The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #119 Message #746806
Posted By: Joe Offer
11-Jul-02 - 06:22 PM
Thread Name: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa (D Latham/M Jaffe)
Subject: Lyr Add: I'M MY OWN GRANDPAW (D Latham/M Jaffe)
Here's the entry from Dorothy Horstman's Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy (Country Music Foundation Press, 1975, 1986, 1996)
I'M MY OWN GRANDPAW Quote from Dwight Latham:
Back in the early days of radio in the thirties, I had a very successful group called The Jesters performing three nights a week on NBC. Our specialty was novelty songs and bits of spoken humor. In reading a book of anecdotes and sayings by Mark Twain, I came across a paragraph wherein he proved it was possible for a man to become his own grandpa by a certain succession of events beginning with the premise that if the man married widow with a grown-up daughter and his father married the daughter, etc., etc., he would eventually become his own grandpa. The idea seemed funny enough to repeat on the air, and sure enough, the response was very good. Later Moe Jaffe and I decided to expand the basic idea and set it as a song.
—Dwight The lyrics are almost the same as what you'll find in the Digital Tradition (click):
I'M MY OWN GRANDPAW (Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe)
Many, many years ago when I was twenty-three I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red My father fell in love with her and soon they too were wed.
This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life For my daughter was my mother, 'cause she was my father's wife To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.
My little baby then became a brother-in-law to dad And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother Of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my step-mother
I'm my own grandpaw, I'm my own grandpaw It sounds funny I know, but it really is so Oh, I'm my own grandpaw.
Father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run And he became my grand-child, for he was my daughter's son My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.
Now, if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpaw.