Hugo Frey (1)Reseñas

Whoever Bill Hardey was, he probably shouldn't have signed his name over to Hugo Frey.

Google searches failed to identify a Bill Hardey who was an obvious candidate to have inspired this book, and the edition I have, at least, does not explain the name. It doesn't explain anything at all. All it has is the songs.

At least, it has part of the songs. Generally as much as will fit on one page. Is there more than one page worth of music? Or multiple verses? Forget it. Who needs complete songs? "When You Wore a Tulip," for instance, has only the chorus, not the verses. Ditto Godrey Marks's "Sailing, Sailing (over the Bounding Main)." And "Where Did You Get That Hat?" And many others -- probably more than I can identify, because there are a lot of songs in here that I don't know.

To top it all off, not all the songs are from the 1890s! E.g. "Singin' In The Rain" (another song with just the chorus) is from 1929 -- as the copyright notice at the bottom of the page explicitly notes. On the other hand, there are several Stephen Foster songs that are half a century older than the Nineties, and a few folk songs that may be older still, and everything in between.

I find myself wondering if there is another version of this book that is actually useful. (Mine is labelled the "Robbins Edition.") I have no way to know -- to give information would require, er, text, and I wasn't kidding when I said there isn't any. There is a title page. There is a table of contents on the back of the title page. Then it goes into the songs -- just over a hundred of them. After the last song, you get a blank inside back cover. That's it.

As a reminder of interesting old songs, this might have some slight value. But if you really want a reliable song source, you truly need something else.

Collected "cowboy" songs. It is treasure -- three-staves with base, treble, and melody.

As I played through these pieces, a thought occurred to me: Most of the cowboys of the West were black men. Most of them sang, and they developed the banjo to carry with them on horseback. A great example of a black song is "Git Along, Little Dogies" -- no white man came up with "Whoo-pee Ti Yi Yo".

Includes, "Yellow Rose of Texas" -- a Negro spiritual adapted for a white audience/singers ["She's the sweetest rose of color"]. Compare, the "I've been wukkin' on de Railroad" the dialect included here, which in various versions shifted to become an anthem for Irish hobos and other working peoples.