"Guts, glee, and glue"

COREY FORD

Presenting some samples of a new and native American folk-song that flourishes in the deserts of commerce

"Yes, ma'am, that's the cleaner,

Yes, ma'am, the name's Regina,

Oh boy, it's the cleaner now. . .

—To the tune of "Yes, Sir, She's My Baby"; from Page ten, Official Song Book of the Regina Vacuum Cleaner Corporation, ig32 Edition.

In America, we are told, the native folksong is no more. The cowboys have departed from the West with their sagebrush ballads and laments; the modern sailor spins no briny chanties about our up-to-date iron boats; the tramps of today do not hymn the trials of the concrete road for the benefit of some future collection by George Milburn or Charles .1. Finger. No longer do the pioneers cross the continent in covered wagons with their banjoes on their knees, composing colorful ballads about the trip, to he gathered together later in an anthology of Americana by Carl Sandburg or Sigmund Spaeth. The Southern Negro, alas, has abandoned his plantation spirituals for the more transient hot-ballads of Harlem. Even those rambunctious and bawdy saloon songs like Frankie and Johnnie or The Harlot of Jerusalem have degenerated and disappeared under the softening influence of the more co-educational speakeasy. The frontier sagas, the barrackroom epics, the rhymed legends of American mountain and plain have departed, so they tell us, along with the horsecar, the velour hat, and the yellow button shoe.

So they tell us. Fortunately for not, as you prefer) this challenge is not true. The death of our native song, it seems, is greatly exaggerated. On the contrary, the American tonsil has never warbled with greater vigor, the anonymous ballad-writers of our nation have never recorded their epoch with more admirable zeal. Far from languishing in anthologies and sentimental revivals of the Nineties, a new and vigorous form of American folkballad is flourishing at the moment in our very midst; and it is for the benefit of some future Spaeth or Sandburg, seeking fifty years hence to collect data on our present day and age, that I have ventured to overturn the bushel and disclose the light of this new and flourishing folk-song that exists in the field of commerce today.

For it is among the Rotary Songs, the Pep Songs, the Get-Together Songs, the Go-Getter Songs of our leading business institutions that we find the humble chanties of our modern America. Like their pioneer forebears, the enthusiastic traveling salesmen who set out on the road with their sample cases of Fuller brushes, their electric ice-box catalogues, or their specimen vacuum-cleaners, gradually have evolved a native balladry of their own. The salesgirls in the department stores, the subscription salesmen of our magazines, even the advertising or insurance representatives who make their weary rounds from door to door, all have their own songs of their profession, their own verses to the tune of Smiles. their own chanties celebrating the trials and misfortunes of their respective careers. The cowboy and the sailor have ceased to sing of their trades; hut the traveling salesman, with his briefcase and his order-blank, has taken their place as the new historian of the American scene.

For example, there is before me as I write a small blue book bearing the cryptic title Songs of Regina. The subtitle is The Official Song Book of the Regina Vacuum Cleaner Corporation, ig32 Edition, and within its pages are sixty-five different Pep Songs designed to celebrate the merits of Regina Vacuum Cleaners, to taunt the rival salesmen who slave for other corporations, and even, if we may believe some of the words, to work the prospective purchaser into such a pitch of enthusiasm that she will join with the salesman in the last verse of the lyric. These songs, it seems, are sung every Monday night in a compulsory gathering known as a "Pep Meeting"; and the bleary-eyed salesman, staggering into the meeting hall after nine hours pounding the pavements of Flatbush or Queens, will find his weary steps growing firm, his heart pounding with new excitement, his fists clenching once more and his eye flashing with revived determination and fire as he joins with his fellow Regina salesmen in the rousing chorus of Number Forty-Eight (tune: Bye-Bye Blackbird):

"When you hear the doorbell ring,

Walk right in and everything.

Buy! Buy! Regina.

Lady meets you at the door,

Maybe she's a little sore,

Buy! Buy! Regina.

Isn't it a wonderful sensation,

When you make a perfect demonstration. Never worry, take your time.

Get her name on the dotted line.

Regina Bye Bye."

To be sure, there is one distinct point of difference between this modern American folklore and the predecessors of sea or plain. Unlike the familiar old ballads such as Blow the Man Down or Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, in which the tune was quite as distinctive and memorable as the words themselves, the burden of composition in our modern songs seems to rest entirely on the shoulders of the librettist. For their music, it appears, these gentlemen depend on the better-known radio or dance tunes, which seem to lend themselves to adaptation with an engaging lack of legal litigations or injunctions. Thus, in the Regina Songbook, we find lyrics based on practically every popular air of the past ten years, ranging from the Maine Stein Song or Tip Toe Through the Tulips all the way hack to such standbys of the concert hall as Peggy O Veil!, John Brown's Body or, in the song entitled Number Ten, that familiar old air, Smiles:

There are 'Vacs' that make a woman happy, There are 'Vacs' that make a lot of noise, There are 'Vacs' that get the dirt and ravelings And bring into the home just lots of joys, There are 'Vacs' that have revolving brushes That are always clogged with dirt and hair, But the 'Vac' that (ills their hearts with gladness,

Is REGINA so bright and fair."

