Lyr Add: Standard Bread (from Harry Champion)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Standard Bread (from Harry Champion)
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Dec 13 - 02:01 PM

not Spandau but Sandow - a hungarian strong man

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Standard Bread (from Harry Champion)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 08:53 AM

From Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, Volume 27, No. 7 (New York: The Gazette Publishing Company, July, 1911), page 387:

"STANDARD" BREAD.

There has been going on in England during the past two or three months what may be termed, perhaps, a boom in regard to a form of bread designated "Standard" bread. The London Daily Mail, the most progressive not to say the most sensational newspaper of Great Britain, inaugurated the discussion on the subject of the wholesomeness or otherwise of the different kinds of bread. The medical journals then took the matter up. The British Medical Journal is now carrying on a discussion dealing with the matter. In the Daily Mail was published a manifesto signed by some well-known physicians treating of flour and bread, and stating that the bread to which the name had been given, "Standard," was the most nutritious.

For some time voluminous and more or less scientific articles appeared in the pages of the London go-ahead daily eulogizing in extravagant terms the surpassing merits of "standard" bread. Of course, the 'Daily Mail, as is the case with papers of this description, altogether overdid the matter; but this good has proceeded from the debate, that the question is now being considered from a scientific as well as a practical standpoint. It goes without saying that the subject is of vital importance. That flour and bread should possess high nutritive qualities affect all classes of society, but especially the working classes, with whom in England, at least, bread is the staple article of diet.

The contention was made in the Daily Mail that the white bread now most usually sold is made from an over-milled flour, and by this practice some of the chief nutritive properties of the wheat are destroyed. The Council of the National Association of British and Irish Millers recently appointed a commission to report on the subject. In this report, which has just been published, analyses are given of four kinds of flour obtained from the same blends of wheat. These were "high grade flour," "town household," "whole wheat flour" and 80 per cent., or "standard" flour. The results showed that protein and phosphate are lowest in the "high grade" and highest in the "whole wheat," whereas in the "town household" and "standard" these were almost identical....

Subject: Lyr Add: Standard Bread (from Harry Champion)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 08:28 AM

You can hear this song at YouTube. It is the first of 2 songs in that "video." As usual, my transcription has a few gaps and uncertainties. I would appreciate any help in clarifying these.

STANDARD BREAD
Words and music by E. Bateman and F. Murray
As sung by Harry Champion (1911)

1. My old woman was as weak as any rat,
Never shook a tablecloth and never beat a mat.
If she had a little drop to keep her on her feet,
Hadn't strength to water it, so always had it neat.
One day our lodger went and said to her that standard bread is nice.
It'll make you strong as Spandau(?) if you only had one slice.
She had once slice and, dear oh lor! Her strength she hardly knew.
The threw the lodger down the stairs, pushed me up the flue.

CHORUS 1: Bread! Bread! Bread! Standard bread!
"I'm going to do the washing," the old girl said.
Like a lion she began to scrub,
Pushed my shirt though the bottom of the tub.
Six months washing it was done in half a jif, and when she came to bed,
In her arms she had the copper,
The mangle and the chopper,
And a little bit of standard bread.

2. We kept a fowl and our lot was very hard.
Hadn't got a single feather on her Scotland Yard.
When the wind was blowing hard, she couldn't do her craft.
Had to put a curtain up to keep away the draft.
She spied her match, a cock-a-doodle doo next door named Chanticleer.
He said, "Pop off! I'm busy. You are too ..., old dear."
She found some standard bread one day, and as she ... with shame,
She'd hardly got it down her neck when out her feathers came.

CHORUS 2: Bread! Bread! Bread! Standard bread!
She grew a feather duster on her old bald head.
Ostrich plumes on her, I suppose,
Landed stickers(?) on her parson's nose.
She got married to the cock-a-doodle-doo. It's a fact, now they are wed.
They're a-cooing and a-billing,
And it's twenty for [or "twenty-four"?] a shilling
Through a little bit of standard bread.

3. Our greasy cook was a-screaming down the house.
Standing on the dresser, she was shouting, "There's a mouse!"
The animal skedaddled. When he took his flight,
Saw her fancy garters and couldn't bear the sight.
I went and got a bit of standard bread and set it in the trap,
And after waiting fourteen hours, I caught that little chap.
The mouse had ate up all the bread. His muscles grew and grew,
And when he saw our old tomcat, you'd hardly think it's true.

CHORUS 3: Bread! Bread! Bread! Standard bread!
The mouse he went and jumped upon the old cat's head.
Lifted up one massive paw,
Caught poor Tommy such a wonder on the jaw.
They got wrestling together on the mat, and the poor cat dropped down dead.
The mouse, lord lumme,
Got a pussy in his tummy
And a little bit of standard bread.