Show Me the Way to Go Home
Show Me the Way to Go Home is a song written by the British songwriting team Reginald Connelly and Jimmy Campbell under the common pseudonym Irving King and published in 1924.
Background and song structure
Reg Connelly (1895 (or 1898) -1963) and Jimmy Campbell (1903-1967), who had also written hits like Goodnight, Sweetheart, If I Had You and Try a Little Tenderness , created with Show Me the Way to Go Home “ a hymn of the American prohibition era . ”The short refrain of the song written in G major (in the form ABAC ) consists of four sections, each consisting of four bars and the“ parameter of popular music, a fourth . ”The text consisted of elements with which the lovers of the illicit distillery could identify:
- I had a little drink about an hour ago
- and it went right to my head.
Connelly and Campbell were able - after they had previously unsuccessfully offered the song to various music publishers - sell over two million copies of sheet music in their own publishing house, Campbell, Connelly & Co.
First recordings
The song was presented by the Hal Swain Princess Toronto Orchestra; Among the first musicians to record the show Me the Way to Go Home from 1925 was Billy Jones and Ernie Hare , who popularized the song in the United States. In 1925 he was also played by the Savoy Havana Band (with Rudy Vallee , among others ), Hank Frye, the California Ramblers , Vincent Lopez , Louise Vant and the studio band Varsity Eight (with Red Nichols and Adrian Rollini among others ).
In Germany, where the cultural background was unknown, the two librettists Otto Stransky and Kurt Schwabach wrote the local language text “Yes, if love were not there”. Dajos Béla played the title as “Kapelle Sándor Józsi” in Berlin on March 6, 1926 on an Odeon record.
Later cover versions
Show Me the Way to Go Home has since been covered by musicians of various genres from country, oldtime, folk, swing, pop and rock music, etc. a. Performed by The Andrews Sisters , Chet Atkins , Frank Crumit , Tiny Hill , Bert Kaempfert , Frank D'Rone , Billy Duke , Dick Hyman , Henry Jerome , the hillbilly band The Skillet Lickers and Emerson, Lake and Palmer ( Works Volume II ) . The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of 57 (as of 2015) cover versions in the field of jazz , including a. by Raymond Scott , Les Brown , Artie Shaw , Stan Getz , Johnny Otis , Kai Winding , Jimmy Giuffre , Urbie Green , Matt Dennis , Rex Stewart and Dave McKenna , in Europe a. a. by Eric Delaney , Hazy Osterwald , the Dutch Swing College Band and Kurt Edelhagen .
Notes and individual references
- ^ A b c Marvin E. Paymer, Don E. Post: Sentimental Journey: Intimate Portraits of America's Great Popular Songs . 1999, p. 80 f.
- ↑ JJ Kennedy: The Man Who Wrote the Teddy Bears' Picnic: How Irish-Born Lyricist and Composer Jimmy Kennedy Became One of the Twentieth Century's Finest Songwriters . 2011, p. 46 ff.
- ↑ a b Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online)
- ↑ Odeon A 41 420 (mx. Be 5014-2) Show Me The Way To Go Home, Fox Trot (Irving King) Chapel Sándor Józsi [d. i. Dajos Béla], cf. Chr. Zwarg, ODEON Matrix Numbers -xBe 250 - 9999 (Berlin), PDF , p. 398
- ↑ Columbia Records 15404-D