This blog is dedicated to the amateur or beginner musician with music written in a simple and easy to read Alpha Notes format and with Chords for the left hand. This is to assist those with little or hardly at all note reading skills. This is a blog that shows all the chords in Alpha Notes format too which you can find the notes for the chords in one of the blogs. Please feel free to leave a comment or any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy!
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is a song written in 1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. Frank Sinatra later recorded a version with modified lyrics. In 2007, ASCAP ranked it the third most performed Christmas song during the preceding five years that had been written by ASCAP members. In 2004 it finished at No. 76 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs rankings of the top tunes in North American cinema.
The song was written in 1943 for the film Meet Me in St. Louis, for which MGM had hired Martin and Blane to write several songs. Martin was vacationing in a house in the neighborhood of Southside in Birmingham, Alabama, that his father Hugh Martin had designed for his mother as a honeymoon cottage, located just down the street from his birthplace, and which later became the home of Martin and his family in 1923. The song first appeared in a scene in which a family is distraught by the father's plans to move to New York City for a job promotion, leaving behind their beloved home in St. Louis, Missouri, just before the long-anticipated 1904 World's Fair begins. In a scene set on Christmas Eve, Judy Garland's character, Esther, sings the song to cheer up her despondent five-year-old sister, Tootie, played by Margaret O'Brie.
Some of the original lyrics penned by Martin were rejected before filming began. When presented with the original draft lyric, Garland, her co-star Tom Drake and director Vincente Minnelli criticized the song as depressing, and asked Martin to change the lyrics. Though he initially resisted, Martin made several changes to make the song more upbeat. For example, the lines "It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past" became "Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight". Garland's version of the song, which was also released as a single by Decca Records, became popular among United States troops serving in World War II; her performance at the Hollywood Canteen brought many soldiers to tears.
In 1957, when Frank Sinatra approached Martin to record the song, he asked him to revise the lyrics to promote more positive themes; he particularly pointed out the line "until then we'll have to muddle through somehow," saying "the name of my album is A Jolly Christmas. Do you think you could jolly up that line for me?" Martin's revised lyric was "hang a shining star upon the highest bough." Martin made several other alterations, changing from the future tense to the present, so that the song's focus is a celebration of present happiness rather than anticipation of a better future.However, Sinatra had recorded the original song's lyrics in 1948.) On The Judy Garland Show Christmas Special, Garland sang the song to her children Joey and Lorna Luft with Sinatra's revised lyrics.
In 2001, Martin, occasionally active as a pianist with religious ministries since the 1980s, wrote an entirely new set of lyrics to the song with John Fricke, "Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas," a religious version of the secular Christmas standard. The song was recorded by female gospel vocalist Del Delker with Martin accompanying her on piano.
In a 2002 interview, NewSong lead singer Michael O'Brien claimed that the line "through the years, we all will be together if the Lord allows," was part of the original song but was purged and replaced with "if the fates allow" to remove religious reference when the song was released. O'Brien stated that while a pastor in a California church in 1990, he had met Martin, who played piano at the church where O'Brien was serving for an evening, and the pastor was told, "That's the original way I wrote it, so I want you to sing it this way."
Although Ralph Blane is credited with writing the music for many of Martin's songs, Martin claimed in his autobiography that he wrote both music and lyrics to all of the songs in Meet Me in St. Louis and that "all of the so-called Martin and Blane songs (except for Best Foot Forward) were written entirely by me (solo) without help from Ralph or anybody else." His explanation for allowing Blane equal credit for the songs was: "I was reasonably content to let him receive equal screen credit, sheet music credit, ASCAP royalties, etc., mainly because this bizarre situation was caused by my naive and atrocious lack of business acumen."
