Post 599: DISCARDED VERSES OF THE POPULAR SONGS

In most of the popular songs from the early days, composers wrote a Verse as well as a Chorus. But today, in the case of hundreds of these tunes, our jazz bands normally leave out the Verse and play only the Chorus. In fact, if anyone suggests playing the Verse, it usually turns out that only one or two members of the band actually know it.

Of course there are exceptions. For example, the Verse of Alexander's Ragtime Band is so much an integral part of the song that it is practically always played through, at least once. Chloe has a highly unusual spooky Verse in a minor key - well worth playing. The Verse of Everybody Loves My Baby is a good one, too, and leads perfectly into the Chorus. Exactly the same is true of I'm Gonna Meet My Sweetie Now, where the Verse is an important part of the narrative.

And the Verse of Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet is so good and substantial that it's a fine song, quite independent of the neat and merry Chorus. And - in case you don't know - I can tell you the Verse of Ice Cream, though rarely played, is very attractive. Peg o' My Heart has a pleasant 16-bar (8+8) Chorus based on the Four-Leaf Chord Progression; but to give your performance a bit of body you should also play the attractive Verse (which is also an 8 + 8)

I used to think we ought to make an effort to revive discarded Verses. So I started to seek them out, though it's often difficult these days even to get hold of the original music. Here is what I discovered: the Verses were often really dull compared with the popular and familiar Choruses! So perhaps it's no bad thing after all that so many Verses have been abandoned. Yes, it is astonishing but true that some great songs with good melodies that everybody loves actually had, in their original form, dull and forgettable Verses.

The reason why I am thinking about this matter of long-forgotten Verses is that my attention was drawn to When You're Smiling. That wonderful researcher and vintage music collector Audrey VanDyke shared the original sheet music of this song.

When You're Smiling (composed in 1928 by Mark Fisher, Joe Goodwin and Larry Shaye) is such a good song. Bands love it. Audiences love it (and often sing along); and the tune is easy to improvise upon.

Yet - be honest - do you have the faintest idea of its VERSE?

Well, thanks to Audrey, I can now tell you the Verse consists of 16 bars and the words are:

I saw a blind man.

He was a kind man

Helping a fellow along.

One could not see.

One could not walk.

But they both were humming this song:...

CHORUS

When you're smiling, etc.

The Verse is a kind of 'recitation' - the melody uses only five different notes. And whoever would have thought that When You're Smiling - as originally composed - is about two severely disabled people?
======
John Dixon of The Shotgun Jazz Band sent me these further comments:
Your post on missing verses, dead on. the Verses were often really dull compared with the popular and familiar Choruses! - too true. It’s the general reason we don’t play EVERY verse to every tune. Many times we’ll learn the verse and just realize it’s not very good. Same with lyrics. 'Poor Butterfly' is an outtake from the latest record and at first I wanted to do it with the lyrics but they are SO cheesy and hamfisted. Same with many verses. It’s an ongoing joke, actually… We’ll call a tune and someone will say “Know the verse?” and Tyler and I will break out in a super schmaltzy verse that’s always the same.

======

I received the following comments from James Buck - a friend and regular reader who lives in the South of England:
I was told by an old dance band musician, some dozen years ago, that in the 'dance hall days', when he was playing regularly. "The bands missed out the verses because they were often in different keys and tempos, from the choruses.  This was too much for most dancers to cope with, so they stopped dancing.  So the bands just dropped the verses!"    

I can not check with him, as he has long since died.  He being in his late 80's when he told me this.

This, as well as your comments, is another reason for the verses no longer being played.   In my mind the verse often gives another meaning to a chorus, as in "Pennies from Heaven".

Post 473: PLEASE COME HOME

Everybody knows the songs Baby, Won't You Please Come Home? and  Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home? but did you know there are also two very good songs both called Daddy Won't You Please Come Home??

The more famous of these was composed by Sam Coslow for the 1929 film 'Thunderbolt'. A very fine recording of it was made that same year by the lovely singer Annette Hanshaw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJwLB7KHAwo

I hope you will enjoy that as much as I do.

But there was an earlier Daddy Won't You Please Come Home?, composed in 1921 by Noble Sissle (words) and Eubie Blake (music). This too is a delightful song and was written for a New York musical called 'Shuffle Along' - a show that helped launch the careers of Adelaide Hall and Paul Robeson, and also introduced New York to the use of syncopated jazz rhythms in musicals.

Thanks to the kindness of Audrey VanDyke, the great collector of vintage sheet music, this song has now been made available to us all. I hope that a lady singer in one of our jazz bands will be inspired to revive it soon. It has a good and straightforward 16-bar Verse as well as a fine 16-bar Chorus of the type fashionable in the 1920s - lending itself to instrumental 'breaks' in Bars 9 to 12. Yes, this would be a really good tune to play.

Post 410: 'WILLIE THE PEEPER' AND 'WILLIE THE WEEPER'

Willie The Weeper is a very popular traditional jazz standard. I guess there are very few bands that don't have it in their repertoire. For a lively performance of it by one of today's best bands, CLICK HERE.

But there is a bit of a mystery concerning the origin of this tune. Willie The Weeper was published in 1920, with the composers given as Walter Melrose, Grant Rymal and Marty Bloom. That is the version to which our jazz bands stick very closely.

