August 21, 2007
The Great Songs of Baseball: An Interview with Jerry Silverman (Part 2) Posted by Allen Barra at 03:45 PM EST This is the conclusion of the interview that begins here. You write in your introduction that your choice of material is based “on textual interest and inherent musical value (i.e., singability).” Which are your favorites among the 41 songs included? Did you uncover any that were popular in their time but are just too awful by today’s standards? I’ll start with some of the problem songs. The strangest song in the collection was originally entitled “Base Ball” when it was composed in 1914. To avoid confusion with another song with the same title written in 1908, I amended the title slightly to “Base Ball [With You],” borrowing that line from the song itself. It is a song about a woman sitting in the stands and admiring her hero on the field. It has a very nice syncopated, sentimental melody, but the lyrics were all but incomprehensible. However, I liked the tune well enough to want to include it in the collection, so I took the liberty of changing the lyrics so that would make some sense. Here are the words to the original chorus: How you take my eye,
How I love to love,
To be your never never good,
But now I’m going to try,
I am going to try.
It’s true as I am looking into your little eye.
To never lose to never
No greater game I can play
Than baseball for you. See what I mean? To find out how I translated the song into English just turn to page 159 in the book. The next problem song presented a problem of a very different nature. Despite the existence of black baseball teams with their own panoply of stars, no published songs were found that sang of this aspect of American baseball. A call to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Omaha confirmed this inexplicable absence. The only song that was mentioned was “Brother Noah Gave Out Checks for Rain” (1907), which I had already included in the collection. This song, which puts a humorous baseball interpretation on Biblical events, was written by a white composer in the so-called “Negro dialect” that composers of the period knew would draw laughs from audiences. The song is quite clever despite itself, but the sheet music cover illustration is an embarrassment to our twenty-first-century eyes. The hundred-year span from 1907 to 2007 has witnessed a slow but steady change in what we deem acceptable. The concept of political correctness didn’t exist back then. This artistic and linguistic difficulty is one that I have had to deal with often in editing my collections of Civil War songs, blues, and other songs where contemporary composers and publishers used language and images that to our present-day sensibilities may be offensive. There are no easy answers here in the balance between authenticity and sensitivity. I generally have come down on the side of authenticity, with an apologia in advance if the material is really racist). Along the same lines, but perhaps less blatant, are a number of “Irish” songs, where the Irishman in question (umpire, fan, or player) is treated in the stock vaudevillian manner as a cross between a drunkard and a buffoon. Among these songs are “Finnegan, the Umpire” (1890) and “O’Grady at the Game” (1891). Interestingly, the tune to “McGuffin’s Home Run” (1891), where the McGuffin in question is a hero, was composed by Gussie Davis, one of the late nineteenth century’s first successful African-American composers and one of the charter members of Tin Pan Alley, which came into being in New York in 1885. It probably never occurred to Davis to compose a song about a black baseball player; or if it did, he or his publishers no doubt thought it “wouldn’t sell.” Too bad. As far as my favorite songs in the collection are concerned, well, each one of them has something to recommend itself, including the aforementioned problem songs, or I wouldn’t have included it. However, there are a few that really stand out for various reasons. The very first song, “The Bat and the Ball” (1867) was composed when the wounds of the Civil War were still bleeding in the nation. It contains certain significant lines that could not have escaped notice: “We gather in numbers on the field once again . . . The contest is bloodless . . . And victors and vanquished are friends as before.” “Told Between Ticks” (1891) describes how baseball (and other) news was transmitted across the nation by ticker tape. I have vivid memories of listening to Red Barber broadcasting the away games of the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1940s when, as the song