Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer

Subject: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 17 - 03:40 PM

What is the origin of this Weird Counting song?
I heard its from the 20th century but what's the history of it?
Please tell me

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Mar 17 - 06:35 PM

I don't think anyone knows. Some things just 'develop' in groups and spread like the flu.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Mar 17 - 07:06 PM

I first heard "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall" as a child in 1959.

"Ninety-Nine Bottles Hanging on the Wall" first seems to have been published in a collection of British soldiers' songs in 1917. The tune was a little different.

There's still another version, "Ten Green Bottles Standing on a Wall," mentioned in the mid '20s. It seems to be British.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Mar 17 - 12:20 PM

There is, of course, a Wikipedia article on this song:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Bottles_of_Beer

The Traditional Ballad Index also has an entry:

Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer

DESCRIPTION: Need I really tell you? "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, Ninety-nine bottles of beer, Take one down and pass it around, Ninety-eight bottles of beer...." And so on, ad nauseum, drunkenness, or exhaustion
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: drink nonballad
FOUND IN: US(MW,So)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Randolph 456, "Ninety-Nine Blue Bottles" (1 text, 1 tune)
BrownIII 190, "Ninety-Nine Blue Bottles" (1 text)
DT, BOT99*
Roud #7603
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Eight Little Cylinders" (counting)
cf. "Ten Little Injuns" (counting)
NOTES: Randolph's and Brown's texts, obviously, refers to "blue bottles" rather than "bottles of beer"; might this be an attempt to clean up the song for a temperate audience?
I will admit amazement that neither Randolph nor Brown seems to know this in its common form -- but then, they probably were born in the days before school buses took students on field trips. - RBW
File: R456

---

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The Ballad Index Copyright 2016 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.

Is it in the World's Greatest Songbook, the Digital Tradition? Of course: /@displaysong.cfm?SongID=4239

And yes, friends, the entire, unedited text of this song was posted at Mudcat by The Honorable Toadfrog: /detail.cfm?messages__Message_ID=814677

Subject: ADD Version: Ninety Nine Blue Bottles
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Mar 17 - 01:13 PM

From the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, Volume III, #190;

190
NINETY-NINE BLUE BOTTLES
This sounds like a College song, though it may of course be a music-hall product. It is listed in Miss Pound's Midwestern syllabus, with "forty-nine" instead of "ninety-nine." Randolph (OFS III 210) reports it from Missouri. Presumably the blue bottles are bluebottle flies, though the term is not hyphenated in the manuscript.
'Ninety-Nine Blue Bottles.' Reported by K. P. Lewis as obtained in 1910 from Dr. Kemp P. Battle of Chapel Hill.

NINETY-NINE BLUE BOTTLES

Ninety-nine blue bottles were hanging on the wall;
Take one blue bottle away from them all
And ninety-eight blue bottles will be hanging on the wall.

Ninety-eight blue bottles were hanging on the wall;
Take one blue bottle away from them all
And ninety-seven blue bottles will be hanging on the wall.

"Etc., etc., until the last blue bottle is removed or until the singer faints from exhaustion."


-I wonder if Dr. Kemp P. Battle sang all the verses for the collector.... -Joe-

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Mar 17 - 01:19 PM

But why stop there? Here's the version in Ozark Folksongs, by Vance Randolph (Volume III, No. 456)

456
NINETY-NINE BLUE BOTTLES
I heard my father sing this in the late 90's; he had learned it as a boy in South Carolina, shortly after the Civil War.
From Mrs. Hugo Blair, Joplin, Mo., Sept. 4, 1929.


NINETY-NINE BLUE BOTTLES

Ninety-eight blue bottles
A-hanging on the wall,
Take one blue bottle
Away from them all,
Leaves ninety-seven blue bottles
A-hanging on the wall.
(And so on, until the singer is out of breath.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Lighter
Date: 30 Mar 17 - 04:22 PM

Nice, Joe.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Cool Beans
Date: 30 Mar 17 - 05:20 PM

A religious Baptist in one of my graduate school classes called it "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Pop on the Wall."

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Mar 17 - 01:03 AM

Gee, Cool Beans, are you sure that's not One Bottle of Pop? Note that the Digital Tradition instructs that we can substitute beer for pop. Oh, and I learned it: "Don't chuck your muck in my dustbin":

ONE BOTTLE OF POP

One bottle of pop, two bottles of pop, three bottles of pop, four
bottles of pop,
Five bottles of pop, six bottles of pop, seven bottles of bottled
pop.

