Footnotes From “In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree” by Henry Burr to “School Days” by Byron Harlan

Footnotes From “In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree” by Henry Burr to “School Days” by Byron Harlan 

* Where exactly this old-school/now-40-story-apartment is supposedly located is never revealed… even in New York the tallest building at the time – The Park Row Building – only reached 30 stories.

** This, it is worth noting, was also Billy’s approach to a previous Harry and Egbert composition, the “Indian-coon-song”, “Navajo” (it’s a 3)

*** “The Isle Of Bong Bong” is not the oddest-titled production Harry would write lyrics for, “A Yankee Circus On Mars” would probably hold that honour!

**** Henry Burr, for example, the most wholesome… family-values conversative of… the “Famous… Record… Makers” of an already… implausibly wholesome… family-values conversative age. His version doesn’t mention the wife’s death, even though he probably could have fit it in, if he just sang a bit faster (Henry’s version is a 3)

The Haydn Quartet had a slightly different approach… they didn’t mention the death either, but at least they made it sound as though it was recorded at a funeral, whilst standing around the open grave, with the backing vocals harmonizing like ghosts (The Haydn Quartet version is a 5)

*****“In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree” seems completely out of character for Harry, who would end up going to Hollywood, coming up with slapstick comedy ideas for Keystone Studios. That seems like a more appropriate place for him.

****** The joke being that the night would be too dark for roaming around the park at night or spooning in the bright moonlight. “If The Man In The Moon…” was so unequivocal about being a “coon song” that the chorus feels comfortable with repeating the word multiple times: “if the man in the moon, was a coon coon coon.” The sheet music described it as “a combination of classical music and comical words” which is a gross overstatement on both counts (“If The Man In The Moon Was A Coon” is a 2)

****** “Where The Wurzburger Flows” appears to be that rare Tin Pan Alley song that appears broadly geographically accurate: Wurzburg is the name of an actual town in Germany, Bavaria to be precise, and indeed it does have a Wurzburger Hofbrau brewery! Rhyming Rhine with stein was too good a rhyme to only use once and would lead to Harry’s “On the Banks of The Rhine with a Stein.”

******* Somewhat less despicable, or at least more self-aware, was “He’s A College Boy” - described helpfully as a “Rollicking Rah! Rah! Rah! Song”, chants playing a central role in college life – all about the sense of privilege that comes with going to college, being worshipped for being the big noise of the nation, with his “college walk and his college talk”, painting the town red “like a sailor or a whaler”, leaving it to father to pay the bills. Although one is meant to disapprove of all this nonsense, it kind of makes you want to be a college boy yourself (it’s a 7)

******** Gus and Will had also written a tune called “Since My Margarette Became A Da Suffragette”, the sheet music of which shows a man cowering on his knees in front of an absolute giant of a woman.

They’d also written some songs for the 1903 version of “The Wizard Of Oz” – the one where Dorothy’s animal companion is a cow – one of which “I Love Only One Girl in the Wide, Wide World”. Harry MacDonough had recorded it, boasting that “I could have 16 or 20, nice little girlies, with nice little curlies - an unlikely scenario if photographic evidence can be believed – but ultimately decided that one girl is enough, mostly because there are economic concerns to consider: “I’d be a poor man, if I was a Mormon.” (it’s a 4)"

********* Gus spent much of the next decade scouring the nation from east to west for more kids, producing similar acts, and raising more concerns about just why he was so interested in them. There was “Kid Kaberet” where kids would put on an otherwise grown-up cabaret show, complete with grown-up jokes. One of the performers in “Kid Kaberet” was Eddie Cantor, who – at 20 years of age – was positively ancient by Gus’ standards, and of whom much, much more later.

********* If that feels like a harsh rating, it’s quite charitable compared to the notices at the time. Here’s the New York Tribune: “School Days is a concoction of poor material, in which two or three performers are made a sorry picture by being associated with amateurs.” The Evening World went with the headline of “Won’t Someone Ring The Bell On “School Days”?”