58. Only An Old Beer Bottle

This is another popular favorite known by both
college men and women, which is sung at almost
any kind of informal campus song fest.

¥, Edson Richmond reports learning this song as
far back as 1930 from an aunt who sang it in the
1920's, The earliest variant I have discovered
is a text collected by James Breckenridge in New
York in 1945 (NYSHAFA Br), set to the tune of
"Aloha Oe". Printed appearances, none of them
very much different from one another textually,
include the IOCA Song Fest (1948, p, 9), the New
Song Fest (1955, p. 116), and Songs For Swingin'
Housemothers (1961, p, 14), The song is also
given in "Old American Ballads" (1952, p, 36),
and there are over twenty texts collected at
Michigan State in the IUFA, Isolated variants
have also been reported from Indiana University,
Western Kentucky and elsewhere.

Variation in the lyrics of this song, in common
with others of a similar semi-popular nature
among college students (#56-64 in this
collection), is noticeable but distinctly minor
in character. An excerpt from a text collected
by Phyllis Southman at Michigan State in 1948,
when compared to the field item below,
illustrates this kind of secondary textual
change:

Just an old beer bottle
Floating in from sea:
Just an old beer bottle
Came floating in to me...

The tune most often listed by the students at
Michigan State for these lyrics is "Sing A Song
of Colleges (or Cities)," a piece with which I am
unfamiliar. The reader will note, however, that
the music is very close to that used for the B
text of "Just Put Her in the Corner" (#3).

58, Clay McMullen, Ray Brandell, and Forest Redding
learned this variant in the Indiana University Kappa
Delta Rho fraternity. They sang it on December 6, 1963.

'Twas only an old beer bottle
A' floating on the foam,
'Twas only an old beer bottle
A thousand miles from home.
And in it was a message
With these words written on:
"Whoever finds this bottle
Find the beer all gone,"

An Annotated Field Collection of Songs from the American College Student Oral Tradition by Richard Reuss. Pgs 299-301.

See online here: https://archive.org/details/1965annotatedfieldcollectionofsongs/page/299/mode/2up?q=%22old+beer+bottle%22