Steyn's Song of the Week

Happy Mother's Day!

This essay is adapted from Mark's book, A Song For The Season:

It's Mother's Day (in North America, that is: in Britain, it's the fourth Sunday after Lent), and a young lad's heart naturally turns to thoughts of serenading his mom. And, when it does, he quickly discovers the heyday of mother songs was a century ago. From the Gay Nineties to the Great War, mother songs were a Tin Pan Alley staple and among the biggest hits of the day: "Always Take Mother's Advice", "A Boy's Best Friend Is His Mother", "Your Mother Is Your Best Friend After All", "That Old Fashioned Mother Of Mine", "That Wonderful Mother Of Mine", "That Old Irish Mother Of Mine". Old Irish mothers were a thriving sub-genre all by themselves – "Mother Machree", "Ireland Must Be Heaven For My Mother Came From There". So were songs for southern mammies, for whose smiles one would walk a million miles. There are songs about dads with excellent taste in mothers: "Daddy Has A Sweetheart And Mother Is Her Name", "I Want A Girl Just Like The Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad". There are mother songs about mothers who sang songs, like "Those Songs My Mother Used To Sing" (1912). And songs about elderly mothers – "There's A Mother Old And Gray Who Needs Me Now" – and even a few that hint at senile decline - "Baby Your Mother As She Babied You, Back In Your Baby Days".

Other people's mothers are a different matter. One of my favorite mother songs is by Ivor Novello and Dion Titheradge, and was introduced with appropriate rueful resignation by Jack Buchanan in the 1921 West End revue A To Z. Although it's brimming with period detail, most fellows of whatever age will have encountered this situation at some time or other. As the verse says, "There may be times when couples need a chaperone/But mothers ought to leave a chap alone":

My car will meet her
And her mother comes too!
It's a two-seater
Still her mother comes too!
At Ciro's when I am free
At dinner, supper or tea
She loves to shimmy with me
And her mother does too!

I like the way Titheradge keeps the conceit going:

We lunch at Maxim's
And her mother comes too!
How large a snack seems
When her mother comes too!
And when they're visiting me
We finish afternoon tea
She loves to sit on my knee
And her mother does too!

And he caps the thing with a twist in the final line:

She simply can't take a snub
I go and sulk at the club
Then have a bath and a rub
And her brother comes too!

Jeremy Northam warbles it after a fashion in the film Gosford Park, and so does Don ("American Pie") McLean more Americanly, but I always enjoyed the way that that great mainstay of the BBC, Hubert Gregg, used to sing it on his radio show "Thanks For The Memory".

British revue songs aside, it was not an age to be cynical about mom. There are songs about mothers who left before their time, leaving the wee bairn to be raised by pop ("Daddy, You've Been A Mother To Me") or trying to get the operator to put through a real long-distance call:

Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven
For my mama's there
You can find her with the angels
On the golden stair
She'll be glad it's me who's speaking
Call her, won't you, please
For I want to surely tell her
We're so lonely here.

That was by Charles K Harris, the king of Tin Pan Alley in the late 19th century – "After The Ball" was his megasmash. During the Spanish-American war, he wrote this song:

…then a cry from our brave captain
Said, 'Boys, the flag is down.
Who'll volunteer to save it from disgrace?'
'I will,'a young boy shouted,
'I'll save the flag or die!'
Then rushed into the thickest of the fray,
Saved the flag, but gave his young life,
All for his country's sake.
We carried him back and heard him softly say,
'Just Break The News To Mother
She knows how dear I love her
And tell her not to wait for me,
For I'm not coming home.
Just say there is no other
Can take the place of Mother,
Then kiss her dear sweet lips for me,
And break the news to her.'

It's easy to dismiss these songs as maudlin, but, compared to, say, network news "human interest" stories today, they're rather stoic, and oddly affecting. Nowadays, alas, any song that mentions mother tends to spell it "mutha", and it's usually only the first half of the word. In 30 or 40 years, it means any gangsta rapper who hasn't been gunned down at the age of 27 will have plenty of lovely old songs with which to celebrate a happy Muthaf-----'s Day, but in the meantime it means the pickings are thin for those who want to serenade mom with anything less than 80 years old.

So this remains the mother of all mother songs – the one that's lasted longer than almost all the others, if only because its lyric is reprinted every May on a gazillion greetings cards, some of which even play the music, too. It was written in 1915 by two second-rank Alleymen, composer Theodore Morse and lyricist Howard Johnson. Morse had quite a few hits in his day, though "I'd Rather Be A Lobster Than A Wise Guy" seems to have dropped out of the repertoire, and "We'll Knock The Heligo Into Heligo Out Of Heligoland" didn't outlast the First World War. But "Hurray For Baffin's Bay" was one of the big songs in the original Broadway production of The Wizard Of Oz (1904) and "Two Little Boys" was revived with great success by Australia's didgeridoo maestro Rolf Harris and has the distinction of being one of Mrs Thatcher's favorite songs. Howard Johnson, though no relation to the household name, did share an interest in one of the items on the menu: "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream". He also wrote war songs – "I'd Like To See The Kaiser With A Lily In His Hand" – and novelty songs that were a bit too novel – "I Don't Want To Get Well (I'm In Love With A Beautiful Nurse)".

But these words are Johnson's claim to posterity. Eva Tanguay, Broadway's "I Don't Care" girl, introduced it in on stage, and Henry Burr, the soft-voiced son of New Brunswick, had a huge selling 78 with it in 1916, and thereafter it became a mainstay for every sentimental Irish tenor and barbershop quartet. Happy Mother's Day to Irish mothers, dear old mammies, red hot mamas, and all the rest. And, as it's a spelling song, see if you can fill in the missing words:

M is for the m ------- things she gave me
O means only that she's growing o--
T is for the t---- she shed to save me
H is for her h---- of purest gold
E is for her e--- with lovelight shining
R means r----- and r---- she'll always be
Put them all together, they spell MOTHER
A word that means the world to me

~adapted from Mark's book A Song For The Season, which anthologizes many of our our most requested Songs of the Week, from "Auld Lang Syne" to "White Christmas" via "My Funny Valentine", "Summertime", "Autumn Leaves" and many more. You can order your personally autographed copy exclusively from the SteynOnline bookstore.

(Answers: million, old, tears, heart, eyes, right.)

from A Song For The Season, May 12, 2013

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~and don't forget, if you like Mark's Song of the Week essays, some of his most requested are collected in his book A Song For The Season - including many songs for national days, from "America The Beautiful" to "Waltzing Matilda". You can order your personally autographed copy exclusively from the SteynOnline bookstore.

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~and don't forget, some of Mark's most popular Song of the Week essays are collected in his book A Song For The Season. You can order your personally autographed copy exclusively from the SteynOnline bookstore.

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