SONGS—PAST AND PRESENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

SONGS—PAST AND PRESENT.

MUSIC AND MASS PRODUCTION! Most of our present-day songs seem to be manufactured on New York's East Side—Tin Pan Alley is the appropriate name of the place—by men with names like A 1 Shwickbaum and Siavotsky. A 1 and Zed can churn out their song success complete with pyrotechnic cover, every day. It is simply done. From half-a-dozen well-tried formulae, Al, the librettist, selects, let us say, the '"Home Town" formula.

The instructions tell him that a home town may be in California, Nicaragua, or Borneo, but that ordinary places like Oshbosh, Pa., Oldham, Lanes., or Geelong, Vict., must be sedulously avoided. Sometimes it is not, strictly speaking, a home town at all. but becomes a River of Dreams, a Valley of Memories, n Beach where the Moon is Always Shining, or even a pure figment of the imagination, as Avalon.

Remoteness and inaccessibility a home must have. Al, therefore, selects a place a>t tlie end of a small, single-track railway, and in addition makes the returning ex lie carry his grip on a long, long trail or winding track ere the old shack where Mammy and Daddy live at last comes into view.

These tilings done, Al's tnsk is easy. He hews the theme roughly into the time-honoured rhymes-—'"Shack, goin|£ back," "Girl, pearl," "Across the foam, no more to roam," and so on—calls it a libretto, and strolls out for a game of pool.

Zed. meanwhile has" selected two or three classical tunes, blended them, written the mixture in syncopated time, finally transcribed the whole into an easy key so that every flapper can play it at sight, and is already making tracks for the club.

The life of the song will be short and the game would doubtless be true. . Ah, well, Al and Zed, on their way to the Zionist Club may stumble into a nest of desperate hold-up men. We will hope for the best.

The songs of a few years ago were not made that way. There was a dash of inspiration about many of those tunes. The words, admittedly, were generally banal, full of sugary eentimentalism or trite humour, but at least they were not gibbering nonsense. We did not mouth the idioms of another race—"Red hot mamma," "Oh, boy, she's my baby," and so on. When we roared out 'Where did you get that hat?" and "What a mouth, what a north and south," we stuck to idioms and phrases that were in everyday use and familiar to us. When we sang ballads like "Just a Song at Twilight," "The Long, Long Trail," and "Sweet Adeline," we became frankly sentimental.

It seems, on looking back, thai the sentimental and the comic song had the field pretty much to themselves. "By the Side of the Zuyder Zee," "Oh, Oh, Antonio," "Has Anyone Seen a German Band?" "She's a Lassie from Lancashire," "In the Twi-Twi-Twlight," "I Love a Lassie," "Meet Me To-night in Dreamland," and "Somewhere the Sun is Shillings," were all conspicuous examples of the sentimental song, with varying degrees of eentimentalism.

Livelier moods were conjured up by "Let's All (Jo Down the Strand," "I'm Twenty-one To-day," "All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor," "Flanagan," and "Down at the Old Bull and Bush."

The jerky, galvanising rhythms of ragtime struck a sharp blow at these evenflowing, decorous folk tunes. "Alexander's Rag-time Band" swept through the countries like a disease. Soon a flood of these tunes came along. In the vanguard were "Everybody's Doing It," "Get Out and Get Under," "Hitchy-koo," and "I Want to Go Back Home to Dixie." Mark how our intellectual decadence set in. It was with diffidence- that staid citizens enunciated "It's Just the Bestest Band that Am" (Alexander's, that is); but that accomplished, they passed on more boldly to "Where the Hens are dog-gone glad to lay, Scrambled eggs in the new-mown hay," and very I soon were shamelessly giving tongue to i such literary melanges as

When that midnight choo-ehoo leaves for Alabam, When I see that ru«ly-haired conductor man, I will be right there with bells, When that southern brakeman yells 'All aboard for Alabam.' " The war brought new types of songs, but the "Mother" song became a greater favourite than ever. Big, rascally soldiers, who probably wrote home once a year, would beef out with the utmost salemnity— " so don't neglect your home, my boy, Yon can get a sweetheart every day, But not another mother."

There was a Cockney song that used to sound like this when London troops sang it:—

"Ow, for anuvver dye at Margit, Good old Margit by ver sea. Haul Id a row, twenty in a boat, Shahtin' 'Boatman, won't yet tyke us 'ome agyne.' BUI lorst 'Is 'arf-a-dollar cady, Liza lost 'er llckle fewer, Ho ! we was airistocrac.v Eatin* 'em an' eggs for tea. An' we awl rowed 'ome togevver." "Australia Will be There," "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty," "Good-bye-ee," "Tipperary," "The Army of To-day's All right"—what memories do these wartime favourites not evoke; memories of slogging night marches, of crowded tents with braziers glowing and the atmosphere almost pure carbon monoxide, troopships casting off, cosy estaminets, snowed-up hutments, cattle trucks, comrades who died, perhaps with a music-hall song on their lips?

Crash! Next door they have put "Yes, Sir, She's My Baby" on the gramophone. Across the road "Nobody Knows What a Red-Haired Mamma Can Do" desecrates the quiet air!