From “How'd You Like To Spoon with Me?” by Corrine Morgan to “I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife – But Oh! You Kid!” by Arthur Collins

 (The Tin Pan Alley Discovers Sex - Or At The Very Least “Spooning” - Chapter)

Jerome Kern wanted to be English.

This was partially – although very much not solely - for professional purposes.

When Jerome first tried to break into Broadway back in the 1900s, most of the shows came from Europe, more specifically from England, even more specifically from London’s West End. If you wanted to write a Broadway showstopper, it helped if you lived as far away from Broadway as possible.* Unless, of course, you were a shamelessly popularist vaudeville genius a la George M Cohen, but Jerome was far too gentile for that. That was the other reason for wanting to be English. Englishness seemed to better suit his personality.

In order to break into Broadway, Jerome first needed to travel to Europe – specifically Heidelberg in Germany - and gain an English accent, one that was apparently convincing enough that Charles Frohman, a Broadway theatre owner, was fooled by it, truly believed that Jerome was British, and thus offered him a job back in New York. A job writing new songs that could be added to the American editions of British musicals, specifically in the first act.

British musicals may have been popular, but they were infamous for having terribly average songs in the first act. There was a good reason for this. Or at least a stupid reason, but one that makes sense. In London the cream of society never arrived at the theatre on time. The song writers of London didn’t want to waste their best material on the rabble, so they put all their good songs towards the end of the show, once the better class of people had arrived.

In New York things were the other way around. Theatregoers in New York actually arrived on time. But they often left early if the first act was boring. So, when the musicals arrived in New York the first act needed some sprucing up. That’s where Jerome came in. Jerome was a professional sprucer of first acts. And since he was an American pretending to be English, he was uniquely suited to the role.

Jerome’s first project was the sprucing up of “The Earl And The Girl.” Like seemingly every other musical of its age, the plot of “The Earl And The Girl” was centred around the receiving of an inheritance - in this case the inheritance involves the Earldom Of Hole – and a mistaken identity, this time involving a travelling salesman.

Jerome came up “How’d You Like To Spoon With Me?”, a classic example of a new genre, the spooning song. It wasn’t long before spooning songs could be heard everywhere. Which begs the question: what exactly did the act of “spooning” entail?

The precise definition of “spooning” was… look there was no precise definition of “spooning.” The definition was maddeningly vague, covering everything from mild flirtation to “coo”-ing, to the murmuring of sweet nothings, to begging for a kiss, to proposals of marriage; proposals of marriage often being the most reliable means of securing said kiss*, which may explain why marriage proposals were such a regular feature of Tin Pan Alley love songs. Dating, in the world of Tin Pan Alley, was a very brief affair. Any song that didn’t end in a marriage proposal was deemed to be taking it unnecessarily slow.**

Many of this generation of Americans belonged to the first generation of their families to have a choice of whom their romantic partners might be. Often, they were the children of migrants from backwards lands where marriages were still arranged. Consequently, lacking a dating-gene, they stumbled though courtship, they stumbled through dating. They had few role-models to guide them. Tin Pan Alley songwriters – most of whom were also immigrants or children of immigrants from arranged-marriage lands - similarly had few role-models to help them write about the experience. No wonder then, once they found a trope, or a phrase like “tootsie-wootsie” or “spoon”, they worked that trope or phrase to death. And boy, did they work “spoon” to death. There was “By The Light Of The Honeymoon” in which they “spoon in the month of June.” Not to mention “By The Light Of The Silvery Moon” in which by the light of the silvery moon, they want to spoon, croon to their honey’s love's tune. Not to mention “Honey On Our Honeymoon” which began with the observation “come honeymoon, come love and spoon.”

Not to mention a whole lot of other examples that we’ll be forced to cover over the next few chapters.

As you may have deduced from these examples much of the popularity of “spoon” came from the fact that it rhymed with both “moon” and “June.” And “tootsie-wootsie” rhymed with… actually “tootsie-wootsie” offered far fewer options for rhymes. The ubiquity of “tootsie-wootsie" is simply one of those unexplainable things that happens from time to time.

Thousands of songs mentioned spooning, but “How’d You Like To Spoon With Me?” was the spooning song that became a spooning anthem.

