Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning

[sovay]

Courtesy of First World War.com Vintage Media, which I discovered last night during a particularly profitable bout of insomnia, I have a new theme song. (MP3, right-click to download and all that jazz.) Proving that the oral tradition still functions in contemporary America, I'd actually learned this song from my mother and my grandparents under the title "Someday I'm Going to Murder the Bugler"; but I'd never heard a recorded version. The Harry Champion songs are also highly recommended, especially "A Little Bit of Cucumber" and "My Old Iron Cross," and the classic "Henry the Eighth, I Am" (found here), which again I'd learned by familial transmission and never heard in its own time period. But I warn you that Enrico Caruso's 1918 rendition of "Over There" is just conceptually bizarre.

Speaking of Caruso, this is a marvelous site for historical opera. I've been collecting baritones right and left, and a few sopranos as well. Milada Šubrtová's "Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém" (Rusalka) gives Renée Fleming a run for her money. This site isn't bad either. Even based on a really, really scratchy recording, Pasquale Amato's "Largo al factotum" (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) has just made him one of my heroes—it's the careless laughter halfway through, as though Figaro's own cleverness tickles him so much he can't even get through the coloratura, and the crazy la-ra-la-ra-la after the finale. If he was as much of a character actor as he sounds, I'm very sorry I missed the chance to see him; by more than half a century, but even so.

Lastly, the Poluski Brothers make me laugh. Listen to "Misunderstood." Abbott and Costello, eat your heart out.

My soundtrack for the last twenty-four hours has been very interesting.

Comments

[lesser-celery.livejournal.com]

My parents, both former Army sergeants, often sang "Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning" when I was a kid. It wasn't until about five years ago that I learned it was an Irving Berlin song. My mother also had some army tunes that were more on the scatalogical side. What can I say? She was an Army nurse.

[sovay]

On the site from which I obtained these songs, there's a note about a couple—"Mademoiselle from Armentieres" and "If You Want to Find the Sergeant Major" in particular—explaining that, well, here are the popularly recorded versions, and here are the lyrics as they were originally written, but the soldiers themselves were a little more creative . . .

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I noted that "If You Want to Find the Sergeant Major" wasn't recorded until 1929. Not what the folks at home wanted to hear:

If you want to find the old battalion,
I know where they are, I know where they are.
If you want to find the old battalion,
I know where they are,
They're hanging on the old barbed wire...

Nine

[sovay]

It's sort of like "Where Have All The Flowers Gone," with trenches . . .

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

But far far grimmer.

Nine