Anthology of Newspaper Verse

Subject: RE: Modify an existing link on Mudcat
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 May 09 - 09:03 PM

The reason I posted this is a bit off-topic, but I didn't know where to put it just now. Now I've moved it to a new thread.
I found an old book at archive.org, called ANTHOLOGY OF NEWSPAPER VERSE FOR 1925, Seventh Annual Issue. It includes some intersting old songs. I'm wondering if there are other anthologies for other years.

Once upon a time, newspapers published a lot of poetry - much of it bad, but with some wonderful stuff mixed in. One of the best-known of these newspaper poems is The Face on the Barroom Floor. This was originally published in the newspaper in Ashtabula, Ohio. We're still looking for that original newspaper version, by the way.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Modify an existing link on Mudcat
From: wysiwyg
Date: 25 May 09 - 09:22 PM

Wish there were more, here: http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?genre=Music

But if there are any lyrics in Project Gutenberg, they could appear at Librivox, too.

~S~

Subject: RE: Modify an existing link on Mudcat
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 May 09 - 10:33 PM

Joe, found two more with google. There may be more. Apparently a series of books- the '1935' was the seventeenth annual edition.

Anthology of newspaper verse 1929:
http://www.archive.org/details/davisanthologyof008653mbp

A. S. Davis, Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1935:
http://www.archive.org/details/davisanthologyof027502mbp

Some very interesting material!

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 May 09 - 01:17 PM

Any other newspaper poetry collections we can find?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Artful Codger
Date: 26 May 09 - 06:22 PM

Lots of folk songs were taken from verse published in newspapers or weeklies. Off the top of my head, "Five/Nine Miles from Gundagai" (derived from "Bullocky Bill"), "Billy Venero" (derived from Eben R. Rexford's "The Ride of Paul Venarez"), "When the Work's All Done This Fall" and "The Tenderfoot" (D.J. O'Malley's "After the Roundup" and "D-2 Horse Wrangler"), Allen McCandless's "The Cowboy's Soliloquy" (aka "The [Biblical] Cowboy")...

In the latter 1800s, books of "rhetorical pieces" were popular. These consisted of speeches, stories and poems intended for recitation at public meetings or parlor gatherings, and they often pirated material from newspapers. In this way, pieces from local papers sometimes reached a much wider audience (unbeknownst to the original authors). Such books may be easier to find than explicit anthologies of newspaper verse.

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Rowan
Date: 27 May 09 - 12:10 AM

"The Bulletin" is (or was; it closed down recently) arguably the most famous of Australia's weeklies and published a great deal of poetry that has since become folksong and folklore; Lawson and Paterson are now the most famous of its contributors but I don't think The Bulletin ever published anthologies of its own; it got rather beaten to the punch by others.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 May 09 - 12:24 AM

My niece has a thick agricultural dept. book in which my grandfather pasted all kinds of poetry clipped from newspapers. The book is filled with them as he loved poetry and had a great ability to memorise and recite.

Thanks, Joe, this will be fun to explore!

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 27 May 09 - 11:08 PM

See also these books at Google Books:

Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1919 and Year Book of Newspaper Poetry edited by Franklyn Pierre Davis (Enid, Okla.: F. P. Davis Company, 1920).

Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1921 edited by Franklyn Pierre Davis (Enid, Okla.: Frank P. Davis, 1922).

Spanish-American War Songs: A Complete Collection of Newspaper Verse during the Recent War with Spain compiled and edited by Sidney A. Witherbee (Detroit: Sidney A. Witherbee, 1898).

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 28 May 09 - 03:50 AM

Rika and I are researching for a book on just this topic. We've gone back to the sources (the papers themselves) and found a huge number of verses. Our area of the country is very strong in newspapers that lasted for only three years: some 195 published between here (Princeton, BC) and Fernie in the Rockies. The reason is that the whole area was a mining area, with many towns springing up on the site of a promising find. The first thing done was as often as not to publish a paper: first, to demonstrate that this is a town, with success ahead of it; second, to publish the legal notices required for mining and logging licences; and thirdly, to sell ads for land for speculation.