Don't throw your muck in my trash can, my trash can, my trash can
Don't throw your muck in my trash can, my trash can's full.

Fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar, vinegar
Fish and chips and vinegar, pepper, pepper, pepper pot.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
also with beer instead of pop
Sung as a three part round
@round @kids
filename[ POPBOTTL
DC

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Fred Maslan
Date: 31 Mar 17 - 10:22 AM

We used to alternate "if one of those bottles should happen to fall" with "take one down and pass it around" to add a little variety.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Jun 25 - 09:05 AM

Earliest mention?:

The Vedette (Greenfield, Mo.), Feb. 22, 1945:

"The Greenville pep squad was heard singing the 'Bottles of Beer on the Wall' song on the bus Friday night, and this time they left 'no bottles of beer on the wall.'"

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jun 25 - 09:50 AM

Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer on a wall,
Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer....
Take one down- put it back up,
There's Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer.
etc.
(until the bus driver goes mad.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Jun 25 - 11:03 AM

"Detroit Free Press," July 1, 1906:

"THE FOURTH IN NICARAGUA...About 12 o'clock that night, seven or eight jolly young Americans, reinforced by no less than forty natives and darkeys, planted themselves in front of the hotel and struck up a doggerel that was new to me, but Drew had crossed the states twenty-six times and he said the thing was old and had been chanted from Seattle to Portland, Maine. I heard so much of it - they were at it an hour and a half - I learned it by heart and certainly have never forgotten it.

"'There were ninety-nine beer bottles hanging on the wall,
Ninety-nine beer bottles, counting them all.
Take one of those beer bottles down from the wall,
Leaves ninety-eight beer bottles hanging on the wall.'

"...This is kept up until there is but one beer bottle 'hanging on the wall'...when the crowd...will run it back to ninety-nine and so on ad infinitum.'"

(Among other melodies, this fits well with "Turkey in the Straw" - but not with the familiar tune of "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.")

I heard it in the Cub Scouts in 1959 as:

"A hundred bottles of beer on the wall,
A hundred bottle of beer;
If one of those bottles should happen to fall:
Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall. ...Etc., etc., (etc.).

The tune is a familiar one, but I can't quite place it. Part of the "Bang Bang Lulu" family.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Jun 25 - 11:11 AM

World Folklore Dept., from the "Chicago Daily Tribune," Nov. 8, 1957:

"KHRUSHCHEV LEADS ROUSING DRINKING SONG Moscow, Nov. 7 (Reuters) Nikita Khrushchev tonight led a rousing chorus of a folk song at a banquet celebrating the 40th anniversary of the bolshevik revolution....

"He launched out into the Russian equivalent of a British song, 'Ten Bottle of Beer on the Wall.' Khrushchev beat time and led the singing for 15 minutes"

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: clueless don
Date: 17 Jun 25 - 01:27 PM

Like many, I learned it as

Ninety-Nine bottles of beer on the wall
Ninety-Nine bottle of beer!
You take one down
pass it around
Ninety-Eight bottles of beer on the wall (etc.)

But I did once hear it as

Ninety-Nine bottles of beer on the wall
Ninety-Nine bottle of beer!
If one of those bottles should happen to fall
there'd be
Ninety-Eight bottles of beer on the wall (etc.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: GerryM
Date: 17 Jun 25 - 06:53 PM

We used to sing it on the bus to day camp, circa 1960. We would try to time it so we got down to zero just as the bus was pulling in to park. If we finished too early, didn't faze us: Zero bottles of beer on the wall/Zero bottles of beer/If one of those bottles should happen to fall/Minus one bottles of beer on the wall. We'd go down to about minus ten, then Minus ten bottles of beer on the rack/Minus ten bottles of beer/If one of those bottles should happen to come back/Minus nine bottles of beer on the rack until we got up to zero.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 24 Jun 25 - 06:45 AM

Joe:
ONE BOTTLE OF POP

One bottle of pop, two bottles of pop, three bottles of pop, four
bottles of pop,
Five bottles of pop, six bottles of pop, seven bottles of bottled
pop.

Don't throw your muck in my trash can, my trash can, my trash can
Don't throw your muck in my trash can, my trash can's full.

Fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar, vinegar
Fish and chips and vinegar, pepper, pepper, pepper pot.




Final lines also appear in 'Can't put your muck in our dustbin' Here