Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo?

Sheet music cover for a 1924 Irving Mills song

From Porter Grainger's World War One song, discussed in the previous post, we move to another song rooted in the Great War.

 "Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo" (also known as "Whatever Happened to the Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo?") was published by Jack Mills Music in 1924, six years after the end of the "Great War." It is based on a very popular WWI song, "Mademoiselles from Armentieres" that was sung by British soldiers as they marched towards battle. "Mademoiselles" was itself based on a song popular with troops during the Boer War in the 1880s. These songs were in the public domain.

While "Mademoiselles from Armentieres" had its popularizers, the marching song was far too blue for public performance back home. The troops would improvise verses while on the march; sex and the dark humor of war dominated the lyrics.

A typical, mild version of the lyric went like this:

Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlez vous
Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlez vous
Mademoiselle from Armentieres
She hasn't been kissed in forty years
Hinky dinky parlez vous

For the 1924 release, Irving Mills got together with Al Dubin (posthumously inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 1970), Jimmie McHugh (also inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1970, a year after he died), and Irwin Dash (not much is known about Dash, but under the name Fred Heatherton he later wrote "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts"). The sheet music cover boasted "With twenty new choruses!" From reading the lyric, one gets the impression that many ex-soldiers actually missed the war (or maybe the writers were being sarcastic?):

What has become of the Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo
What has become of all the happy times you knew
I'll bet there are lots of married men
Who wish they were back in the army again
Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo

The lyrics - devised for a popular audience - could be fodder for researchers into social attitudes of the time. For instance, both Uncle Tom and the devout and devoted Eliza (or Liza) were the central black characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin:

What has become of Uncle Tom and Liza too
Up in his cabin on the hill
I hear his daughter is running a still

"Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo" opens with the verse:

Do you ever think of the time
When all the boys went 'cross the sea
To the land of Wee Wee Wee,
Where they strolled with sweet Marie,
Then the boys came back with a song 'bout
"Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo"
If you don't recall the song at all
I'll sing it over for you (shout) Say!

I wonder how well this sheet music sold? You can read the "twenty new choruses" here (clicking should enlarge):

When Our Brown Skin' Soldier Boys Come Home From War

Sheet music cover for a 1919 Porter Grainger song

This is the oldest sheet music by Porter Grainger that I have found. Dated 1919, Grainger would have been about twenty-seven. It is a patriotic song of soldiers returning home after World War I.

Let's go down to the station, people,
Our boys come home today
With great honors won in a grand and noble fray.
Do join us,
There'll be great politicians waiting,
Taxis all in a row.
See Old Glory!
Waving as down the streets they go.

In an era that gave rise to such patriotic favourites as "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," "Over There," "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," and "When the Boys Come Home," there cannot have been many that celebrated the contributions of black soldiers to the WWI United States war effort. (The armed forces did not integrate until 1944, twenty-five years later.) And considering that this was still a year away from the first black blues recording, it is probably a wonder that the sheet music was published at all - that is, music companies were not yet convinced of the financial viability of marketing to an African-American population.

Kudos to Porter Grainger - one gets the feeling that he was not taking the easy route with this song.


(If you are interested in the sheet music, you can find it here)

I Went Down To SJI - in New Orleans

Photograph by Michael Ward-Bergeman

Michael Ward-Bergeman recently sent me a photograph of "I Went Down To St. James Infirmary" situated proudly on a display table in the store "Forever New Orleans." This is the only store in New Orleans in which this book can be found. I think it looks at home.