Breakfast Bytes Blogs

It's Thanksgiving next week in the U.S. I am taking the whole week off and Breakfast Bytes will not appear. So today is the day before the break and I always indulge myself by writing about something completely off-topic. Let's look at some things about music that few people know.

Edelweiss

When I was doing my PhD at Edinburgh University, I joined the Edinburgh University Canoe Club (EUCC). In the UK, we call everything a canoe, the word kayak is rarely used. Each summer we would load up the minibus and the canoe trailer and go to Austria. I did a lot of the driving because to drive a minibus with more than, I think, eight passengers, you have to be 21 (as opposed to the normal driving age of 17). So only postgraduates or people late in their final year were allowed to do it.

We had a sort of tradition of all of us singing Edelweiss when we packed up the campsite. After all, it's an Austrian folk song, right?

Wrong!

Rodgers and Hammerstein decided that they needed an extra song for the concert medley near the end of the show (this is the stage show in 1959, not the movie). So they wrote one. Theodore Bikel, the actor playing Captain von Trapp could play the guitar so they decided to write a folksy number to be accompanied on the guitar. This was Edelweiss. In the English-speaking world, most people believe that it was an Austrian folk song that had been translated into English for the show, but it was written in English and there is no German version.

I think it is amazing that Hammerstein wrote lyrics that were so convincing that almost everyone, including me, thought it was an Austrian folk song. Edelweiss was actually the last song Hammerstein wrote. Within a year he had died.

What was perhaps even more surprising, is that Hammerstein had also done something very similar over thirty years before as a young man, this time with Stern as his composer. In the 1927 musical Show Boat, the stevedore Joe sings Ol'Man River. Ask almost anyone and they will assume that it is a traditional spiritual. But no, Hammerstein and Stern wrote it.

So Hammerstein, a New York guy, twice wrote lyrics for songs in two very different genres that were so convincing that most people believe that he didn't write them. I'm not sure what counts as the ultimate accolade in music, I guess having a big repertoire that everyone knows you wrote like Lennon-McCartney. But writing songs that are so precisely on-target that nobody can even tell that they don't date back hundreds of years, must be another ultimate compliment.

Comme d'Habitude

Here's another odd song story. When I lived in France, I discovered that the French version of My Way is called Comme d'Habitude. It seemed a rather tame translation — "comme d'habitude" just means "as usual". Further, if you listen to the lyrics, it is weird. Whereas My Way is triumphant, this is...well, not.

For example, here's the first verse (translated into English by me, so buyer beware):

It turns out that this is the original version, written by Claude François. Paul Anka took the tune, ignored the words, and wrote My Way to it, and Frank Sinatra made it famous.

But even more surprisingly, there is a third version. Even a Fool Learns to Love. This was actually the first version in English. It was written by a young musician who had yet to make it big, or even small, called...David Bowie. I've seen an interview with him where he admits that it was terrible, but that he still took it badly that his version was discarded without anyone telling him in favor of Paul Anka's English lyrics, which became a big hit. Here is a performance of Bowie's lyrics in the style of Frank Sinatra:

But, in some ways, Bowie got the last laugh since he wrote Life on Mars as his own version with exactly the same initial chord progressions (it changes a lot later!), which turned out to be on his own breakout album. And he was on his way to Frank Sinatra-level stardom.

And if you've never seen it, you have to watch Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols performing My Way in 1979:

The Tiffany Problem

Here's a slightly different problem, like thinking Edelweiss is truly Austrian, but again everyone is wrong. One famous version is known as the Tiffany problem. Tiffany is a very old name dating back to the 12th century, a derivative of Epiphany.  It was a traditional name for children born close to Epiphany (January 6). Since my daughter was born January 7, maybe we'd have gone along with idea if we'd known. In France, on January 6, you have to eat "galette des rois", a big family-scale pastry with a cardboard crown on top. There is a little pottery baby Jesus inside, and whoever gets it in their slice has to wear the crown. But I digress.

Try writing a story set in, say, the 13th century and name one of the characters Tiffany. It just seems too modern to be plausible. But it is historically accurate.

Squanto and the Pilgrims

Do you know who Squanto was? He was a Native American who wandered in among the Pilgrims, probably not at Thanksgiving though. But let's pretend it was, because it's a better story, especially at this time of year. There's one telling of the story in the book The Light and the Glory:

Indian coming? Surely he meant Indians coming. Disgusted, Captain Standish shook his head as he went to look out the window - to see a tall, well-built Indian, wearing nothing but a leather loincloth, striding up their main street. He was headed straight for the common house, and the men inside hurried to the door, before he walked right in on them. He stopped and stood motionless looking at them, as though sculpted in marble.

"Welcome!" he suddenly boomed, in a deep, resonant voice. The Pilgrims were too startled to speak. At length they replied with as much gravity as they could muster: "Welcome."

Their visitor fixed them with a piercing stare. "Have you got any beer?" he asked them in flawless English. If they were surprised before, they were astounded now.

He had been kidnapped by an Englishman and taken to Spain and then England, before returning to the US, which is how he spoke fluent English (and liked beer).

A Final Pilgrim Fallacy

People often assume that the first Europeans to settle in the United States came with the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in ships sailed from Plymouth (near where my Dad lives) in 1620. However Spanish explorers had been in the Southwest, having moved up from Mexico, for almost a century by that time. In 1610, they began building the 'Palace of the Governors' in Santa Fe. So it already existed before the Pilgrims landed.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, I know it's still nearly a week to go. Have as good a Thanksgiving as you can under these trying circumstances, and I'll see you the Monday after.

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