I am thinking about The Fourth as I try and reroof the shed today, and as always, I am burdened by scraps of patriotic songs I was taught in school. They weren't always very good, yet here I am humming them sixty years later.
Waving, waving, see the flag waving
Waving, waving, red, white, and blue.
The sentiment is admirable, but some were rather insipid.
This one, I Like The United States of America has a single YouTube version, but the woman gets the melody wrong and the camera work is old-phone. I linked to one that has the lyrics and has a MIDI file that plunks out the melody. It's the best I could do.
There was a poem "Hats off! The Flag Goes By" that used to be popular in the first half of the 20th C, so it is unsurprising that my elderly fifth-grade teacher (she also taught my mother) was still teaching it in the early 60's.
One of them sort of did make it. To YouTube, anyway. And the US Army Band plays it, or used to
I knew the lyrics at "Land of my birth," and "Grandest on Earth," which I will bet are original , and these "corrected" later.
Yet one more incident of me sharing the small creatures who live in forest holes in the depths of my brain, which come out and sing unexpectedly.
6 comments:
I remember it well. Here is Tennessee Ernie Ford's version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zqoR3yWu2k
You don't even have to look it up. Except for immigrants, the notion that a land was "my choice" would have been comic until very recently. In testimony of that claim, consider Gilbert and Sullivan: "But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman! He remains an Englishman!" It would be like saying you chose your parents.
Listening to the version that Roy sends, the explanation emerges. What I learned was the first verse, but Ford sings what I thought was a new version as a second verse. That makes some sense. America, like every other nation, has nativism as a first choice. That can become unattractive and even evil, certainly. But the idea of people choosing to be here was recognised as wholly legitimate long before the 21st C.
One of the reasons illegal immigration infuriates me is that it gives a place in America that could have gone to someone from any of a hundred countries who has been waiting patiently and following the rules. Which reminds me...
Quick new post
We sang "This is My Country" and "I like it Here" in 8th grade chorus. We sang "This is My Country" in an EXUBERANT tone. Much different from the 2 versions offered here. As many of us in the school were children or grandchildren of immigrants- including a classmate whose mother fled Red China- we had no problem with seeing being American as a choice, and being very glad for our forbears making that choice. (I saw my Quaker ancestors making a choice for religious freedom in Pennsylvania. Ironically, one of the Quaker immigrants to Pennsylvania fled Massachusetts. Guess that dislike of Massachusetts is genetic...That's a joke, of sorts.)
We of the 8th grade, like nearly every other student in the school, esteemed our music teacher. At the time, I merely accepted his choice of music- you sing what the teacher assigns you. In later years, I saw he made some pretty good choices for us to sing. "Autumn Leaves," for example. Another example would be "Every Night When The Sun Goes Down/In." This link has The Weavers or Joan Baez (not together) singing the song.
I never realized until today that Marble Town in the song referred to the graveyard. Some of its lyrics about apron low/high- not in every version- are also seen in The Weavers' Wild Goose Grasses and also in some versions of Careless Love.
Additional: That's quite the mustache, innit?
Yes, as a later verse (in another voice) it makes sense.
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