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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
Sanjay Sircar Lyr Req: Tauber comic parody 'Curly-Headed Baby' (2) Lyr Req: Tauber comic parody 'Curly-Headed Baby' 18 Jan 13


In the following

www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_pTXWCXEB8

(I apologise for not knowing how to link it)
the note reads 'GEORGE CLUTSAM'S SONG..."MY CURLY HEADED BABY", SUNG BY THE AUSTRIAN TEnOR RICHARD TAUBER. HE RECORDED AT THE SAME SESSION A HUMOUROUS VERSION WITH CHANGED LYRICS, FOR HIS FRIENDS.." Is there further information anywhere about this, or of the words of this comic parody, please? It would be good to have.

This is an interesting exampled of a non-US composer (New Zealand/Australia) writing in an appropriated genre (but then, there were "Hawaian" melodies from c. 1940s India, in English, by Indians). Youtube does not have what I think is a lovely rendition by Frieda Hempel (which the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, undertaking cultural cleansing, found in the possession of an elderly academic in Canton. They taped it up in a cardboard box, but did not destroy it, and he treasured it till his death.) It is also one that does not seem automatically to attract cries of stereotyping or racism, presumably because Robeson sang it, and now, Kevin Maynor. However Robeson altered (mangled?) the timing of the lulling, and Maynor follows him: Hempel doesn't. Apparently "lulling" words/sounds come out differently in German.

But what was the parody>

Sanjay Sircar


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