Music Hall - evergreentrad

02 Feb

Michael James

I’m as happy as can be, faith, there is merriment in me,
And I’ll try and tell you everyone,
When I came home from work this morn,
I found I was the father of a son.
Ten years we’ve been married this very day,
And we never had a chick or a child,
The thought of this gives me such joy,
Take me word for it, I think I’m going wild.

Chorus—
For he has a puggy little nose, and there’s dimples in his toes,
And we’re going to give a party and a ball,
And we’ll name him Michael James, put his picture in a frame,
And we’ll hang it in the parlor on the wall.

When a man he grows you’ll see, a president he’ll be,
I would never let him run for Alderman,
I’ll buy a horse and dray, and we’ll drive it every day,
You would never find his equal in the land.
He’ll not be a fool, for we’ll send him off to school,
Where they’ll teach him how to row and play ball,
And when he gets some money, we’ll have his picture taken,
And we’ll hang it in the parlor on the wall.

As I have discussed in this column before, logging era singers like Minnesotan Mike Dean typically sang recently composed songs from the American stage alongside older ballads from communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Dean’s repertoire, based on his own self-published songster, seems to have been about half and half. His stage songs are mainly on Irish-American themes common in the late 1800s including: nostalgia for Ireland, stereotypes of urban Irish American life and songs of Irish laborers.

Another category could be “the Irish in American politics.” Three of Dean’s stage songs reference the pursuit of public office and a fourth, “Muldoon, the Solid Man” has its protagonist “called upon to address the meeting” where he “read the Constitution with elocution.” During Dean’s lifetime (1858-1931) Irish-Americans did find success in American politics. Dean lived in Hinckley, Minnesota where Kilkenny native and fellow saloon owner James J. Brennan was the first town president when it was incorporated in 1885. James’ brother Thomas owned the lumber mill in Hinckley and was himself an alderman in St. Paul.

The story behind the song “Michael James” has eluded me for a long time but I recently found the song in an 1881 songster (complete with musical transcriptions!) of compositions by Charles R. Dockstader (1847-1907). Dockstader tried his hand at recycling all the popular song motifs of his day including many riffs on the stage Irishman character. He wrote another song that Dean sang and called “I Left Ireland and Mother Because We Were Poor.”

Dean’s “Michael James” was titled “In the Parlor on the Wall” by Dockstader and was sung on stage by R. M. Carroll, “The Champion Irish Singing Humorist” Harry Kernell and John Sheehan. It appears in the Dockstader Songster published by Philadelphia publisher and music instrument dealer J.W. Pepper in 1881.

The song turns out to have a fine example of the dynamic sort of melody that energized music hall audiences. It also paints a reasonably dignified picture (for its time) of the immigrant father exuberantly pouring his aspirations into his newborn son. I found a March 15, 1902 piece in the The Intermountain Catholic newspaper in Utah about an Ancient Order of Hibernians event in Park City where the chairman of the evening sang the song to an approving crowd. Interestingly, the newspaper wrote: “The programme was appropriate to the occasion and of a nature to please the most critical, while mainly Irish in character there was nothing of the boisterous stage Irishman kind to be seen.”

05 Jul

Two Irish Laborers

We are two Irish laborers, as you can plainly see,
From Donegal we came when small unto America;
We got work on the railroad, but sure it didn’t pay,
So we struck a job to carry the hod for two and a half a day.

Chorus-
Pat, be quick, bring up the brick, the mortar, too, likewise,
Then push along and sing a song as up the ladder you rise;
I always thought it bully fun to be a mason’s clerk,
And have the man on top of the house for to do all the work.

When we go back to Ireland, that dear old Emerald Isle,
Where the stranger finds a welcome and is greeted with a smile,
Then if you ever want a friend you needn’t try too hard,
You’ll always find one in the Irish boys that carried the hod.

