Actually: Speaking of the Toussaint/Costello tune “Ascension Day,” it’s the song that made me zero on the phrase “let her go” in “SJI,” because I assumed (and actually still believe) that “SJI” is what Costello was referencing when he dropped it into his lyrics.
A reader pointed out to me some time ago that the phrase probably found its way into “SJI” from elsewhere. Moreover, heroic “SJI” researcher and author Robert W. Harwood and the readers of his I Went Down To St. James Infirmary blog have since traced it back to at least 1909. Now: He has a new post on the matter, concerning a tune called “She’s Gone Let Her Go,” appearing in, of all places, a 1902 book of “Harvard University Songs”:
“She’s Gone, Let Her Go,” with its chorus that is so familiar from SJI, appears on page 72. The melody is utterly ordinary, a kind of parlor ditty that one could imagine being sung by hearty fellows in argyle sweaters, gathered around a piano with drinks in their hands. The lyric is the same as that identified in a March 21st entry on this blog, from the 1909 Harvard song book. The fact that it has appeared in at least two of these books, and that it is joined by only twenty-six others in this 1902 book, attests to its popularity at the time – at least among students at Harvard.
Mr. Harwood’s new post is here.
[audio src="http://blip.tv/file/get/107ans-theEvilsGirlsElectro219.mp3" /]
In a kind day
You met a kind girl
and this kind girl
have a kind smile
then
you got to the park with the lovely girl
and then
you met people
who walk on
cool flowers
the kind girl
want to kiss you
and you kiss her smoth lips
then the kind people walk on your kind flowers and
watch out your girl
and then your so jalous
then find other park
with other flowers and may be tries
and then fine girl
tell you something strange
she ask you if you yould like to go
with her in a fine town
if the fine girl
ask you that
have to ask yourself
the folowing and important question
where did people go ?
who is behind the miror ?
the kind men find kind girl
didn’t knew that she was the slave of another bad master
If you’ve got spicy in your brain
know that the way you take
bring you to the evil’s girls
[…] zeroes in on one line of “SJI” — a line that’s always interested me quite a bit Check out the highly interesting and informative monologue here. GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", […]