Hi Steve: I'm still around (to my constant surprise) and still enjoying Mudcat as much as ever, but rarely finding anything for the last year or two that I felt competent to comment on.

You have already made an essential point about the historical place of swell songs. This one certainly sounds quite like 'Crutch and Toothpick', 1879, words by H J Byron:

I'm a swell, you can tell,and behave of course as such,
Close-cut hair, elbows square, with my toothpick and crutch

- but I am hampered by the fact that I don't have this song in my collection of sheet music, so have not been able to look at a published copy. It was,in any case, one of several with similar names, four being listed in the BL catalogue. Another was called (such originality!) 'Toothpick and Crutch' and there was at least one ladies' version (I think I have this one) and there were no doubt American variants.

It strikes me that the lines above, would not fit comfortably to triple time. I was going to add that swell songs don't seem to survive very long in oral tradition, but then I noticed that Leadbelly's discography included 'Champagne Charlie'.

I'd really like to see the video mentioned in the opening post.