You Belong To Me

This song is special to me because until 9-10 years ago, I was happy and felt challenged to just play tunes on the dulcimer.  I collected tablature and worked on quick fingerings for fiddle tunes and smooth melodic playing for celtic aires. Then I heard Kate Rusby sing this song, and I felt it vibrate in my chest. I had never heard her before and I fell in love instantly.  I wasn't content to just play a dulcimer tune from that day forward.  I wanted to participate in the song by singing it too.  I've never even approached her style of singing for this song, but I became fascinated with trying to work out an entire song...with an intro, and a little finish, and an instrumental break. Basically arranging a song for singing.  I had a never sung before except in the shower or in my car.

I enjoyed the challenge, although I felt very limited in my singing ability...I was forced to re-tune to find a comfortable key to sing in...later, through the addition of a 1+ fret, I learned to play in other keys while still remaining tuned in D-A-D...OR...by tuning down to C-G-C, and playing chords in the key of C with the fingerings I would use tuned to D-A-D, using my 1+ fret...I could also sing another step lower than the key of C without having to tune my dulcimer down so low, the strings might flap.  Did you follow that?  I purchased a 'G' Ginger dulcimer to give me more options...and pulled out my neglected Baritone dulcimer to see what options that would give me for singing.

For these last 9 years or so, 95% of my efforts have been put into finding songs with a story or melody I want to work out on the dulcimer to sing.  If I can't sing it (and there are many), I still want to play them.  It's just that when you sing multiple verses of the song, the song lasts longer.  I'm not real adept at repeating parts of a tune by playing them all over the fretboard for variety.  I need to work on that!  By singing a song, you can go through it 3 - 5 times with the different verses using just chord accompaniment, and then run through the song once as an instrumental.  Use some creativity on intro or tags between lines.  It's wonderfully challenging and rewarding.

Here is the song that inspired me to start singing with the dulcimer:
Kate Rusby - You Belong To Me

My song sheet of lyrics and chords I use to sing the song on the dulcimer.  This is NOT tablature for playing the melody.
You Belong to Me PDF song sheet

According to Wikipedia…

"You Belong to Me" is credited to Pee Wee King, Chilton Price and Redd Stewart.

Price, a songwriting librarian at WAVE Radio Louisville, had written the song in its virtual entirety as "Hurry Home to Me" envisioning the song as an American woman's plea to a sweetheart serving overseas in World War II. Afforded songwriting credit on the song mostly in exchange for their work in promoting it, King and Stewart did slightly adjust Price's composition musically and lyrically, shifting the focus from a wartime background "into a kind of universal song about separated lovers" and changing the title to "You Belong to Me".

…The first 1952 recording of the song was by Joni James