New Project: Songs Of The Wwi Era.

[Don Taylor]

I am glad that you did this song and I like your arrangement very much.

 

The story about Groucho Marx and Irving Berlin offering to pay him not to sing it - I don't think it was a myth. Here is Groucho singing the song, and at about 3:20 into the video he explains the background to the song. I like Groucho's version too.

 

https://youtu.be/9WTkzBRbtZA

[Bob Michel]

The story about Groucho Marx and Irving Berlin offering to pay him not to sing it - I don't think it was a myth.

 

Thanks, Don. No, you're right; I thought the story had a pretty firm foundation, though I'd forgotten that it came from the man himself.

 

I think Irving protested too much. What higher praise than having one of your songs covered by Groucho?

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

When I started this project last summer I'm not sure whether I pictured myself ever typing a note on the fortieth song in the series. But here it is, just in time for St. Patrick's Day:

 

http://youtu.be/Eoqj9RkIPUo

 

Ireland rivaled Dixie in the 'teens of the last century as the focus of Tin Pan Alley's nostalgic reveries; sometimes the two destinations seem practically interchangeable. Needless to say, few of these songs have even the most tenuous relationship with any music that actually came from Ireland. Fred Fisher (see note on #38, "Peg O' My Heart") was German born; the two lyricists, Joseph McCarthy (no, not that one) and Howard Johnson (no, not that one), were both New Englanders. We've met McCarthy as the lyricist for "They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me" and "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows"; Johnson, who would see Navy service in the War, also penned the words to "Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.)" and the immortal "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream," both in 1927.

 

Charles W. Harrison's recording of this number topped the charts (such as they were) in 1916, the single moment in history when the notional gap between Ireland and its conventional reflection in the American songwriting industry may have been widest. That said, this isn't a bad song of its type. As my own grandmother was busy quitting Loughrea and establishing herself (briefly) in Boston around that time, I'll dedicate it to her memory.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited March 16, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Bob Michel]

And so to #41, another song that could hardly be omitted from a WWI collection, at least in this country:

 

http://youtu.be/jZwMoOGhv8Q

 

This one isn't a Tin Pan Alley production: it was written in 1913, supposedly on a whim, by two Yale students, Alonzo "Zo" Elliott (music) and Stoddard King (words). The copyright is variously given as anything from 1913 to 1915; I've gone with 1914, the date of its London publication.

 

So, like "Tipperary," it's a pre-war piece that only hit its stride (sorry) as a wartime marching song. But the mood here is very different: frankly wistful and sentimental, without a shred of comic relief. I think the juxtaposition of that emotion with the martial rhythm makes it quite an interesting song, as well as a lovely one. Small wonder that it was a bona fide favorite among the doughboys, or that it was recorded several times during the War years, most notably by John McCormack (whose 1917 version, needless to say, puts my little effort here utterly and hopelessly to shame).

 

And as with "Tipperary," one wonders whether it would be remembered today, had it not figured, through no fault of its creators, in the soundtrack of so much history. One just writes the things, after all; there's no telling where, if anywhere, they'll end up--or even what they'll end up meaning.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Don Taylor]

Quite lovely. I am enjoying this series very much.

 

Bob: do you write out your arrangements? If so, could you be prevailed upon to publish?

[Bob Michel]

Quite lovely. I am enjoying this series very much.

 

Bob: do you write out your arrangements? If so, could you be prevailed upon to publish?

Thanks, Don. That's most kind.

 

Publish the arrangements? What an interesting idea. I confess that it hadn't occurred to me before now--in fact I'd barely thought of my dead-simple chording as "arrangements" at all, and it's quite gratifying to hear it described that way!

 

I suppose I should, at any rate, make some notation of how I'm approaching the accompaniment. It's very much a matter of learning as I go, but I think I'm making slow progress. My interest in the project from the start has been equally divided between revivifying the material for its own sake and using it to figure out how to back myself up while singing.

 

So let me think about that. You may have created a monster!

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

Our #42 is a bit of period fluff that turns up now and then in anthologies of WWI songs:

 

http://youtu.be/_qt4zJDhu5M

 

Composer George W. Meyer had a long career; among his many credits he also wrote the music to "For Me And My Gal" (#4 in this series). Grant Clarke, who cowrote the lyrics, barely made it to his fortieth birthday (he died in 1931), but managed to leave his mark with "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" (1912), "Second Hand Rose" (1921), "Am I Blue?" (1929), and dozens of other vaudeville songs. Of his collaborator Howard E. Rogers I know next to nothing, except that he also had a hand in such enduring classics as "Hunting The Hun" (1918) and "Don't Take Advantage (Of My Good Nature): The Great Automobile Song" (1919).

