Hello Lighter and Q,

I never meant to imply that the Salvation Army would have sung anything detrimental to their mission—or humorous in any way—let alone a parody on their efforts. All you need do is work your way through the mammoth, grimly serious SA songbook (it's online) to realize that.

I see I phrased it badly. I should have said—not that they would have used a line like "Save another drunken bum." Of course they wouldn't. But that I thought there was a possibility some line of one of their hymns might have been the sound-alike that suggested the parody.

I think that possibility is vanishing, though, now that I've slogged painfully through the SA songbook in search of a line that might have suggested the parody and found nothing remotely similar.

You may have been misled, too, by the article I quoted, which portrays the Army playing and the students singing the parody song back at them. It implies the Army gamely made the best of it for the sake of placating the irreverent students in hopes of contributions ... no more than that. The Salvation Army has taken a lot of ribbing over the years and forged on regardless.

As to the parody's age, I was surprised to see the germ of it in print as early as 1928! I thought it must have originated later, and my guess is that it did not reach final form until the 1940s.

Again, I would be most interested to learn the source of the "Throw a Nickel on the Drum" chorus, whether parody or original. The search continues.

Bob