School Days
Will D. Cobb (1876–1930); Gus Edwards (1878–1945)
Will Cobb was born in Philadelphia and had an active career right up to his death, writing music for over two dozen Broadway productions. He also co-wrote “In the Good Old Summertime.” He and Edwards met when they were both performing on Long Island at Camp Black, for soldiers fighting in the Spanish-American War. They formed a partnership called “Words and Music” that lasted many years.
Gus Edwards, born in Germany as Gustav Schmelowsky, came to the U.S. with his family when he was 13. During the day he worked in his parent’s cigar store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and every evening he would hustle singing gigs in lodge halls, saloons, and ferry boat lounges.
Gus Edwards is the first Jewish songwriter of the 100 Songs. He also co-wrote “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “In My Merry Oldsmobile,” two exceptionally big hits that became standards for decades. He later formed his own theatre companies and became a music publisher. He discovered, among others, Eddie Cantor, Groucho Marx, Phil Silvers, Ray Bolger, Eleanor Powell, the Lane Sisters, Hildegarde, Walter Winchell and fan dancer Sally Rand. Bing Crosby played him in a 1939 movie, The Star Maker. I’d love to see that.
Comments
4 responses to “1907”
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I’m a rock and roll head, belatedly also a folk(-rock) head, born 1989. I fell in love with Peter’s voice and songwriting in the autumn of 2019, thanks to Have Moicy, and have explored most of his catalogue in detail by now, finding ungodly amounts of things to treasure.
This was the first new Peter album to come out after I became a fan. I thought, “Alright, this is big. And this is really weird. I’ll need to take it slow.” I figured I could treat each decade as if it were a standalone album. It’s a journey-in-progress, but this first decade I’ve heard upwards of 30 times by now. The only song I’d heard before, out of the ten, was Take Me Out to the Ball Game (and right, not the verses).
So, as to School Days in particular: the chords are many and strange. For that matter, the chords in a lot of these first ten songs are many and strange. I’d been exposed to this woozy kind of harmonic/melodic approach through Dylan’s Love & Theft (Bye and Bye, Moonlight, etc) but although I got used to it on that record, I didn’t really like it, preferring the more straightforward blues/rock songs (Tweedle Dum, Mississippi, Cry a While). So a lot of my first listens to this first decade made for headaches of “whaaaat the hell am I hearing.” Mark’s clean and sparkly arrangements didn’t hook me either. But Peter’s voice, which is my favorite singing voice in recorded music, did. And the thing is, if I listen to anything enough times, be it gnarly progressive rock from the 70s, or Liszt piano suites, or these hits of the 1900s, my head gets used to what it’s hearing, learns to expect what originally seemed weird, and finally I can start to notice the kinds of details that make me love a song.
Back to School Days in particular: what a chorus! “rith/metic” and “hick/ry stick” is a great rhyme. And the alliteration? Queen in calico. Bashful barefoot beau. And particularly “reading and writing and arithmetic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick,” the T sounds politely following the R sounds as they would in an alphabet primer. And all coming off so natural it takes a while to even notice.
The set-up felt overly nostalgic (“I love you so” on a slate? A bit too high-flown for their age and circumstances, isn’t it?) until I registered that the couple in the song is still together. There’s a neat extended ship metaphor happening as the guy and “Nelly darling” think back to those bygone days (only because they’re bored). And then it makes sense, yeah: nothing quaint or sentimental about a long-term couple revisiting (and rewriting) their origin story. My wife and I do it all the time. And given the tendency awful times have of shedding their awfulness as they become memories, it figures that even the hickory stick would take on a kind of rose-colored glow.
Eventually (as has always happened, so far) Mark’s arrangement won me over too. All those chiming guitars!
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I was born in 1950, and my experience with the first decade was pretty much the opposite. I was surprised by how many of the songs I knew from my childhood. Some because they were still being revived on TV and popping up in movies. They were not known the way things are today, with people still listening to the ’60s records. The singers were not remembered, but the songs were.
Many of the songs, such as this one, I knew because of my mother singing them around the house. I remember being confused by the line about the hickory stick. I thought maybe it was being used to keep rhythm. It had to be explained with some embarrassment that this was nostalgia for being beaten mercilessly by the teacher!
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The Star Maker can be found on youtube.
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ooo cool thanks!
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