 

The current number is notable mainly for two motifs: the linden tree and the Morris chair. The latter begins to emerge as something of a period obsession. A good friend owned an antique one in my undergraduate years, and I spent many hours sitting in it (always alone). It was comfortable enough, but it never would have suggested itself to me as an appealing venue for serious courtship. Presumably options were fewer a century ago. Wikipedia informs me that William Morris's firm first marketed the chair in 1866, and that D.D. Palmer of Davenport, Iowa introduced chiropractic in 1895. Coincidence? I think not.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

When not single-handedly capturing Berlin, pining for Erin, Dixie and/or Mother, or chasing his girlfriend around a linden tree, the young American of 100 years ago (at least as represented in popular song) could usually be found building castles in the air, chasing rainbows, or engaging in some other form of feckless reverie, a frame of mind in which he must have been a sitting duck for any wily recruiter. Song #43 is not the least famous example of this period trend:

 

http://youtu.be/bhtACXNSsL8

 

John Kellette wrote the music; the lyrics, slight as they are, came from the team of James Brockman, James Kendis and Nat Vincent, working pseudonymously as "Jaan Kenbrovin." Although it was introduced in "The Passing Show of 1918," it was not copyrighted until the following year.

 

Though the song--or at least its familiar chorus--has been endlessly covered and featured in countless soundtracks during the past century, it retains on this side of the Atlantic no particular association with Sport--though Ring Lardner did produce a memorable parody during the "Black Sox" baseball scandal of 1919. For all that he presumably wrote them without collaborators, Lardner's lyrics are frankly an improvement on the original.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited March 25, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Rod]

Bob, Your performances are enhanced by your inclusion of the verse melodies to so many of these old tunes for which the chorus is, all too often, all that seems to have survived. Irrespective of the lyrics, the verse melodies themselves are very much part of these compositions without which the choruses alone can sometimes sound somewhat bereft ?

[Bob Michel]

Irrespective of the lyrics, the verse melodies themselves are very much part of these compositions without which the choruses alone can sometimes sound somewhat bereft ?

I couldn't agree more. Many if not most of these songs were introduced onstage, as part of some sort of dramatic sequence (were it only a stand-alone production number in a variety show). Even when the verses are less than brilliant, they suggest something of that context. I can't imagine omitting them.

 

"La donna è mobile" is surely one of the catchiest tunes ever written; you don't need to understand a word of the lyrics, or to know anything about the plot of "Rigoletto," to appreciate it. But when it also evokes for you the unspeakable Duke of Mantua, jeering at women at the very moment when Gilda is about to give her life to save his worthless hide...it becomes an almost unbearably mordant reflection on the way clueless power dismisses the sacrifices that enable it. *And* a great melody!

 

More typically the verses are no more than a conventional setting, while the chorus is the gemstone. It's the gemstone that commands our admiration--but we still like our gemstones in settings.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited March 26, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Rod]

A selection of different, well chosen, linked choruses can be combined very effectively to make a very pleasing instrumental 'medley'.

 

Has the 'medley' slipped out of fashion Bob.....I fear it may have done.

[Bob Michel]

A selection of different, well chosen, linked choruses can be combined very effectively to make a very pleasing instrumental 'medley'.

Has the 'medley' slipped out of fashion Bob.....I fear it may have done.

It's an alternative way of providing the choruses with a context, I suppose. (Again, I think of a stage performance, where the overture of an opera or musical often quotes all the big tunes to come.)

 

As to whether song medleys have gone out of fashion, I can't say. They used to be a prominent feature of TV variety shows when I was growing up, but as far as I know (I don't watch a lot of TV) shows like that disappeared long ago. If it's true that medleys are no longer popular, that may be part of a larger cultural trend: I think of the Internet as a global jukebox where individual songs circulate independently and are rented (owning a copy is increasingly passé) without reference to their origin, or to their historical/stylistic relationship to other songs. (Sitting down and listening to an entire album, as I still like to do, always makes me feel terribly old-fashioned!) I've played around with devising medleys for some of the WWI choruses, and may yet work up a few standard ones.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

Song #44 is one of my favorites from the period, and one I've recorded before*:

 

http://youtu.be/E2yAUowLa1I

 

The lyricist, Sam Ehrlich, was a Southerner educated at Columbia; I'm intrigued by how many of the footsoldiers of Tin Pan Alley had degrees, often from Ivy League schools and the like, in an era when very few people in this country went to college. Ehrlich collaborated on more than one song with the composer, Con Conrad, who went on to create earworms such as "Ma! He's Making Eyes At Me" (1928). Conrad's most enduring achievement, though, has to be the immortal "(Leena From) Palesteena" (1920), which is, or should be, the anthem of our guild.

 

This song retained its popularity in the 1920s, becoming something of a jazz standard, recorded by no less than Fats Waller (among others). It has a place of honor in my personal collection as the first piece of period sheet music I acquired, sometime in the '80s. I do love the cover art, which still graces my wall:

 

http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/sheetmusic/b/b09/b0964/b0964-1-72dpi.html

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

 

*The previous, concertina-free version is at http://youtu.be/HgT8NIggcnE.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Bob Michel]

Although song #45, a megahit in 1910, falls slightly outside the chronological scope of this project, I've decided to include it for three reasons.

