The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #6515   Message #3485840
Posted By: JohnInKansas
03-Mar-13 - 11:45 AM
Thread Name: Bawdy Song:she stood out there in the midnight air
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: she stood out there in the midnight air
More years ago than I care to admit, a friend sang a song for a small group of us, to the tune of "The Girl I left Behind Me" that included the phrases:

She looked so fair in the midnight air
As the wind blew up her nightie.
So I ... (?)

It degenerated from there ...

At the time it was implied that it was a "frat song" that he apparently learned at Kansas State University, although I don't kow what fraternity he was in.

A few (half dozen) years later the same person insisted he'd never heard of any such song (he'd married by then), so I'm afraid I never heard (to recall) any more of it.

Many of the frat-rats had access to "Fraternity songbooks," some of which might have included similar material but the ones I've found (in the antique shops) have mostly been from earlier eras (?? I'm guessing) when mushy sentimentality was more the custom than recycled marching songs (i.e. pre-WWII at least?).

While the military has been possibly the richest source for such "bawdiness," very little of it was ever formally published, and if it was ever written down was only distributed as "mimeo" that turns into blank sheets of paper after 4 or 5 years. Some of these were recorded, possibly more frquently than by collectors of bawdy songs, in "college lore" so it's a possible place to look, in the US especially in the few years after large numbers of troops returned home and went to college on the "GI Bill." For unknown reasons, similar creativity seems to have been less common among those involved in the later "police actions."

I have no suggestions on how to find such (frat) songbooks except by accident.

John