Introduction: Froggy's Novelty Song Lyric Collection

Froggy's Novelty Song Lyric Collection: Introduction

WHERE THESE LYRICS COME FROM

These lyrics to early 20th century American novelty songs were transcribed from contemporary performances, recorded on "78" and "Edison Disc" records, in addition to a few cylinders. The majority of these date from the 1910's and the 1920's; some are a couple of years earlier or later. Most of the records are from my own collection, with a few out of the collections of my record collecting friends Justin Winston and Tom Saunders, whom I thank for allowing me access to their recordings.
The most of the source material has been original vintage recordings. Most of this material is unfortunately not available on late twentieth-century formats. The situation does seem to be improving some. Some sides which had been out of print for over half a century when I informally started transcribing lyrics in 1986 have since been reissued. Vast amounts of excellent material remain untapped. The highly clever and polished (and very popular at the time) recordings of Billy Jones & Ernest Hare are an example sadly overlooked by reissuers. Several reissues have appeared featuring singers and bands that often included novelty songs in their repertory (such as Al Jolson, Cliff Edwards, Frank Crumit, Harry Reser's band, etc.) but novelty songs are seldom per se the focus of reissues-- an exception being the recent CD "SILLY SONGS" (Australian ABC 836 169-2) in Robert Parker's "The Golden Years in Digital Stereo" series.
When I have come across published sheet music to the songs herein included, I have noticed that the printed lyrics often differ significantly from the lyrics I was familiar with from recordings. Different recordings of the same song by different singers (or sometimes even different recordings by the same singer) may contain alternative lines or even completely different choruses. Some of the lyric transcriptions in this collection take elements from multiple recordings; for example none of the several recordings of "Palesteena" which I am familiar with has more than two vocal choruses, but within these various recordings I found enough alternate lines to construct an entire third chorus.
I have tried to render words accurately from the recorded performances and include any significant alternative lyrics. Occasionally, especially when I am familiar with the song only on a single low-fidelity recording in less than optimum condition, certain words or phrases must represent my best guess. Lines which I am unsure of are prefaced with a question mark (?). Novelty song lyrics are often slangy and full of topical references of the time. When I come upon a line such as the one which sounds to me like "Your wife gives you Halifax without a shoe that's all", I wonder if I'm mis-hearing the words or if the phrase was some slang reference which made sense at the time but has become obscure over half a century later. Perhaps some of these lines never did make much sense...strict sense never was one of the novelty song's strong points.

CRITERION FOR INCLUSION IN THIS COLLECTION

This collection was started for my own amusement. I like these numbers. While some of these songs are undoubtably better than others, they all have some portion which I consider either particularly enjoyable or particularly illustrative of the novelty song of the period. Some selections are included for comparison to other songs in the collection; it will be seen that shared themes and self references are common within the novelty song genre of the time covered in this collection.

NOTES ON THE NOVELTY SONG

The phrase "Novelty Song" as used in reference to this Collection

I have come across various uses of the term "Novelty" in referring to songs or recordings, some referring to humorous lyrics, some to methods of singing, others to instrumentation or musical style. A full discussion of differing uses of the tag "novelty" is beyond the scope of this introduction. For the purposes of this collection, I define a novelty song as one purposefully intended to be amusing, or at least silly. Many were intended for the vaudeville stage (although I consider recorded vaudeville acts as such to be a different category). Most are related to the older venerable comic patter song music hall tradition, but some are in the newer song forms of the "Jazz Age".

Double Entendres

While the "double entendre" is a common device in novelty songs, I consider songs whose primary humor derives from such sexual implications (such as "Kitchen Man", "Empty Bed Blues", and "I'm Going To Give It To Mary With Love", etc.) to be a separate song form outside of the scope of this collection, perhaps belonging in a "Double Entendre Song Collection".

Common Themes

Common themes can be found in these novelty songs. While this is no doubt partly because these songs are all products of their time and culture, it is also due to the fact that composers and publishers tried to imitate in "formula pieces" songs which had already proven commercial successes. Big hits spawned swarms of imitators. The worst of these (not included here) tread little original ground either in lyrics or music (for example, one of many pieces published in hopes of cashing in on the success of " Yes, We Have No Bananas" was called "Hey, You Want Any Codfish". The composers of this last piece were evidently too embarrassed to print their real names, and were listed as "Ima Fish & Ura Herring". The vaudevillians Furman & Nash actually recorded this piece for some reason...it is a creditable performance of a song with little merit). Extremely popular songs would also inspire parody songs expressing how sick the listener was of the repetition of the popular song. "Yes, We Have No Bananas" was parodied by " I've Got The Yes We Have No Bananas Blues". Songwriters Yellen & Ager followed up their own success " Crazy Words Crazy Tune" with " Vo Do Do De O Blues" --perhaps the composers became tired of the song themselves!

