New Project: Songs Of The Wwi Era.

[StuartEstell]

Bob,

 

I'm really enjoying these. Your vocal phrasing is great -- you have a subtlety and lightness of touch that reminds me of Harry Nilsson, although it's very much your own.

Edited February 23, 2016 by StuartEstell

[Bob Michel]

I'm really enjoying these.

Thanks, Stuart! I'm just trying to figure it out as I go. I couldn't sound like Billy Murray or Al Jolson even if I wanted to, so I'm trying to see what can be done with my limited folkie toolkit.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

The thirty-third entry in our series is one of those iconic WWI songs one could hardly omit from such a collection:

 

http://youtu.be/ePW3ZakMMds

 

Bostonians Jack Caddigan and James Alexander Brennan collaborated, as lyricist and composer respectively, on quite a few war-themed numbers ("We're All Going Calling on the Kaiser," etc.), as well as some bog-standard Dixie pieces ("When It's Cotton Pickin' Time in Tennessee," etc.). But the current song is easily their best known work. It also has a French verse, penned by Louis Delamarre. Ordinarily I'd have included this, but I found it a surprisingly awkward fit with the melody.

 

The full-bore sentimentality may be a bit of a stretch for modern tastes, but (possibly because I've been immersed in this stuff for a year) I find it a lovely song. Since my own late mother was a war nurse--though regular Army, not Red Cross, and in a later conflict--I'll make the appropriately sentimental gesture of dedicating this one to her memory.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Rod]

Yes Bob, a lovely one. 'Modern tastes' could well benefit from being stretched in the direction of a bit more of this sort of sentimentality.

[Jack Campin]

I just came across this, from the Hungarian side:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO8cuAOBlwk

 

Google Translate does a good job on the lyrics (ghost of a dead soldier talking about what he didn't get to write back home to his mother) - rather similar to the Turkish "Canakkale icinde" which I think I've already mentioned here.

 

Background to the song:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Doberd%C3%B2

 

This is the same battle sung about from the Italian side:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtsMuFdO4yg (with lyrics)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbFINI9pxuU (my favourite version)

Edited February 24, 2016 by Jack Campin

[Bob Michel]

I just came across this, from the Hungarian side [...]

Those are marvelous, Jack; thanks. It'd be hard for me to say which melody I prefer, though I confess I fared better with the Italian lyrics than with the Hungarian ones.

 

Have you by any chance been following this blog? I can't remember whether I've mentioned it before.

 

http://ww1blog.osborneink.com

 

I particularly appreciate the space he's giving to theatres and aspects of the war--the Eastern Front, certainly, and Africa--with which I'm less familiar. I haven't noticed any entries on WWI music yet, but I suspect that's only a matter of time.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited February 24, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Jack Campin]

That blog is really interesting. I had absolutely no idea about all those details of how the blockade of the Central Powers worked (today's entry), and what its implications were. There are probably parallels with present-day manipulations of the oil trade in the Middle East.

[Bob Michel]

Having scored a hit in 1918 with our last entry, lyricist Jack Caddigan evidently thought there might be another big payday in the angel-of-mercy theme. Whence this song (#34), on which he teamed up with yet another Bostonian, Oliver E. "Chick" Story (1885-1961), a composer and publisher with whom he often collaborated.

 

http://youtu.be/QOV6Ufdc-U8

 

Like most sequels, the second song completely failed to achieve the éclat of the original. Still, when I came across the title the other day, I knew I had to learn and record it as soon as possible. Although the lyrics claim that the pious young volunteer had "the emblem of God in her hand," I suspect that this was a misidentification--due no doubt to the fog of war--and that the device she was holding, and with which she won the narrator's heart, was actually something quite different.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

I haven't noticed any entries on WWI music yet, but I suspect that's only a matter of time.

 

 

I'd missed this Great War Blog entry on popular music from just over a year ago, which provides some useful background to this project:

 

http://ww1blog.osborneink.com/?p=5705

 

It features a nice picture of the actual Tin Pan Alley on 28th St. in NYC, as well as a link to Henry Burr's recording of Irving Berlin's notorious anti-war song "Stay Down Here Where You Belong." (I need to work up a concertina version of this one. I did record it with uke accompaniment last spring: http://youtu.be/4WsGCnwFedQ).

