Subject: RE: Help: New Hampshire Song
From:
GUEST,999
Date: 17 Feb 12 - 09:47 PM
Joe, check the following link.
http://news.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGBINOW730F.html
Song Has Traveled Winding Road By GRETCHEN PARKER The Tampa Tribune
Published: Apr 4, 2007 WINTER HAVEN - The Lions of Winter Haven file into the clubhouse wearing yellow vests, blanketed with flair collected over decades of community service, and take their folding chairs. They're ready to sing. The song leader kicks it off, his wife at the piano, and they do it with gusto. As it has been at their Friday luncheons for more than 50 years, the highlight of song time is a tune called, "I want to wake up in the morning where the orange blossoms grow." It is their theme song. It's in their songbook, and it's honored with a framed printing on the clubhouse wall. The music is getting renewed attention, now that there is a push to make a new version of it into the state song. Floridians who were in grade school in the 1950s and '60s are again humming the catchy melody, filling in the words they remember and using the Internet to find the ones they forgot. For many, the upbeat song about orange groves is a stroll down a sunny Florida lane. But how far back does memory lane go? A look into where the music comes from reveals a song that has traveled many, many miles. At stake is a claim on a tune that has a chance of becoming Florida's new state song. The Lions got the tune from Carroll Smith II, a charter member who led the Winter Haven club's song sessions in the 1940s. With his wife, Billye-Mullins Smith, at the upright piano, Smith started the tradition of playing the song at every Friday luncheon. Over the decades, members and their winter visitors learned to play the song by ear. Billye-Mullins believes that as Lions flowed in and out of the Winter Haven club from the far corners of Florida, the Northeast and the Midwest, they took the song with them. Maybe, she says, that's how folks came to learn and sing other versions of it. In New Hampshire, it's a song about purple lilacs. In West Virginia, it's about rhododendrons. Meanwhile, the Winter Haven club kept singing the Florida song's single verse, about sun and songbirds and orange blossoms - even after Carroll Smith died in 1969. Eventually, members wanted to include it in their songbook. They approached Billye-Mullins and asked her to copyright it. She agreed and was awarded a copyright by the Library of Congress in 1993. The sole distributor of the sheet music, along with a CD that Billye-Mullins recorded with her grandson, is Till Office Equipment in Winter Haven. "I want to wake up in the morning where the orange blossoms grow" is a combination of her late husband's lyrics and her musical arrangement, said Billye-Mullins, who at 87 teaches piano to a full schedule of students out of her home in Winter Haven. It's a creation of theirs and theirs alone, she says. Teachers Start Class With Song The song is perfect for singing by little Floridians, too. That has been the reasoning of schoolteachers over at least two generations. In 1955, Linda Cope Oliver learned it from her first-grade teacher at Central Elementary in West Palm Beach. She remembers that every day, Miss Julia Todd walked to school with a hibiscus in her hair and started the morning with the song about orange blossoms. Twenty years later, Oliver visited her old classroom. Todd was still imprinting it in the young minds of her students. Now, Oliver sings it with her own kindergarten class every morning at Coral Sunset Elementary in Boca Raton. Oliver, 57, plays the autoharp and her kids belt out the happy song. They call it "The Florida Song," and the lyrics include the lines "I like the fresh air and the sunshine/They're so good for us, you know!" She's taught the song to 20 classes. She never saw any of it written down. Neither did Patty Swann, a retired elementary school teacher in Sanford who is a past president of the local historical society and now an employee of the Sanford Museum. Without any written music, she sang it for her third-graders, starting in 1967. "Every once in a while, I'd have a music teacher who would say, 'I know that!' and she'd play it at the piano," Swann said. She used it in student performances as well. She wanted her students to know it, as a piece of Florida history. Years later, after she finished teaching and was reviewing potential Florida history textbooks, she saw the song in writing for the first time. It was called "Where the Orange Blossoms Grow." The credit line read "Traditional." Replacing 'Swanee River' One of the children who soaked up the song was Mary Lynn Ulrey in Dade City in the 1950s. It came to mind again when she read reports that lawmakers, with the support of new Gov. Charlie Crist, wanted to replace Florida's state anthem - an 1851 song widely known as "Swanee River" that harkens back to the state's plantation era. She and her husband, Temple Terrace Elementary School music teacher Stephen Ulrey, set about putting the song she remembered to paper. Not finding any written music, they picked out the tune note by note, and Stephen added two new verses. The goal was to reflect the sunniest side of Florida. The new words are an ode to tarpon, Everglades, gators and live oaks. He called it the "Orange Blossom Song," recorded it with the voices of his students, began distributing it to lawmakers, and The Tampa Tribune wrote about it. Soon, those who knew of a pianist in Winter Haven spoke up for her. Smiths' Version Similar To 1917 Tune Billye-Mullins Smith teaches her students on two grand pianos in her front room. A block off Lake Elbert, the driveway was designed for Model T Fords, and lush, pink bougainvilleas are the backdrop. A native of Fort Worth, Smith came here straight from music training in New York as a bride in 1944. Ironically, the song she and her husband performed for the Lions Club spread by ear just as Smith was inventing a style of learning and reading music that shuns playing from memory. Based in math, the system she calls Opus 1 emphasizes structure and encourages students to understand how music is built, so they can improvise and write on their own. And just as she and her husband wrote their song, Smith says Ulrey should write his own candidate for state song. "It has to be on his part, to back up and write something original," Smith said. She won't say whether she'll formally challenge Ulrey if he presses his version. She says she does not want to get involved in a hassle over a song she has fond feelings for. In Ulrey's mind, the story has since become more complicated and more straightforward at the same time. He looked further back in time and found a song from 1917 that is similar to the Smiths' classic. Its title is "Where the Morning Glories Grow," and it was written by Gus Kahn and Raymond Egan, along with Richard A. Whiting, a Hollywood composer who wrote film scores and collaborated on dozens of hit songs - including "Ain't We Got Fun." "Where the Morning Glories Grow" became so popular that Bing Crosby recorded it and sang it on "The Tonight Show" in 1976. The melody is similar to the Smiths' song; the lyrics of its chorus are nearly the same as the solo verse of the Smiths' song, Ulrey pointed out. Smith maintains she and her husband didn't borrow from any other work. The copyright on the Whiting song has expired. Whether Ulrey is borrowing from Whiting or from the Smiths is key to his own quest for a copyright. Whiting's song is considered to exist in the public domain. The Smiths' song is not. Toward that end, Ulrey said he's trying to get in touch with Smith and to negotiate an agreement. Meanwhile, lawmakers have announced a statewide search for a new song. And independently of each other, Smith and Ulrey last week had the same thought. Maybe, each said, they would write something new - from scratch. Researcher Michael Messano contributed to this report. Reporter Gretchen Parker can be reached at (813) 259-7562 or gparker@tampatrib.com. Keyword: State Song, to hear audio and read about the current official song, "Old Folks At Home." Keyword: State Song, to hear audio and read about the current official song, "Old Folks At Home." Article text posted by Joe Offer
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