In “How’d You Like To Spoon With Me?” the girl is so shy and retiring, or as she puts it “demure”, that she’s never been kissed and – like yourself until a couple of paragraphs ago - seems only vaguely aware of what “spooning” involves. She wants to flirt, it’s the first time she’s tried, but all she knows is “lovey dovey” and “tootsie wootsie.” “How’d You Like To Spoon With ME” is the kind of baby-talk trifle that songwriting geniuses tend to spend the rest of their lives feeling ashamed about, and, indeed, Jerome would.***

The biggest selling recorded version of “How’d You Like To Spoon With Me?” was by Corrine Morgan, a ghostly looking lady with a long neck and a billowing black cloud for hair.

 Corrine was 30 when she recorded “How’d You Like To Spoon With Me?”, so she presumedly had been kissed before, although given the time period we are talking about such things cannot be taken for granted. Corrine does however sound rather demure, or as demure as she could be, given that, like her male counterparts, she was hollering into a horn. But she was the first female “Famous Record Maker” to manage to make a career of it (Corrine’s version of “How’d You Like To Spoon With Me?” is a 4)

For a couple of years Corrine’s was about the only female voice to be heard on the phonographs.**** There were, however, quite a number of popular tunes from the female perspective and given the lack of women in the recording studio, these were mostly sung by men. Similar to the practice of white men performing the role of ethnic characters from ethnicities to which they clearly did not belong, the practice of white men playing women was not deemed a problem. Nobody expected George Gaskin or Arthur Collins or Henry Burr or whoever to believe, or even to identify with, the words they were singing; and judging by the stilted and constipated performances that ended up on these records these expectations were met. The only thing that was important was that they were able to enunciate the words properly.*****

Sometimes the “Famous Record Makers” tried to sound like women. It’s probably for the best that they didn’t try too often, since they weren’t particularly good at it. Case in point: BillyMurray and Len Spencer’s rendition of “Can’t You See My Heart Beats All For You”, an infuriatingly catchy song, in which Billy impersonates a woman – he did have a high voice after all – whilst Len impersonates an African American man with a baritone voice, saying things like “come to me honey, I was only teasin’ ya gal.” Nobody is what they seem to be! (“Can’t You See My Heart Beats All For You” is a 2)

 

Sometime around the middle of the decade, after a few years of being effectively the only female voice heard on the phonograph, Corrine got some company, when Ada Jones arrived in the recording studios of New York and New Jersey. And because there was apparently only enough room in the 1900s phonograph industry for one female “Famous Record Maker” Ada almost immediately took over the role, whilst Corrine, almost as instantly, faded away. Her voice always seemed to be in danger of fading away anyway.

This was not a danger for Ada, who possessed a number of qualities much desired by the industry of the day, including almost manlike levels of loudness. Ada’s voice was so loud that some might call it shrill. And indeed they did. So loud that it completely overpowers Billy Murray’s – with whom she would record countless duets****** - own distinctive honk of a voice.

Ada and Billy had chemistry together. Not necessarily romantic chemistry or – heavens forbid – sexual chemistry, but they always gave off the impression that they were an old married couple bickering good-naturedly with each other. The platonic chasteness of their chemistry made them the perfect duo for the documentation of dating behaviour in the first decade of the 20th Century, at least as far as Tin Pan Alley described it.

This platonic chastity can best be seen on “Let’s Take An Old Fashioned Walk”, written by Billy’s friend – although they may have never actually met – George M. Cohan, who included it in “The Honeymooners”, a remake of his 1903 production “Running For Office”, in which an older couple get married, but decide to keep it a secret until their children get engaged. When performed back in 1903, “Running For Office” had been a respectable-sized hit, but that had been before George was super-famous, so a lot of his newer fans might have missed it. So, for want of any new ideas – and 1907 also saw George write the sequel to “45 Minutes From Broadway” so perhaps his creative juices were finally beginning to run a little low – it was time to bring it back again.

