OLD SONGS IN FAVOUR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 19093, 28 January 1932, Page 9

OLD SONGS IN FAVOUR

TENDERNESS OF THE PAST. Has the present generation acquired a sudden and an extraordinary respect for its elders? Has it awakened to a recognition of the truth that the latest is not necessarily the best? Let it not be supposed that the younger people among us have dramatically realised their own unworthiness, and have turned in an instant from self-adulation to ancestor-worship. Nothing of the kind. Neverthless, there are signs of an admission of the fact that life has a past as well as a present and a future. Old songs have come into favour after a generation or more of neglect. Strangely enough, these resurrected melodies are being disseminated by the aid of man’s newest toy, wireless—an incongruous blending of the old and th new. Have the old lyrical bones thus dug up been worth the exhumation? Perhaps not; but the old songs have at least the negative merit of not being as bad as comparable songs of the present day. The humorous confession of the impecunious lover in “Daisy Bell” that a bicycle built for two would have to convey his bride and himself from the church, because he could not afford a carriage, had point in its day, for the “safety” bicycle was coming into popularity in the early ’nineties when i,he song was first sung. “The Sunshine of Paradise Alley.” the simple story of a girl of the slums who was everybody's friend by reason of hr buoyant temperament, was not without its touch of sincerity and trueness to life.

What can be said, however, of the ravings of the swain in one of the modern fox-trot songs who assures his lady-love that she is the cream in his coffee and the lace in his shoe? Or for ‘songs with the inane titles. “When I Take My Sugar to Tea.” “Button Up Your Heart.” “Come and Have a Cuddle on the Common.” “There Ought to be a Moonlight-saving Time,” “All by Yourself in the Moonlight,” “Singing in the Bath-tub,” “Painting the Clouds with Sunshine.” “Picking Petals Off of Daisies,” “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” and “When the Little Red Roses Get the Blues for You?” The young man who told his sweet Adeline nearly 30 years ago that at night he pined for her was a sentimental ass. but he did not insult the girl by calling her a shoelace or a spoonful of cream. So the reappearance of those old songs, cheap and crude and obvious as they may be, may be welcomed, if only for the reason that while they are being sung the irritating rubbish that in an endless stream from the songfactories of the United States is being kept away. The familiar tunes, too, bring back to older people memories that are not unpleasant The banal words provoke only a tolerant smile; the melodies—so different from the syncopated perversions of to-day—-possess a refreshing lack of sophistication and some pretence to individuality, albeit of a cheap kind.

What has come over the rising generation that it is willing to do homage to at least something that belonged to its fathers? Not only are old-time songs tolerated from its three-valve, all-electric sets, but old-time dances find a place in many public dancehalls. But the acceptance by the present generation of the fashions of yesterday has its limits. There is no tendency to scorn the aeroplane as a means of swift transit, and to revert to the stage coach. No one having the means to possess a motorcar chooses a pony and jinker instead. The sportive youth with a steady job buys on time-payment a motor-cycle, not a push bicycle. The taxi-cab is preferred to the horse-drawn cab. The train and the motor-’bus are more in favour than a riding-hack for the purpose of moving from place to place. More player-pianos are sold than oldfashioned musical-boxes, in spite of the mortgage placed upon the family income for several years ahead. Nor do the young men of to-day wear cravats and side-whiskers in preference to semi-stiff collars and “to‘oth-brush” moustaches. Nor do the young women of to-day wear “leg-of-mutton” sleeves in preference to no sleeves at all. Youth has not flung itself in an agony of selfabasement at the feet of the past and begged for a wayward child’s share of the wisdom of age. Rather has it bowed to the past with off-hand politeness, with the air of one discharging a social duty. The songs of yesteryear—perhaps, for a change; but the inventions and the fashions of yesteryear—never! Is' there any explanation of this modified tenderness toward the past? It is not the way of the present generation—it has never been the way of present generations—to look to the past for anything. The superiority of 1932 over 1892 is a postulate, not a proposition. It is as self-evident as the superiority of 1892 over 1852. Why, then, should “After the Ball” bo dragged from its dusty obscurity to challenge the supremacy of “She's a Gorgeous Thing?” “After the Ball” may have tugged at the heartstrings; It was certainly not due to any genuine pathos in the song. The only strings it ever deserved to tug at are those controlling the mechanism of laughter. Yet “After the Ball” is heard occasionaly nowadays, in all its excess of sweetness. So are “Two Little Girls in Blue”—another “heartstrings” number—and the evergreen “Lily of Laguna.” 'Dear old songs! They have their uses. They are as a patch of green in a grimy city, a breath of cool air outside a heated room. Above all, they are free from j the hideous moaning of the dreadful I saxophone. ■ It is difficult to imagine a

future generation asking to be given once again those priceless songs, “Sonny Boy” and “Singing in the Rain” (circa 1930). Surely nobody inhisrigiit mind could wish to give a new lease of life to any of the machine-made songs which disfigure our day and generation. They can mean nothing to the middleaged persons of 1960 who were young with the songs of 1930. They are not like “Daisy, Daisy!”