I have been trawling though the Net in a fruitless attempt to find the complete lyrics of the WWI song 'In these hard times'. The best I could find was a fragment from some unknown poster. It seems that the person had heard the recording that Jack Norworth made for Pathe some time between 1917 and 1919. It reads:

By no means always separate; one of my favorites is a WWI song by vaudevillian Jack Norworth, "In These Hard Times," which he recorded himself for Pathe.

Things are bad, awfully bad,
In fact they've never been worse before.
But everything, though, chappy,
Can make your girlie happy!
Food is dear, rent is dear,
But love is cheap for the time of year,
So grab the nearest miss,
And whisper while you kiss:

In these hard times, you've got to put up with anything,
In these hard times, you mustn't pick and choose.
And if you're nice and squeeze her tight,
She'll ask you 'round tomorrow night,
If you don't mind sitting without a light,
In these hard times!

And so it goes for 3 or 4 lively minutes, with verses about a girl marrying an old geezer because her beau marched off to the war, a woman buying a fish that's been torpedoed, and even Adam and Eve's sartorial problems ("go out behind the barn/your fig leaf you must darn"), among other things. I imagine in the theater it could have gone on much longer, with topical verses thrown in to keep it fresh, much to the delight of any audience.

The record has one endearing quirk. Norworth and his his (alas, unnamed) piano accompanist just rip off verse after verse, each followed by the "in these hard times" refrain (with a different punch line each time, of course) connected to the next verse by a jaunty little 9-note bridge passage, until the last one they do. They pause for a moment between the refrain and bridge at that point, and I have this image in my mind: the performers looked up at the recording engineer, who looked at how much space was left on the recording blank and nodded "go ahead." And they did.

Norworth, by the by, also wrote a much-better-remembered little ditty called "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (or at least the lyrics; I think someone else may have been responsible for the tune).

On his album 'Hard Times' {Fuse CF 382, 1982}, Roy Bailey recorded a version of 'In these hard times' which is attributed to R.P. Weston and F.J. Barnes. A google search reveals that there is sheet music of that title, composed by Weston and Barnes, as sung by Whit Cunliffe, an English comic music hall singer. The Bailey recording has:

Things are bad, awful bad,
In fact, they've never been worse before
But every single chappie
Can make a girlie happy!
Food is dear, rent is dear,
But love is cheap for the time of year
So grab the nearest miss
And whisper while you kiss

In these hard times, you've got to put up with anything,
In these hard times, you mustn't pick and choose
And if you're nice and squeeze her tight,
She'll ask you 'round tomorrow night
If you don't mind sitting without a light
In these hard times!

Mrs Green, rather mean
Went out one Saturday marketing
She saw out in the gutter
A cod fish on a shutter
She felt its gums, poked her thumbs
All round the fish, and said, 'Oh crumbs'
'It don't look nice at all
And the cod seller had to bawl

In these hard times, you've got to put up with anything,
In these hard times, you mustn't pick and choose
That cod fish there's a sacrifice
And I ask your mum would you look nice
If you'd a-been torpedoed twice
In these hard times!

Farmer Brown came to town
He spent the day at the cattle show
Then went to wet his whistle
Inside the Hotel Cecil
A lady fair, near him there
Had all her neck and her shoulders bare
Said farmer Brown, 'Alack'
As he saw her dainty back

In these hard times, you've got to put up with anything,
In these hard times, you mustn't pick and choose
That fancy kind of dress you wear
Leaves all your neck and your shoulders bare
But you're lucky to be dressed up to there
In these hard times! (x2)

The Bailey version has a similar beginning as the excerpt from the anonymous poster and also includes a torpedoed fish stanza. The 'farmer brown' stanza sounds very English to me and possibly does not appear in the Norworth recording.

Is the original song by the American, Norworth, or by the English pair? I believe Weston was also the composer of 'I'm Henery the Eighth, I am'.

Can any 'Catter supply the complete lyrics to the Norworth recording or know where they can be obtained? I'd love to see the 'Adam and Eve' stanza. Is the Bailey version the same as that sung by Whit Cunliffe? Any assistance in getting to the bottom of this would be greatly appreciated.

--Stewie.