The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #7094   Message #4165589
Posted By: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
19-Feb-23 - 09:17 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Gee But I Wanna Go Home
Subject: RE: Origins: Gee But I Wanna Go Home
“39. GEE, BUT I WANT TO GO HOME
...From the very first days of training, however, the most popular of all soldier songs in World War II was “Gee, but I Want to Go Home.” This was an adaptation of a British song of World War I composed by Lt. Gitz Rice:

I want to go home, I want to go home,
The bullets they whistle, the cannon they roar,
I don't want to stay here anymore;
Take me over the sea,
Where the Germans can't get me,
O my, I'm too young to die,
I want to go home.


One must conclude from their songs that American citizen soldiers don't care for wars, but up to now they have won them.”

Gee, But I Want to Go Home
Words and melody adapted and arranged by John A. and Alan Lomax
Piano arrangement by Charles and Ruth Seeger”

...Coffee, biscuits, clothes, money, girls. Chorus:
I don't want no more of army life,
Gee, but I want to go,
Gee, but I want to go home.

[Folk Song U.S.A., Lomax & Lomax, 1947]

Also as: Best Loved American Folk Songs, 1947