The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #72832   Message #3608819
Posted By: Joe_F
10-Mar-14 - 08:13 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: The Gruen Watch Song
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Gruen Watch Song
_Roll Me Over_ arrived today, and from it I discover that the editors got it from _Songs of Raunch and Ill Repute_ (compiled at Caltech while I was there, 1958) and fitted it with a tune of their devising. So we still don't know the original tune.

The version in RMO, like the one in SORAIR, is defective in that it only gives the chorus once, tho in the original (as ketchdana noted) there is a couplet in it that changes from verse to verse. The compilers in Ricketts House at Caltech almost certainly got it from the loose sheet that I acquired as secretary of Fleming House, but they probably overlooked that subtlety.

Young folks may need to be told that "best time piece" represents a pun: "best timepiece", "best-time piece". "Piece" (short for "piece of ass") was extremely common vulgar slang in those days, but I haven't heard it for many years, and good riddance!