Holton Arms School - Scribe Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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But it is the songs of the period that have made the Gay Nineties so inimitable and unique. Sigmund Spaeth has collected the most popular in his book Read 'Em and Weep. When Sweet Rosie O'Grady, Daisy, Daisy, and On a Sunday Afternoon hit the country they were wildly received. To a nation in which the women wore bustles, carried muffs and parasols, and the men had sideburns, wore narrow trousers and derbies, the sweet, sentimental mushiness of some of the songs had great appeal. It was a time when music had a mournful melodramatic note of tragedy in it, with happy, sticky endings tacked on. Partings, villains, and reconciliations were favorite themes. And the songs usually told stories. In The Little Lost Child a policeman found a little Waif who later turned out to be his own lost child. When the frantic mother came in search of her, the estranged husband and wife had a touching reconciliation scene. Of course there were also some peppier songs, pieces with more punch and less sentimentality such as, Make a Noise Like a Hoop and Roll Away, and My Mother Was a Lady. As it was the beginning of the mechanization of America, automobiles and telephones inspired such songs as ln My Merry Oldsmobile and Ting-a-Ling Ling. Hordes of country yokels were being drawn to the cities which were springing up overnight-men for the factories, girls for telephone operators. Everywhere were sung cautions to the little, innocent, country maid arriving in the big city or den of iniquity, warning her of cabs, men with fascinating ways, and the evil of money. She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage sang the sad story of a girl who married for money, and She's Only a Poor Working Girl linked demi-tasses and the upper classes sinfully together. Songs laid great emphasis on girls. lust One Girl, Sweet Marie, and Elsie from Chelsea are just a few out of many. Words in many of the songs were pathetic in their triteness, their only excuse being that they rhymed. A typical verse of this type is one of the many stanzas in the popular Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-dere. I'll sing a little song, it won't take long, If I sing it Wrong, why ring the gong, Then I will say to you so long, And start at once for old I-long Kong. Then a tear to my eye 'twill surely bring And l'll call you a saucy thing. Then for the Patrol you all may ring And hear the Copper sweetly sing. When this was sung by, say, Lottie Gilson in a bouffante dress pulled up to display a leg, and wearing a huge straw hat with ostrich feathers it is more understandable how such a song could go over. But can we truthfully say that their words are much sillier than those in many of our songs today, such as, Flatfoot Floogie and Satchelmouth Swing ? What will future generations say of Tommy Dorsey, jitterbugs, and swing music? Will we be referred to as Those Trying Thirties ? Will we be revered, remem- bered, or laughed at? Catherine Clement, Form Vl 87

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