Exotic Settings

The theme of exotic foreign places is one of the most common in novelty songs. Perhaps this theme is best typified by Lew Brown and Albert Von Tilzer's phenomenaly successful " OH BY JINGO". The title "OH BY JINGO" is quoted in such later songs as "NAGASAKI" and " THE NIGHT WE DID THE BOOM BOOM BY THE SEA". Albert Von Tilzer himself tried his hand at an "OH BY JINGO" sequel in the form of "CHILI BEAN", whose tune was much played by the dance bands of the time, but whose lyrics never achieved the renown of "OH BY JINGO". The setting of these exotic foreign place songs, whether described as San Domingo, Borneo, Timbuctoo, Nagasaki, The Bamboo Isle, or The Land of Einie Meanie Miney Moe, is not meant to be realistically portrayed. Instead, the theme is one of escape to a dreamy distant land where life is presumably simpler and more enjoyable, and alcohol and sex are cheap, good, abundant, and legal.

Alcohol

Alcohol itself is a major novelty song theme of the Prohibition Era. A large folio could easily be assembled of nothing but songs talking about prohibition and its social consequences, few if any having anything sympathetic to say about the law.

Ethnic Stereotypes

Stereotyping of ethnic groups was a very large part of what was concidered entertainment in early 20th century USA. While this phenomenon is not a focus of this collection, such stereotyping was so pervasive in the culture that produced these songs that bits of it inevitably pop up in the songs. What is one to make, for example, of " What Does The Pussy Cat Mean When She Says Meow"? The song appears to be a lighthearted naieve stream of silly nonsense and bad puns-- jarringly interupted by what modern sensibilties may consider a rude ethnic slur. (For those not familiar with USA slang of that era, "Wop" was a term for an Italian or person of Italian ancestry. In recent decades, anyway, it has been considered insulting-- though as a counter example, in New Orleans some Italian restaurant menus featured what was locally known as a "Wop salad" as late as the early 1980s; It would probably still be known as such locally with no offense meant were it not for out-of-towners who took issue with the term.) What did the lyricist for "What Does The Pussy Cat Mean When She Says Meow" intend when using this term? Was malice intended? Probably not. It should be noted, however, that the USA of that era had a much larger percentage of recent immigrant population, and there was much more cultural presure for persons to loose the visibile aspect of their ancestral heritage to become "More American". This indeed too often devolved into stereotyping and belittling. None the less, the answer for the lyrics here is probably much more simple: Such ethnic terms or stereotyping were not concidered in anyway inappropriate or out of context for a light-hearted silly song intended for the general audience of the day. The lyricist quite likely rhymed "cop" with "wop" with hardly a second thought.

Products of a Vanished Culture

It has been said that "The past is an other country; they do things differently there". Although these songs were produced within the memory of people still alive as I write this, they are products of a very different culture. Technology has created swifter cultural change in the 20th century USA over a few decades than some ancient nations experienced over many centuries. The old shellac 78s of pre-Depression era novelty songs can be as much a glimpse in to a lost civilization as the frescos of Pompeii. When looking from one culture to another, the observer will see both similarities and differences. Some differences may seem quaint or amusing; others may seem shocking or barbaric. I would like to think that society has made at least some progress from the ethnocentrisim and misogyny of the turn-of-the-last-century. Such attitudes are alas here and there evident in the songs in this collection. I could not remove them with out a dishonest and misleading amount of editing. Since I concider these songs to be a type of historical and sociological document, I have left them intact. I hope that my readers will take no offence at this collection for presenting a portrait of the past as it was, in it's own words, warts and all. The reader should read these lyrics as the period pieces that they are.
The reader will find moments of ignorance and prejudice in these lyrics... but also bits of wisdom and surprising insight. Amidst the hopelessly dated material there are, I believe, bits of timeless wit.
For those wishing to use this collection to examine the culture of early 20th century USA as reflected in it's novelty song lyrics, I have included an Index of Selected Topics.

In Conclusion

I'm sure that there are other meritorious recorded novelty songs which have thus far escaped my attention. There are also, no doubt, more alternate lyrics to the songs contained in this collection on recordings which I am not familiar with. I'd like to know about them. Those wishing to contact me relative to this matter may do so though the below address. This collection is an expanded re-working of a smaller first edition, xeroxes of which I ran off for a few friends in May of 1987. I hope to further expand this collection at some time in the future.

-- Froggy, 2 April 1997

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