 

http://youtu.be/RESchw1AD0A

 

1. Both its composer, Fred Fisher, and its lyricist, Alfred Bryan, are major figures in the popular music of the WWI period, and we've run into them before--Fisher as a collaborator on "Peg O' My Heart" and "They Go Wild, Simple Wild over Me," Bryan as a contributor to "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier." And the current song certainly retained its popularity through the 'teens.

 

2. Like "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now" (1909), this one also has some thematic relevance to the war. Aviation was brand new and extremely exciting in those years. As an aside, I have to confess that, like any American schoolkid, I long ago had the portentous year of 1903 impressed upon me as the date of the Wright Brothers' first successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk. But only recently did I learn that very little happened to advance their fame or influence for the next five years: flight didn't really begin to seize the interest of governments and private citizens, in either Europe or America, until the demonstrations the Wrights made in France--in 1908. So flying as a metaphor was still very fresh in 1910, when this song first appeared.

 

3. Most importantly, I just really like the song--for its giddy "industrial optimism" (to crib a phrase from Wendell Berry), for its sheer silliness, and for what seems to me a sustained exercise in outrageous double entendre to match anything in American popular music of any period. Not only that; it simply begs to be backed up on an Anglo (before starting this project I'd recorded a version with more conventional accompaniment: http://youtu.be/BWknSkysthY). I find I can tolerate the duets of Billy Murray and Ada Jones only in small doses, but their classic 1911 recording of this one (also available on YouTube) is great fun.

 

Handle with care, though: if you're not familiar with this song, you should know that it's a serious earworm. There; you've been warned, and my conscience is clear.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited April 5, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Bob Michel]

And now for something...substantially...different:

 

http://youtu.be/oVenKeKGwOM

 

1917 wasn't just the year when the United States belatedly entered the First World War as a combatant. It was also the year when America discovered jazz.

 

While the style had been evolving for quite a while in New Orleans, the release of "Livery Stable Blues" by the Original Dixieland Jass Band (the word's spelling was still up for grabs) is generally credited with introducing it to a national audience. That happened in early '17, and Tin Pan Alley began to register the new fad almost instantly. The current song, #46 in this series, bears the distinction of being one of the very first popular songs to allude to it.

 

This isn't to say that the song *is* jazz, even by the most forgiving definition. The popular recording by the comic duo of Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harland (available on YouTube, though oddly misdated '1912') does have a plausible ragtime vibe to it, but you can't listen to it without reflecting that in 1917 white America (at any rate) is just beginning to learn to hear this music. To wit: jazz-inspired lyrics of the period are full of references to the music being played "off-key," which presumably refers to still unfamiliar flat thirds and sevenths. The Collins/Harland version is lively enough (and not as cringeworthy in its mimicry as some of their other numbers), but it ain't got that swing.

 

As with a few other items in the series, I found in arranging the song that it's very difficult at this remove to unhear the soundtrack of the Jazz Age and reproduce the tentative quality of a 'teens performance (my own awkwardness in interpretation being another matter entirely). But then authentic period performance has never been the goal here. I paid my lip service to authenticity by leaving the song in its printed key of Eb (my 40-button Anglo came in handy on this one), but I probably allowed a bit of anachronistic rhythm to creep in. Well, musical taste was evolving quickly in 1917. Slouching towards jazz.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited April 12, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Jack Campin]

Another one from the other side. The Jagdflieger-Lied, starring von Richthofen:

 

http://ingeb.org/Lieder/esblitze.html

 

Curse you Red Baron!

[Bob Michel]

Another one from the other side.

Wonderful! You've got me humming away, in martial mode.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

As I've no doubt mentioned before, the entries in this series fall into three groups:

 

1) songs that entered the popular canon, and have remained in circulation throughout the past century (e.g., "Smiles," "Are You from Dixie?");

 

2) songs, some familiar, some less so, that are evocative of the period and accessible in multiple recorded versions including, these days, some on YouTube (e.g., "Good-Bye Broadway, Hello France," "Hello Central, Give Me No Man's Land");

 

3. songs that have been more or less forgotten over the years, and which I've never (or hardly ever) actually heard performed (e.g., "When It's Orange Blossom Time in Loveland," "There's a Quaker Down in Quaker Town").

 

Song #47 is in the third category. I bought the sheet music on eBay because I liked the cover art, and it's been hanging on my wall for a long time, but only last year did I get around to learning it. It is indeed a very old-fashioned piece, but I'm quite fond of it:*

 

http://youtu.be/v71-nCj-Evc

 

1915 is a bit late to be citing ragtime as a benchmark of modernity, but Harry Jentes, who wrote the music, was himself a pianist and composer of some reputation in that style, so that for once the song has an authentic ragtime vibe. Of the lyricists, Dick Howard (who lived into the 1980s) is perhaps best known for the WWII hit "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place." And Sam M. Lewis we've met more than once: he also had a hand in "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm" and "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody."

 

Arranging actual ragtime pieces for Anglo is something I'd love to make time for at some point. So in a way this entry is aspirational.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

 

*In fact, just over a year ago I recorded a concertina-free arrangement of the song:

 

http://youtu.be/9ajMJ2lAEyo

Edited April 19, 2016 by Bob Michel