MY GRANDFATHER'S CLOCK
(Latest update on 14/05/2013)
| (Henry Clay Work) | ||
| (o): | Emile Berliner (1886) | label: Berliner Grammophon |
| Hardly audible one-sided disc made out of gutta-percha (pre shellac). There's an illustration and a fragment on the Berliner 12,5 cm Records online Catalogue. The song was introduced by Sam Lucas who, just like the author, was from Hartford, Connecticut. Sam was a black entertainer and actor, ending up as the star of Uncle Tom's Cabin, both the theatre production and the film (in 1915) of Harriet Beecher-Stowe's bestseller. Author Henry Clay Work (1832-1884) was an active abolitionist. His home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. His most famous composition during his lifetime was Marching Through Georgia (1865), immortalizing General Sherman's most glorious campaign during the Civil War. Work's most enduring composition (written in 1876) was this trivial story of an old clock that stopped ticking the day the owner died, like any clock would that needs a dayly wind-up. The wonder of the song's enduring capacities is in the opening lines: the clock "was bought on the morn of the day that he was born". Never underestimate low culture, for this might actually have been a real story, far away from where Henry Work was living, about a standing clock in a public house in Piercebridge near Darlington, north Yorkshire (England). Had been standing there for exactly as long as both innkeeping brothers lived, and the day the surviving one died, his clock broke up. That very same (mute) clock still stands on that very same spot: The George Hotel in Piercebridge. Any customer complaining why that clock ain't working gets a brochure with a link to this song. Sure enough, there's a picture of the clock on their site. | ||
| (c): | Haydn Quartet (1905) [for Victor], George Formby Sr. (1915) [parody released in 1924 (on Zonophone); father of ukelele comedian George Formby Jr.], Frank Crumit (1925) , Gene Krupa (1938) , Max van Praag (1948) [as Grootvaders Klok], Bob Scholte (1954) [idem], Johnny Cash (1959) , Lawrence Welk (1960) [n°1 US as B-side of Calcutta], Sam Cooke (1960) , Everly Brothers (1961) , Doc Watson (1964) , Shadows (1966) , Strangers (1968) [as Ballade Van Bonpa], Seldom Scene (1975) , Barron Knights (1984) , Grandpa Jones (1998) , John McEuen & Jim Ibbotson (1999) , Arizona Snake Revue (2001) , | |
| The Andante at the end of van Beethoven's ballet Creatures Of Prometeus sounds like My Grandfather's Clock's opening lines. | ||