Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'

Subject: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GUEST,sarahsez
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 09:30 PM

Starting a new thread as this was mentioned in in a question about another song. Someone kindly posted the chords to Thais but I still don't know what the tune is.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 12:47 PM

Tune is supposed to be here. But I did not check to see if it played.

Thais

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 03:37 PM

The tune plays as a midi...it is close enough, though not 'exactly' what I use.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Joe_F
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 08:29 PM

It is in _The New Song Fest_ -- words & music.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 08:41 PM

thanks,all!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 10:23 PM

That's one I've done with considerable success. I learned it from Walt Robertson back sometime in the mid-1950s. In fact, I knew and sang the song before my wife and I saw the opera, and the song is a tidy encapsulation of the plot. Pretty much on the button. Mixed ending. Thais the Alexandrian "courtesan" saves her soul, but Athanael, the monk, loses his soul to lust.

But the midi-file, kinda stinks. The pitch changes up and down the staff are fairly accurate, but the tempo--every note value (length) is exactly the same!! Idiotic!

The best I can suggest is to see if you can find a copy of "The New Song Fest" compiled by Dick and Beth Best (crammed with all kinds of great songs, folk songs, camp songs, rounds, lotsa good stuff!) and check the tune there.

Failing that, it IS possible to salvage the tune as presented by the midi-file if you study the lyrics carefully, ignore the "four-square" timing, and ham it up a bunch. For example, do the line "I'll go to Alexandria and save her soul from Hell!" with a sort of lecherous glee.

The following verse when the monk is packing for the trip, sing it fast—his hormones are flowing and he's in a hurry!

And don't miss the double-meaning in the line, "Said he to Thais, 'Pardon me, although this job is hard on me….'"

In the next verse, when Thais responds, Walt (and I) sing her lines as if she's a complete ditz with a heavy Bronx accent.

I had the advantage of hearing it sung first by a guy (Walt) who as both an excellent singer and a fine actor. But I don't know if anyone has ever recorded it. I could go through it line-by-line, but I don't really have the time right know, and I don't want to cramp anybody else's creativity. My best advice would be to study the song line-by-line, and don't be afraid to ham it up!!

I wouldn't sing it at a church social. But I've sung it a fair amount in parties and at coffee houses, and most people simply take it as a funny, slightly bawdy song, and lots of people who sing it are not aware that the story is taken from Jules Massenet's opera. Thaïs.

Oh!! Note that her name is two syllables: "Tah-EES." I have heard a few people who sing it pronounce it "Thighs!" Oy!!

I've note that the people who seem to get the biggest bang out of it are opera fans who are familiar with the opera!

Play with it. Have fun!   

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Gorgeous Gary
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 11:12 AM

If you don't mind a CD with a bunch of SF/fantasy songs on it, Juanita Coulson covers "Thais" on her CD Past and Future Tense.

-- Gary

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 12:53 PM

Here it is, word for word and note for note exactly from "Song Fest" by Dick and Beth Best. The midi is also transcribed note by note from the above reference. Of course one wouldn't sing it exactly this way - every note exactly the same time value - but it does give the basic melody. I don't know if there's any definite version of this song - after all it's folk music, folks, so sing it any way you like.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Stewart
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 02:01 PM

That was me above (sans cookie).
Yes, I learned that song in college back in the late '50s. It was popular among the folk singers then, and we all learned it from "the old yellow songbook" - Song Fest by Best and Best. Years later I still remember every word from the thirteen bloody verses. The words were by Newman Levy from his book "Opera Guyed," 1923, Alfred A. Knopf. I don't know who put it to music, but it's certainly part of the folk tradition.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Joe Offer
Date: 11 May 20 - 10:53 PM

But is it an older tune that we should know? Where did the music come from?

Even Abby Sale didn't know.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Bill D
Date: 13 May 20 - 11:34 AM

I have only ever heard one tune.... I can't even remember when I first heard it, but I sort of knew it before I moved east. When I visited the Wash DC area to attend the National Folk Festival.. then held at the Wolf Trap Farm Park in Virginia, near DC... I volunteered to help make sandwiches and such for the performers, and thus got a 'badge' to have access to the area under the stage where performers wandered about.

Thus, I was hanging out near a passageway when Jon Eberhart, a founder of FSGW, and Jon Bartlett of British Columbia (on the program and who had sometimes posted here at Mudcat) somehow got up on a tiny, low stage and started singing Thais. They had gotten thru maybe a third of it when Helen Schneyer, she of more wonderful songs than I can list, came down the passageway, almost clanking with her turquoise jewelry.
   She came by... stopped... turned and stared at them for about 3-4 seconds, and said "Oh my God... they BOTH know it!".. and clanked
away.

   Since then, I have sung the thing 3-4 times for one event or another.... sometimes forgetting the last verse. The last time was 'about' 3 years ago at the monthly open sing.
   They never missed a word

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Catamariner
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 04:34 PM

Composer Newman Levy 1888-1966, wrote "Thaïs" as a parody on the opera Thaïs by Jules Massenet, for his 1923 book "Opera Guyed."

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Catamariner
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 04:40 PM

Whoops sorry, the tune appeared with the words in Ed Cray's Bawdy Ballads (publ. 1955). There may have been an earlier instance of the tune, but I have not yet found it.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GerryM
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 05:28 PM

I find it amusing that the phrase, "in a manner rather rude," turns up in both Thaïs and in Pretty Boy Floyd.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GUEST,Jon Bartlett
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 08:32 PM

Bill D. remembers it right! It was the US Bicentennial and I was one of the 'gifts' (ha, ha) that Canada sent. Singing with Eberhart was wonderful and with Helen and her daughter even better.

Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GUEST,Jon Bartlett
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 08:32 PM

Bill D. remembers it right! It was the US Bicentennial and I was one of the 'gifts' (ha, ha) that Canada sent. Singing with Eberhart was wonderful and with Helen and her daughter even better.

Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Catamariner
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 04:34 PM

Composer Newman Levy 1888-1966, wrote "Thaïs" as a parody on the opera Thaïs by Jules Massenet, for his 1923 book "Opera Guyed."

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: Catamariner
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 04:40 PM

Whoops sorry, the tune appeared with the words in Ed Cray's Bawdy Ballads (publ. 1955). There may have been an earlier instance of the tune, but I have not yet found it.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Thais: 'One Time in Alexandria...'
From: GerryM
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 05:28 PM

I find it amusing that the phrase, "in a manner rather rude," turns up in both Thaïs and in Pretty Boy Floyd.