Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: rich-joy
Date: 02 Aug 20 - 07:42 PM

Crikey! I too learnt this at my West Aussie primary school in 1962, but only as a poem. So THIS is what it sounds like???!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-mQoB0egyM

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Aug 20 - 07:25 PM

I am now 71 and I rememberin senior school using this as a form of elocution, with the pronunciation. Didn,t know it wzs a shanty. We sang it at Bath Diocesan Girls School 8n the 1960s !

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: GUEST,Elda Munguia
Date: 18 May 20 - 04:23 PM

Oh my I sang this song in 5th grade at Sam Houston Elementary School in Edinburg, Texas. Mrs. Mitchell was our music teacher and would play the piano beautifully. We would have a music program on Friday and some of us would play the piano, the autoharp, or just sing. wow, what wonderful memories and a terrific childhood, filled with music and laughter.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 02:51 PM

We had this song in a collection of Hoagy Carmichael songs when my children were growing up.
I also think I heard Hoagy Carmichael play and sing this at a school assembly at the Fitler School in the Germantown section of Philadelphia in the early 1940's.
Martha Parker Brons

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Apr 16 - 11:46 PM

I found the lyrics here (click). The Website is called "Sandy Kaye Sings." She doesn't know the songwriter name (but we do), but she does have a nice recording of herself singing this song. Take a listen.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: GUEST,adhist
Date: 03 Apr 16 - 09:17 PM

I remember this song from my 4th grade music class at Warner Elementary in Cleveland, in 1963! It was the first time I ever heard of Hoagy Carmichael -- just heard Stardust on the radio and I started thinking about him, and this song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: GUEST,camd
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 04:49 PM

We sang this song in 1950 at South Side School in Ft. Lauderdale.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 04 - 09:10 PM

A different song, "The Whale," called an "old sea chantey," is found in the Silver Furdett Co. Music for Living series, "In Our Country," Book Five, James L. Mursell et al., 1952. It is not a work chantey, but a brief story of striking a whale, the boat capsizing and four men drowned. It seems to be a variant of "The Greenland Whale Fishery."

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Note: The Silver Burdett text is the first five verses of the song identified as Greenland Fisheries in the Digital Tradition. The DT does not identify its source.
-Joe Offer.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Whale Song (Carmichael)
From: Barbara
Date: 23 Jul 04 - 05:37 PM

Thank you!
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: Lyr Add: THE WHALE SONG (Dearmer/Carmichael)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 04 - 02:27 PM

THE WHALE SONG
Geoffrey Dearmer; music Hoagy Carmichael

Wouldn't you like to be a whale and sail serenely by,-
An eighty-foot whale from your tip to your tail
and a tiny briny eye?-
Wouldn't you like to wallow,
Where nobody says, "Come out!"?-
Wouldn't you love to swallow-
And blow all the brine about?-

Wouldn't you like to be so clean
And never have to wash, I mean,
Wouldn't you love to spout?
Oh yes, just think!
A feather of spray, Sailing away,
Rising and sinking and sinking and rising,
And blowing the brine about?

McConathy et al. New Music Horizons, Fifth Book. Silver Burdett Co., 1946, 1953.

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