 

It's also good to be reminded of the enormous influence of John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) on period tastes. Sousa's own cylinder recordings with the Marine Band had been among this country's very first hit records, and his marches were a big part of the War's soundtrack here. Even in the first year of the conflict, when public opinion ran strongly against involvement, Americans loved their stirring martial music.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Jim Besser]

Bob - I assume you know about this, but just in case you don't: the Pritzker Military Museum and Library is starting to digitize World War I sheet music. LInk to PDFs and MP3s. There's not too much here, I assume the project is just starting.

 

http://www.finditillinois.org/ww1Music/

[Bob Michel]

Bob - I assume you know about this, but just in case you don't: the Pritzker Military Museum and Library is starting to digitize World War I sheet music. LInk to PDFs and MP3s. There's not too much here, I assume the project is just starting.

 

Thanks, Jim. No; I hadn't come across this site. Several American universities are doing the same thing, and their collections are growing all the time. Missouri has a particularly good one, as does Duke. And of course the Library of Congress has quite a bit of stuff online. I raid these repositories all the time, though most of the songs I've recorded so far are from my own stash of sheet music.

 

I see that of the 22 songs listed (so far) on the Pritzker site I've already covered half a dozen. And I know I have a copy of "Joan Of Arc They Are Calling You" tucked away somewhere.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

While Tin Pan Alley loved to send the doughboys mooning after any available Red Cross nurses or Salvation lassies, not to mention Sweet Marie from Gay Paree, the wives and sweethearts at home were rarely portrayed as anything other than paragons of stoic fidelity. Occasionally The Girl He Left Behind would take a break from knitting socks and pen a soulful letter. Here's one from 1919, #35 in our series:

 

http://youtu.be/UWx5q4fx6UI

 

To judge by the paucity of online references, this number must be something of a rarity, for all that it was written by two major songsmiths of the period, composer Egbert Van Alstyne ("In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree") and lyricist Gus Kahn ("Makin' Whoopee"), whom we've already met as collaborators on "So Long, Mother" (#21). I've never heard it performed, but I happen to own a very dogeared copy of the sheet music (in the reduced-size format introduced in 1918 to conserve paper for the war effort), and I worked up this arrangement from that.

 

Something about this selection hints strongly--to my ear, anyway--at the music of the decade to come. It's slight enough, I suppose, but by now my taste has been sufficiently corrupted by immersion in the styles of that day that I really do find it a perfectly lovely song of its kind.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

The thirty-sixth song in our series is another bit of ephemera from my personal sheet music collection:

 

http://youtu.be/j1tTFmpWLHo

 

Henry Burr had two separate hit recordings with it in the summer of 1916: a duet version with Albert Campbell on the Victor label and an arrangement for the Peerless Quartet, recorded for Columbia. (Both can be heard on YouTube.) I've been unable to locate any other credits for lyricist David Berg, but German-born composer Alfred Solman was a busy man in vaudeville. I'm eager to take on his "The Heart You Lost In Maryland, You'll Find In Tennessee" on the strength of the silly title alone, but he's better known for "The Bird On Nellie's Hat" (1906). I'd always assumed this originated as an English music hall song, and am intrigued to learn that it was a Tin Pan Alley production.

 

Apart from its historical interest, I feel honor-bound as a native Philadelphian to include this number. I love the notion that my home town, though no more than "two hours' ride from old Broadway," could have been as mythical a landscape to New York songwriters as, say, Alsace-Lorraine. For the sad fact is that even in 1916 Philly's distinctive Quaker roots weren't something one stumbled over at any given intersection in the city. As for nowadays--why, I don't think anyone has addressed me as "thee" all day. Granted, it's early yet.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Rod]

So no one to call you "thee" but have any of the girls given you that "meet me later" look ?

[Bob Michel]

So no one to call you "thee" but have any of the girls given you that "meet me later" look ?