says, “all of this news is heard between ticks.” “Who Would Doubt That I’m a Man?” (1895) is a “baseball aria” from an opera entitled “The Mormons,” in which a woman dressed in a man’s baseball uniform outhits, outruns, outcatches and generally outplays her male counterparts. This one is a real gem. Then, for complete nuttiness, there is Irving Berlin’s contribution to the repertoire: “Jake! Jake! The Yiddisher Ball-Player” (1913). The singer bets a “half a dollar” on the game, but at the critical moment Jake doesn’t come through. “Jake, I lose my half a dollar, Poison you should swallow, Jake, Jake you’re a regular fake.” I could go on and on discussing the merits of all 41 songs, but I’ll leave it right here. If you compiled a songbook from 1920 to the present, what might be on your list? Actually, I had hoped to begin the collection with this little gem, which dates historically somewhere between the high jinks expressed in “Brother Noah Gave Out Checks for Rain” and the post–Civil War “The Bat and the Ball.” The earldom of Murray, or Moray, was one of the seven original earldoms of Scotland. It dates back to about 1314, when Sir Thomas Randolph, a nephew of King Robert Bruce, was created Earl of Moray. By the fifteenth century the earldom had shifted to an illegitimate branch of the royal House of Stuart. The earldom of Huntly was established in 1449. On February 8, 1592, George Huntly, the fifth Earl of Murray, set fire to to the castle of James Stuart, “the bonnie Earl of Murray” and stabbed him to death. He was a braw gallant,
And he played at the ball.
And the bonnie Earl of Murray
Was the flower of them all. He was a braw gallant,
And he played at the glove,
And the bonnie Earl of Murray,
He was the Queen’s own love. There was a time when momentous events and exploits, such as those described in this Scottish ballad, “The Bonnie Earl of Murray,” were invariably celebrated in broadside and song. The bonnie Earl may have been adept at the ball and glove, but he was no match for the knife-wielding Huntly. One hopes that this unfortunate incident was simply a matter of rival earls duking it out over fair maidens, castles, and land rather than a bloody dispute on the ballfield. But alas and alack, my editor didn’t quite see it my way, and so this tragic tale ended up—not on the cutting room floor but eliminated with a click of the delete button. Moving right along, then, to the twenty-first century, following the chronological order of the songs in the collection (1867-1922), the next few songs that I was considering for inclusion start with “Bucky Boy” (1925), a paean to Bucky Harris, who as player-manager of the Washington Senators led his team to the World Series Championship against the Giants in 1924. His return home to Pittston, Pennsylvania, after the Series on October 29, 1924, was declared Bucky Day. There was an all-day celebration to mark the occasion. The song compares Bucky (favorably) with George Washington and Babe Ruth, and ends with “Bucky, now we’ll have to ask you one thing more,/ To do in twenty-five as you did in twenty-four.” But it was not to be. They lost to the Pirates in 1925. “The Card’nals And Mr. Hornsby” (1926): The Cardinals, with Rogers Hornsby as player-manager, defeated the Yankees in the 1926 World Series four games to three. Hornsby went 7 for 28 (.250). The sheet music was published with ukulele chord diagrams, a sign of the times. The lyrics are somewhat less than immortal: “Oh Mister Hornsby, Oh Mister Hornsby, You’ve got the pep, you made them step . . .” “The Galloping A’s” (1929): Apparently all you had to do to get a song written about your team in the twenties was win a World Series. The Philadelphia Athletics, won the American League pennant by 18 games, with a won-lost record of 104–64, and defeated the Cubs 4–1 in the Series. To get to the Series they beat out the Yankees, and the song rubs it in: “Tho’ the Yanks were striving it did not do, For the ‘MACKS’ were wearing the old ‘HORSE SHOE.’” In capital letters and quotation marks, “MACKS” referred to owner-manager Connie Mack. There were other songs, like “It’s A Grand Old Game” (1931) and “The Baseball Blues” (1931), but that old devil copyright reared its ugly head. It turns out that 1922 is the current last year in which songs are in the public domain, so these, and, for example “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio” (1941) and “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” (1949) were definitely out of bounds. So no collection of more recent songs. Pity.
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