It is amazing, in fact, to note with what ease the languid and sentimental lines of these old favorites may he adapted to the more commercial task of advertising the specific features of the Regina Vacuum Cleaner. I bus, in Number Twenty-Four, the dreamy cadences of Till H e Meet Again art' transformed, with scarcely the change of a word, into the effective sales-argument:

"Smile tin1 while you run Regina o'er Thc dirty rugs or high polished floor . . ."

whereas the martial air of "California, Here 1 Come' is altered, without any conspicuous change of words or even spirit, to

"Missus Prospect, here I come You'll soon hear the Regina hum, etc."

Even the old tune of Tammany, that haunting jig of our fathers, seems to adapt itself without very much wrenching of rhythm to the new and enthusiastic lyric of the Regina Salesmen (Number Fifty-One, on page 22 of your Regina Songbook) :

"ALIBIS, ALIBIS,

They won't write a check for you,

They don't mean guts, glee and glue, ALIBIS, ALIBIS,

You fool yourself but no one else with ALIBIS.

"ALIBIS, ALIBIS,

Excuses never rang the hell,

Pull your pants up, dig like hell,

ALIBIS, ALIBIS,

Are Hocus, Pocus and Bolognus ALIBIS."

Nor does our Regina Songbook overlook the elements of rivalry and competition which lie at the heart of all good business. Thus with considerable ingenuity we find the authors, on page 16, composing the friendly lyric of Number Thirty-Eight, to the tune of The Old Grey Mare which, it is stated, is to he sung "to the salesman who failed to make a sale the day before":

"Old Bill Jones*

He ain't what he used to be,

Ain't what he used to be,

Ain't what he used to he, etc."

*Substitute the name of the unfortunate salesman for Bill Jones, unless, of course, the name of the salesman already is Bill Jones.

(Continued on page 56)

(Continued from page 39)

No appreciation of this singular volume, however, would he complete without a special tribute to that super-classic of them all, Song Number Thirty-Five (on page fourteen) which is written to the air of that bawdy old war-time ditty Hinkey Dinkey Parley l oo. In this inspired lyric, which celebrates in specific details all the various advantages of the Regina Cleaner, the anonymous librettist transcends himself and even reaches certain heights of imagery which, it is safe to say, he himself probably never suspected. At the risk of usurping more space, we feel that we owe it to the reader to quote this rare epic in full. In conclusion, may we warn him in all delicacy that the lyric refers exclusively to a demonstration of a vacuum cleaner:

(.Tunc: "Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo") "Good morning, Madame, I've come today, Parley Voo

To demonstrate tlie Regina Way, Parley Voo,

If you'll let me in. and have a seat I'll show you some features that can't be beat,

Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"This fan-shaped nozzle, you comprehend, Parley Voo

Gives even suction from end to end, Parley Voo.

And the floating brush beneath it there. Will pick up the threads and lint and hair, Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"These rubber-tired wheels won't mar your floor. Parley Voo

Most cleaners have three, but we have four, Parley Voo,

You don't have to carry it like a broom .lust roll it along, from room to room, Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"Now I press my foot on the tilting latch, Parley Voo

It releases the handle, see it catch; Parley Voo

To raise the nozzle is what it's for,

You can clean small rugs on a polished floor

Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"The bag opens at the top, you see, Parley Voo

Permits emptying it quite readily, Parley Voo

You shake no dust into the air.

To settle upon your clothes and hair, Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"That's just another of our patented ways, Parley Voo

To take the labor from your cleaning days, Parley Voo

And now for the other cleaning you do, For your over-stuffed set and mattresses too.

Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"This suction attachment does it in a jiffy, Parley Voo

I think you'll admit it's certainly spiffy. Parley Voo

And it cleans your drapes and keeps them

There's a hundred things that it will do, Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"Frankly, Madame, for an excellent cleaner, Parley Voo,

Could you really ask for anything keener. Parley Voo?

You can have one too an easy way.

You just pay sixteen cents a day,

Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo.

"Oh! You want it? Say, that's fine, Parley Voo

.lust write your name upon the line. Parley Voo,

A dandy bargain, you have got Good-bye, Madame, and thanks a lot. Hinkey Dinkey Parley Voo."