Plotwise, there’s a lot going on in “Let’s Take An Old Fashioned Walk.” Billy sees Ada… or to use her in-song character, Lizzie. They used to date when they were kids, and she goes straight into rebuffing him, telling him she’s very, very busy, and also that he was an awful storyteller (presumedly this means that he lied a lot). Ada/Lizzie then gives Billy a hard time about all the girls she’s seen him with, driving them around in his fancy automobile. Billy reassures Ada that while he was driving those other girls around he was thinking only of her, and together they go off on an old-fashioned walk and have an old-fashioned talk. Old-fashioned because it doesn’t require Billy’s new-fangled automobile, nor any other new-fangled invention (“Let’s Take An Old Fashioned Walk” is a 4)

Billy and Ada sang with each other again on “Wouldn’t You Like To Have Me For A Sweetheart?”, Billy wondering why he’s so unlucky in love, why girls are always so cruel and why other guys have 20 girls and he has none. Ada puts herself forward as a solution as she is neither haughty nor naughty. Nor, it appears, especially fussy, since it doesn’t matter what the guy looks like, she just wants a “a chappy.” Equally importantly, she just wants to go on a honeymoon.

Listening to “Wouldn’t You Like To Have Me For A Sweetheart?” is like watching a couple with no standards deciding to be together simply because having a sweetheart is something that people do. “Wouldn’t You Like To Have Me For A Sweetheart?” also gives us the opportunity to watch the entire dating process, from flirting to marriage proposal, in two minutes flat (it’s a 3)*******

“Wouldn’t You Like To Have Me For A Sweetheart?” had been preceded by the similarly themed “It’s Nice To Have A Sweetheart” - from the musical “The Tourists”, an impossibly complicated musical set in the imaginary Oriental land of Rangapang and featuring characters called Jambo-Ree and Boojam - an advertisement for the entire concept of sweetheart-dom. It's nice to have a sweetheart, they assure us, who is really fond of you, so don't think twice, take my advice, and get one, too! Billy makes it clear that finding a sweetheart is something one does when on holiday in the mountains or the seaside and you have nothing else to do. In circumstances such as these, you flirt with anybody who wants to flirt with you. It’s the sort of cynicism you might expect from a Florodora Girl, as though the tunesmiths of Tin Pan Alley had decided to turn ““yes, I must love someone, and it might as well be you” into their own personal mantra. As apparently did Billy and Ada, when a year later they recorded “I’m Looking For A Sweetheart (And I Think You’ll Do)”******** although that one is nowhere near as cynical about love as its title might suggest. Billy thinks Ada is the nicest girl he ever knew - high praise indeed from a man who claims to have met a lot of girls in every city - and Ada is very glad that Billy likes her. So I guess it’s a perfect match then? (“Wouldn’t You Like To Have Me For A Sweetheart” is a 4, “I’m Looking For A Sweetheart” is a 3)

Billy and Ada almost got saucy on another George Cohan composition – this one from “The Talk Of New York”, the aforementioned sequel to “45 Miles From Broadway” – with the charming “When We Are M-A-Double-R-I-E-D.” Not necessarily in the song itself which they spell out what they expect from their married life - essentially a G-I-R-L and a B-O-Y – but in the little comedic chat they have in the middle. “Ah listen” Billy begins “what if I were one of those husbands who get up cross in the morning, and bang things about because the coffee is cold.” “I would make it HOT for YOU!!!” Ada replies and they both laugh, before Ada sighs “oh dear” presumedly in recognition that it was a terrible pun. (“When We Are M-A-Double-R-I-E-D” is a 4)

“When We Are M-A-Double-R-I-E-D” was a hit in 1908, by which time there were other songs equally saucy, or even more so. A whole wave of songs arrived to loosen the morals of America up a bit!********* By 1907 the morals of America had loosened up sufficiently that one hit song even featured a swear word. “Fudge!” as used by “The Linger Longer Girl”, an adorable conversation between a bashful boy trying to be responsible and not give the neighbours something to gossip about and a sassy girl who wants to stay out – or “linger” - longer. This Linger Longer Girl also explains to him that “misses pine for kisses.” The “fudge!” bit sounds even more saucy in a slight English accent, such as one possessed by Elise Stevenson, whose voice is far more prim and proper than Ada’s and filled with operatic trills.  (“The Linger, Longer Girl” is a 3)

There was no one song that defined this new slightly saucy mood; there were three. Three interconnected songs; a sort of trilogy. Three songs that would get much of America hot under the collar. Three songs that led to a moral panic.

 They were usually referred to as the “Oh You Kid” songs.