For some reason I'm failing to picture that look just now. Maybe it's a Quaker thing?

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

[Bob Michel]

Entry #37 belongs on anyone's short list of WWI classics. In France, where it originated, it would need no introduction. But though the English version (given here) was wildly popular among the doughboys--rivaling, by some accounts, "Over There" and "Tipperary"--it's not much remembered now, let alone performed, in the U.S.A.

 

http://youtu.be/7cXCaZaR4qM

 

Louis Bousquet's French lyrics, set to Camille Robert's stirring march, date from the very beginning of the War. But it wasn't until 1918 that this rendering, with new words by the Canadian lyricist Alfred Bryan, was published. We've met Bryan before, as the cowriter of 1915's "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier" (#6 in this series). In addition to having a hand in these two iconic (and radically different) songs of the War years, he also gave us the words to "Come Josephine In My Flying Machine" (1910) and "Peg O' My Heart" (1913). (Even though it slightly predates my chosen period, I may yet choose to add "Josephine" to the list; it's just such a wonderful, goofy song. And surely it was still in the air, as it were, during the War.)

 

Bryan certainly didn't let fidelity to his French source hamper the flight of his imagination here. Nor French geography, either: one wonders why he chose Britanny, when he could have set the scene closer to the front without sacrificing either rhyme or meter (Picardy?). That said, his more formidable version of the flirty, feisty tavern girl is an affecting bit of fan fiction. Anyway, different countries; different customs.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited March 4, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Bob Michel]

Very strictly speaking entry #38, which first appeared in 1913, isn't a WWI era song. But it was certainly in the air throughout the war years--as it's been ever since; this is one of the most tenacious earworms of its decade. Or the chorus is, anyway; as usual, the verses have tended to go missing, an omission which is corrected here.

 

http://youtu.be/w-p03F0Ofxg

 

Alfred Bryan, the lyricist, also had a hand in #6, "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier," and #37, the English version of "Madelon." And we've encountered the composer Fred Fisher as well: among other hit songs of the period he collaborated in 1917 on "They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me" (#16 here). One minor mystery attends the current entry: Fisher, who was born in Köln, is said to have dropped the 'c' from his (adopted) name to deflect anti-German sentiment during the War, but the name is already spelled "Fisher" on the original sheet music--or at least on any copies I've seen. I'd be intrigued to discover an early printing with "Fischer" on the cover.

 

Another peculiarity of this song is that while it was inspired by the very popular stage production of the same name, it wasn't actually featured in that play; instead, it made its debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1913. It was the golden age of vaudevillian Irishry in the United States: sentimental chestnuts like "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" (1912) and "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral" (1914) were the order of the day, and this number fit right in to the trend. American theater audiences reveled in ethnic stereotypes, many of them more than a little toxic by modern standards, but the Irish (or pseudo-Irish) ones are mostly pretty benign. Or such, at any rate, is the judgment call of my own half-Irish self.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited March 8, 2016 by Bob Michel

[Bob Michel]

It's been a while since we checked in with Irving Berlin. Entry #39 is one of his oddest compositions--in fact, it strikes me as one of the weirdest conceits in all of American popular music--and one that he regretted having written for most of his long life. Groucho Marx was particularly fond of it, and delighted in singing it in spite or because of Berlin's protests (and, according to legend, attempted bribes). It was also memorably covered by Tiny Tim on his 1968 LP "God Bless Tiny Tim."

 

http://youtu.be/YCoOs97vUxU

 

Quite a few popular songwriters over here aired pacifistic sentiments in the early months of the conflict, but the trend didn't last long. For Berlin, the professional patriot, who would soon be composing "God Bless America" for the military revue "Yip Yip Yaphank" (though he cut the song from the show and subsequently shelved it for a long time), it was particularly embarrassing to have dallied with such notions, however briefly. On the contrary, I think the song speaks well of him; in all his vast catalogue there are few I like as well. And I'm pretty sure I'd say that even if it didn't sit so well in the not-so-diabolical key of Dm on a C/G Anglo.

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

Edited March 11, 2016 by Bob Michel