But there was a song published eight years earlier with a similar melody and fairly similar structure and an almost identical title. This was Willie The Peeper, apparently composed by three quite different men: Harry Armstrong, Billy Clark and James Coogan.

However, there does not seem to have been any legal challenge concerning breach of copyright; and nobody seems to have been concerned by the obvious plagiarism. Possibly both songs owe more to an even earlier theme whose composer remains anonymous.

Audrey VanDyke, the great jazz researcher and collector of memorabilia and early sheet music, is the person we have to thank for drawing attention to Willie The Peeper. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Audrey, who lives somewhere in Michigan, I think. But during the years since I started to take an interest in traditional jazz, I have learned that the world owes her a great debt of gratitude for her scholarship relating to early jazz, for her enthusiasm and especially for building up a large collection of vintage sheet music. It is because she made the sheet music for both songs available on the internet that I am able to write this article.

So, just how similar are the two songs?

Let's take the words first. Willie The Peeper begins like this: 
Now listen and I'll tell you 'bout Willie the Peeper;
His occupation was a chimney sweeper.
Oh, he had a peepin' habit and he had it bad.
If you listen now I'll tell you 'bout some peeps he had.
Peeped into a keyhole just the other night;
Saw a man and his wife in a terrible fight.....etc.

Willie The Weeper begins:
Have you ever heard the story of Willie the Weeper?
Willie's occupation was a chimney sweeper.
He had the dreamin' habit and he had it bad.

Listen and I'll tell you 'bout the dreams he had.
He dreamed he had a barrel of diamond rings and money,
Mamas by the score to call him honey, etc.

Although Willie has changed from a peeper to a dreamer, it's obvious the songs have a common origin.

But now what about the structure? Both songs have an opening theme of 16 bars, which is in a minor key and may be considered as Theme A, or The Verse. These are very similar; in fact the chord sequences are identical.

Then both switch to the related major key for Theme B, The Chorus. This is where considerable differences may be noted. Willie The Weeper has a 16-bar Theme B, or Chorus. But Willie The Peeper has a Theme B of only 8 bars and with a melody and chord sequence unlike those of Willie The Weeper. So it seems that Walter Melrose, Grant Rymal and Marty Bloom introduced that catchy 'Chorus' (based on the V - V - I - I chord sequence) on which we love to improvise to our heart's content to this day. I have tried to make simple leadsheets, putting the two songs into the same key, and enabling you to compare them easily.

For more detail, examine the piano sheet music. There you can find the words too (including several verses for both songs).
Willie The Peeper

Willie The Weeper

Post 133: 'WILLIE THE WEEPER' - THE 1920 JAZZ TUNE

On Tuba Skinny's CD called Owl Call Blues (released in August 2014), there is a recording of Willie the Weeper.

Willie the Weeper is a tune from 1920, attributed to Walter Melrose, Grant Rymal and Marty Bloom. However, it was remarkably similar to Willie the Peeper, composed in 1912 by Harry Armstrong, Billy Clark and James Coogan, so we may consider it as largely plagiarised. This point was established by the great music researcher and sheet music collector Audrey VanDyke. (For a comparison of the two tunes, CLICK HERE.)

It's a tune every band should be able to play because it always goes well and because it has a number of interesting ingredients.

It consists of two themes of 16 bars each. The first is in a minor key. The second is in the related major. As for structures, the first theme may be considered as an 8 + 8, whereas the second is an AABA  (four bars of each).  On top of these features that give it the variety to make it interesting, Willie The Weeper is simply a jolly good tune. Below it is in D minor and F, but it goes well in other keys too, especially G minor and Bb. You may choose - as many bands do - to add a 4-bar Introduction and to play Theme B first. Most bands treat Theme B as the 'Chorus' and improvise on this part, which uses the simple Sweet Sue Progression (Dominant 7th to Tonic) three times, with an interesting 'Middle Four'.

The tune was recorded very long ago by such bands as King Oliver's. But for a YouTube performance of the tune by a modern band with Theme B in Bb:

CLICK HERE.

And for a special treat (a Tuba Skinny version):

CLICK HERE
or CLICK HERE.

Post 14: 'YELLOW DOG BLUES'

It is a rare treat to get hold of early sheet music of the jazz classics. When you have tried to pick up a tune by ear, it is so good to see the original music and find out whether you got it right.

I came across the sheet music for Handy's Yellow Dog Blues (originally, it seems, also called The Yellow Dog Rag) in my computer's archives and can't remember how it came to be there. But I think it must be thanks to the great Audrey VanDyke.

I have never had the pleasure of meeting Audrey, who lives somewhere in Michigan, I think. But during the years since I started taking an interest in traditional jazz, I have learned that the world owes her a great debt of gratitude for her scholarship relating to early jazz, for her enthusiasm and especially for building up a large collection of vintage sheet music and making much of it available to the rest of us through the Internet.

As for Yellow Dog Blues, yes: I think most bands play it in a way Handy would have admired - with the long narrative Verse (three blocks of twelve bars each) about the woes of Miss Susie Johnson, followed by the Chorus (two blocks of twelve bars, each with that great rising opening  - Ea - sy Ri - der.... ). But I doubt whether many bands these days consider it as a piece in 2/4 time. We treat it as 4/4. And I don't know of any band playing it in Handy's original key of D. Eb is preferred.