It had all started off innocently enough. The first “Oh You Kid” was just a typical love song, “oh you kid!” being just a term of endearment. The song being one of those guy-begs-girl-to-let-him-kiss-her songs, a “spooning song” if you will, in which “cuddle closer” is rhymed with “don’t say “no sir.” So of course Ada Jones and Billy Murray had to record it. “Oh, You Kid” was one of their more charming efforts, even if – due to the duet format – they are both singing to each other, begging each other to kiss each other. This feels unnecessary. You both want to kiss, just start kissing! “Oh, You Kid” was a bit of a hit, but nothing compared to what was to follow (it’s a 4)

What was to follow was “I Love My Wife, But Oh You Kid,” a morality play about adultery in which the husband was caught cheating and duly punished. As this was rather standard in songs about adultery it didn’t really stand out and thus was barely a hit at all. But it caught the attention of Harry von Tilzer who decided he could do better.

Harry von Tilzer needed to differentiate his hit from the one that came before and so it became the mouthful of “I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife – But Oh! You Kid!”

That’s three “I Love”s plus two exclamation marks!! Clearly this was a song of which to take note!!! Harry also differentiated “I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife – But Oh! You Kid!” from “I Love My Wife, But Oh You Kid”, by turning the song into the polar opposite of a morality play. “I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife – But Oh! You Kid!” was an immorality play.

First we meet Jonesy, who is married (oh yes he was!). Jonesy meets an old friend, identified simply as “girlie”. Jonesy informs “girlie” that he's married but… (and I’ll use this dramatic pause, to mention the existence of a theory that this “but(t)” is supposed to be a pun) “that ‘but’ my dear, means you.”

Jonesy also mentions that his wife has never done him wrong. Now this is not strictly true. As we discover in the second verse, Jonesy’s wife is also having an affair… with the butcher! Who just happens to be married as well!! Jonesy’s wife doesn’t mind that. Since Jonesy himself doesn’t seem to know about the butcher, we don’t find out whether or not he’d mind it, but looking at the weight of the evidence, I’d suspect not.

“I Love, I Love, I Love…” darn it, I’m not going to type it out in full each time. I’m just going to call it what everyone ended up calling it, and what would become the defining catchphrase of the year: “Oh! You Kid!”

Reduced to just a catch phrase, the American economy went into overload producing all manner of merchandise for this new “Oh! You Kid!” craze. You could buy the “Oh! You Kid!” necktie. The “Oh! You Kid!” pin badge (complete with a rough sketch of a girl in a bathing costume),

 

the “Oh! You Kid!” porcelain plate (compete with a yellow ribbon and drawing of a blonde winking)

and a vast array of “Oh! You Kid!” postcards, many of which went with the theme of a middle-aged man leering at a nubile youngster, with one such portly gentleman, peeking through the window of a beach-front change room, and one featuring the girl as some sort of goat-girl hybrid (because, y’know “kid”?).

It wasn’t necessarily a good idea to post these postcards. One Missouri farmer (who was not actually married but simply didn’t want to miss out on the zeitgeist) sent one to a young lady and almost got sent to jail. But the judge admitted nothing illegal had happened, just bad taste, so he got fined instead.

And, of course, you could buy it for your phonograph.

The “Famous Record Makers” of the day seemed confounded about how to approach a song like “Oh! You Kid!” They all sound a little awkward, although that doesn’t necessarily appear to have been because of the subject matter. It’s simply an awkwardly constructed song. Particularly the bit where everything slows way down in chorus to really stretch out the “OOOOHHHH YYYOOOUUU KKKIIIDDD!!!!” hook.

Edward M Favor sang it like just another novelty record, the marching band sounding as though it’s arrived straight from the fun-fair, the primary takeaway being “don’t people do the darndest things?” which to be fair, was the approach that most records seemed to take, as though records were the aural equivalent to the “odd spot” section in newspapers. Edward was, after all, a vaudeville comedian who sometimes made records – his version of “I’d Leave My Happy Home For You” had been moderately popular a decade earlier, whilst his version of “Daisy Bell” aka “A Bicycle Built For Two” is arguably the definitive version (assuming that anyone can be bothered arguing about that) – and his version of “Oh! You Kid!” is a very vaudeville comedian version (Edward version of “Oh! You Kid!” is a 4)