We've done an exhaustive search of our local press from 1900 to 1945 (two weeklies, 4pp each) and found some 200 songs and poems for inclusion in the book. Some of the material is on our latest CD, "Now It's Called Princeton: Songs & Poems of BC's Upper Similkameen".

We've also researched the press of the West Kootenays: some forty papers, published between 1890 and 1920 (only two survived the period). This generated a photostat pile some three feet high.

If 'catters are interested, I'll write later on what we've found.

Jon Bartlett

---

I fixed the links you had trouble with, Jon. -Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-

Subject: ADD: FLAG OF BLUE WHITE AND RED
From: Stringsinger
Date: 28 May 09 - 07:12 PM

There used to be a publication called The Hobo News which carried some great verses.

"Why is it that the tenderest feet must trod the roughest road?"

I believe that the Border Affair (Spanish Is A Loving Tongue) by Charles "Badger" Clark was originally a newspaper verse as was "Home On The Range" ("A Home! A Home!)

Alan Lomax railed at this one that popped up in a Southern Illinois newspaper.

FLAG OF BLUE WHITE AND RED

"Come and listen to my song, story of a nation wrong.
Idle men in a roving band, strike the tools from a miner's hand.

(Chorus) Flag of Blue, White and Red, a man's got a right to earn his bread. (2X)

Tried to work 'cause I'm almost broke, to dig for Donnegan's Coal and Coke.
A hundred miners came around and beat me bloody to the ground.

Chorus

John L's pay is big and fat, I wish I had a tenth of that.
I don't like to sit at home and hear the wife and children moan."

Chorus

Alan thought that this was a contrived anti-miner's union song.
I think it's interesting though. Nice to contrast it with Union Miners Stand Together.

---

Art Thieme says below this song was written by Fleming Brown. Brown originally claimed he had gotten the song from a woman in Missouri, but later admitted he wrote it.
-Joe Offer=

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Artful Codger
Date: 29 May 09 - 04:27 AM

Quibble alert!
"Home on the Range" (originally titled "The Western Home") was set to music (by Dan Kelley in the spring of 1873) before it ever appeared in print (purportedly, in the Smith County Pioneer in Dec. 1873). Brewster Higley showed his poem personally to Kelley, who played fiddle with the Harlan Brothers Orchestra. Kelley came up with a tune, and when he tried it out with the Harlans, Judge John Harlan suggested they add a chorus. So Kelley and Cal, Gene and Virgie Harlan worked up the now famous "A home, a home, where the deer and the antelope play" stanza. This chorus appears in virtually every printed or collected version of the song, with only a change to the first line.

That said, the newspapers were undoubtedly instrumental in spreading (and localizing) the song. The lack of a published tune wasn't a serious handicap, since cowboys tended to borrow or make up tunes as the need arose. Kelley's original tune was likely supplanted almost immediately by any number of others. As far as I know, the now ubiquitous tune can be traced to only one source--Lomax's transcription of a saloon-keeper in San Antonio in 1908.

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 May 09 - 08:10 AM

The Punch digital archives are a rich source of poetry, issues of this weekly magazine ranging from 1850 to 1923 (copyright barrier). I and my fellow C. Fox Smith researchers were able to harvest almost a hundred of her poems from this Project Gutenberg website, poems which had never been republished anywhere else: Click here for Punch website!

There are some missing issues of Punch still but considerable progress has been made in scanning hard copy and editing the results. One can download just text or full pages with graphics.

Be warned that reviewing old issues of Punch can become addictive!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 May 09 - 08:47 AM

Some WalkaboutsVerse is also Newspaper Verse, by the way.

Subject: RE: Anthology of Newspaper Verse
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 May 09 - 10:13 PM

Frank,
That song "FLAG OF BLUE WHITE AND RED" was recorded by Fleming Brown -- who I am certain you know. (knew.) He said he got it from a woman in Missouri (as I recall it.)

Several years later, Fleming admitted that he had written the song because he was tired of the union songs and their expressed ethical sentiments.

Art Thieme