A hod is a box with only three sides (imagine three walls of a cube that meet at a corner with the rest of the cube removed). Often mounted at the end of a stick, it is used to carry bricks or mortar during construction work. The image of Irish immigrant men as “hod carriers” was a recurring trope on the American music hall stage in the late 1800s and that’s where this song seems to have originated. However, the text above comes from Minnesota singer Michael Dean who, like other singers in the woods tradition, had a repertoire that freely mixed music hall songs with come-all-ye ballads and other song types. I have not come across “Two Irish Laborers” in any other collections so it may have been rare in tradition. Dean also sang “When McGuiness Gets a Job” which also references the hod (“he’s the boy that can juggle the old three-cornered box”). “McGuiness” originated on the stage and turns up in song collections from the Catskills and Prince Edward Island.

Thanks to some online newspaper archive sleuthing, I was able to connect “The Two Irish Laborers” to an influential 19^th century song and dance man named Dick Carroll. In April, 1924, The Brooklyn Standard Union ran a full page feature titled “Harking Back to the Good Old Days” in which one reader contributed this reminiscence: “In 1873, Dick Carroll, as the hod carrier, in his specialty of ‘Mortar and Bricks’ sang ‘Arrah, Pat be Quick Bring Up the Brick and the Mortar Too Likewise.’” According to Monarchs of Minstrelsy Carroll was born in New York City in 1832 and began performing publicly as a child before having a long career in minstrelsy and, later, the variety stage. He was known primarily as a dancer and Ryan’s Mammoth Collection even includes a tune called “Dick Carroll’s Clog.” “Mortar and Bricks” was his showpiece for many years.

With no luck finding a melody used by Dean or Carroll, I opted to borrow a melody sung by J. Molloy of St. Schott’s Newfoundland for another music hall song, “How Paddy Stole the Rope,” that has a similar opening line. Molloy’s unique and satisfying melody can be heard online via Memorial University’s fantastic digital collection “MacEdward Leach and the Songs of Atlantic Canada.”

21 Nov

Learning McFadden to Waltz

Clarence McFadden he wanted to waltz,
But his feet were not gaited that way,
So he saw a professor and stated his case,
And said he was willing to pay;
The professor looked down in alarm at his feet,
And he viewed their enormous expanse,
So he tucked on a five to his regular price,
For learning McFadden to dance.

One, two, three, just balance like me,
You’re quite a fairy, but you have your faults,
While your left foot is lazy, your right foot is crazy,
Now don’t be unaisy, I’ll learn you to waltz.

He took out McFadden before the whole class,
And he showed him the step once or twice,
But McFadden’s two feet they got tied in a knot,
Sure he thought he was standing on ice;
At last he got loose and struck out with a will,
Never looking behind or before,
But his head got so dizzy, he fell on his face,
And chewed all the wax off the floor.

When Clarence had practiced the step for awhile,
Sure, he thought he had got it down fine,
He went to a girl and asked her to dance,
And he wheeled her out into line;
He walked on her feet and he fractured her toes,
And vowed that her movements were false,
Poor girl went around for two weeks on a crutch,
For learning McFadden to waltz.

McFadden soon got the step into his head,
But it would not go into his feet,
He hummed “Maggie Murphy” from morning to night,
And he counted his steps on the street;
One night he went home to his room to retire,
After painting the town a bright red,
He dreamed he was waltzing and let out his leg,
And kicked the footboards off the bed.

Song collector Margaret MacArthur extended the amazing work of Helen Flanders with her collecting work in Vermont in the 1960s. I came upon this Irish music hall gem in amongst the digitized MacArthur recordings available through the Vermont Folklife Center. She recorded it from Winfred Landman of Brattleboro in 1963. Another more complete version (without its melody) appears in Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan from the singing of Mrs. John Lambertson of Belding, Michigan just northeast of Grand Rapids who sang it for collectors Gardner and Chickering in 1931.

The earliest printing of the music hall original from 1890 lists M.F. Carey as its composer and is viewable online through the New York Public Library digital collection. In addition to entering into folk tradition, the song was recorded by several artists and was even sung by child star Shirley Temple in the 1939 film Susannah and the Mounties as she tries to teach a mountie to dance with a book balanced on his head!

My transcription above is a blend of the Lambertson text, the original song sheet and a rousing recording of Irish entertainer Patrick Kavanagh (no relation to the author?) who recorded it on a 78rpm record in the 30s.