Arthur Collins may have missed some of the point of the song and its embrace of sexual freedoms and simultaneous loosening of both morals and corsets. Arthur’s Jonesy sounds as though he is in tears, torn in two with the guilt of it all. As does the butcher, whom he also plays. Arthur’s sobs are totally over the top, which means that he’s still playing the song for laughs, but at least he’s not trying to turn it into a “coon song” so it has that very little thing going for it. It also doesn’t have Byron pretending to be Jonesy’s wife – she only gets one line in the song anyway –  which also feels like a blessing (Arthur’s version is a 2)

 Although Arthur’s was the most popular version, that’s not the way most people understood it. Neither was it the way most people used the “Oh! You kid!” catchphrase… and use it they did, regularly, in everyday conversation, and in hollering it at women walking down the street. One man both yelled “Oh! You Kid!” at a woman and then grabbed her. At which point her husband shot him and he died. The judge sided with the husband and let him get away with murder. It’s possible – and the newspaper coverage certainly creates this impression - that the judge’s dislike of the phrase was a deciding factor in his verdict. As if he hoped his verdict would stop people saying it all the goddamn time! It did not.

The “I Love My Wife… But Oh! You Kid!” format was an infinitely replicable meme.

The format was simple “I Love (something that’s quite adequate but not exhilarating)… but oh! (something that is utterly stupendous and so much better).” The Suffragettes came up with “I Love My Husband… But Oh! You Vote!”

When Billy Sunday - a baseball player turned evangelist who liked to combine the two by pretending to slide into home base whilst giving a sermon, usually about the evils of sex, about which he’d sometimes get so excited that he’d smash a chair to highlight a point - started making sermons about the evils of “Oh! You Kid!” Tin Pan Alley hit back with “I Love My Billy Sunday, But Oh! You Saturday Night!” Ultimately Billy Sunday did not shut the “Oh! You Kid!” fad down.

In the end the meme wasn’t infinitely replicable. Eventually every possible variation had been used.

But although the supply of new songs using the “Oh You Kid format had dried up, the demand for songs about infidelity had not, and towards he end of the year another jubilant jingle became inescapable, another jubilant jingle whose liberal attitude to extramarital affairs is only matched by the liberal attitude to exclamation marks:  “My Wife Gone To The Country! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

“My Wife Gone To The Country! Hurrah! Hurrah!” is set during the New York summer, when the heat is so oppressive that Mr Brown’s wife decides she can’t take it anymore and demands to take a trip upstate. Mr Brown very eagerly agrees, thus setting off a series of events, gushingly described in verse after verse, as the narrator lists all the things Mr Brown does to celebrate his wife’s absence. He invites all his friends downtown to celebrate. He takes out an advertisement in the newspaper to declare his freedom (or mentions it to his reporter friend who gets so caught up in Mr Brown’s enthusiasm that he pens an article about it, it’s a little unclear). He makes a phonograph recording of the song and buys a parrot so that the parrot can sing it all day. Clearly the song is ridiculous.

It’s almost an afterthought that he calls on “pretty Molly, a girl he used to know” although this doesn’t seem to be a success, since she is not in.

“My Wife’s Gone To The Country! Hurrah! Hurrah!” was one of the earliest hits for Irving Berlin, about whom much more in a couple of chapters. And also for much of the remainder of this book. And much of the next one. He’s a bit of a big deal.

Once again, the “Famous Record Maker” duties fell to Arthur Collins and Byron Harlan, and what a zippy little recording it is! Arthur and Byron sing together at a million words a minute, whilst a crowd of cheerful supporters shout out “Hurray! Hurray!” at appropriate junctures! Despite all indications being that the song was definitely titled “Hurrah! Hurrah!” they only ever pronounce it as “Hurray!”

(“My Wife’s Gone To The Country! Hurrah! Hurrah!” is a 6. Arthur and Byron were finally beginning to get the hang of whatever it is that they do)

“Oh! You Kid!” and “Hurrah! Hurrah!” had revealed widespread demand for sauciness and had capitalized well on that demand. But that was only the star… a new Broadway musical had just arrived to capture this saucy zeitgeist and take it further than Harry or Irving could ever dream. A new Broadway musical that would lead to a long running Broadway institution. One which was dedicated, above all else, to “Glorifying The American Girl.”

One that is the subject of the next chapter.