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Lyrics:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas Let your heart be light Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas Make the Yuletide gay Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again, as in olden days Happy golden days of yore Faithful friends who are dear to us Will be near to us once more
Someday soon, we all will be together If the fates allow Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
The earliest printing of the song is from 1852, when the lyrics were published with similar lyrics to those used today, but with a very different tune. It was reprinted again two years later with the same lyrics and another tune. The modern tune was first recorded with the lyrics in 1881, mentioning Eliphalet Oram Lyte in The Franklin Square Song Collection but not making it clear whether he was the composer or adapter.
People often add additional verses, a form of children's street culture, with the intent of either extending the song or (especially in the case of more irreverent versions) to make it funny, parody it, or substitute another sensibility for the perceived innocent one of the original. Don Music, a Muppet character in Sesame Street, changed the lyrics to feature a car instead of a boat.
Versions include:
Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream. If you see a crocodile, Don't forget to scream.
Row, row, row your boat Underneath the stream. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, fooled you! I'm a submarine.
Row, row, row your boat Gently to the shore. If you see a lion there, Don’t forget to roar.
Row, row, row your boat Gently around the bath. If you see a large giraffe, Don’t forget to laugh.
Row, row, row your boat Gently down the river. If you see a polar bear, Don’t forget to shiver.
Row, row, row your punt Gently down the stream. Belts off, trousers down! Isn’t life a scream?
Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream. Throw your teacher overboard, And listen to her scream.
Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream. Try to make it back to shore, Before your boat sinks.
Row, row, row your boat Gently down the creek. If your boat fills with water, Then you've got a leak.
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Rock o' my soul in de bosom of Abraham, Rock o' my soul in de bosom of Abraham, Rock o' my soul in de bosom of Abraham, Lord, Rock o' my soul. (King Jesus)
Alvin Ailey made "Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham" the music for the triumphant finale of his internationally known choreography Revelations, which was born out of the choreographer's "blood memories" of his childhood in rural Texas and attending the Baptist Church with his mother. It was also performed as a tribute at his 1989 funeral at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Israeli dancer and choreographer Nadav Zelner used "Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham" as music for a clip for his student dance troupe.
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The rhyme exists in several versions. One modern example, quoted by the National Literacy Trust, has these words:
Rock a bye baby on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, And down will come baby, cradle and all.
The rhyme is believed to have first appeared in print in Mother Goose's Melody (London c. 1765), possibly published by John Newbery, and which was reprinted in Boston in 1785. No copies of the first edition are extant, but a 1791 edition has the following words:
Hush-a-by baby on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, Down tumbles baby, cradle and all.
The rhyme is followed by a note: "This may serve as a warning to the proud and ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last."
James Orchard Halliwell, in his The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842), notes that the third line read "When the wind ceases the cradle will fall" in the earlier Gammer Gurton's Garland (1784) and himself records "When the bough bends" in the second line and "Down will come baby, bough, cradle and all" as the fourth.Modern versions often alter the opening words to "Rock-a-bye, baby", a phrase that was first recorded in Benjamin Tabart's Songs for the Nursery (London, 1805).
The scholars Iona and Peter Opie note that the age of the words is uncertain, and that "imaginations have been stretched to give the rhyme significance". They list a variety of claims that have been made, without endorsing any of them:
that the first line is a corruption of the French "He bas! là le loup!" (Hush! There's the wolf!)
that it was written by an English Mayflower colonist who observed the way Native American women rocked their babies in birch-bark cradles, suspended from the branches of trees
that it lampoons the British royal line in the time of James II.
In Derbyshire, England, one local legend has it that the song relates to a local character in the late 18th century, Betty Kenny (Kate Kenyon), who lived in a huge yew tree in Shining Cliff Woods in the Derwent Valley, where a hollowed-out bough served as a cradle.
A later Mormon speculation was that the words "may simply have been suggested by the swaying and soothing motion of the topmost branches of the trees, although…another authority is that Rock-a-bye baby and Bye baby bunting come to us from the Indians, as they had a custom of cradling their pappooses among the swaying branches."
The rhyme is generally sung to one of two tunes. The only one mentioned by the Opies in The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes (1951) is a variant of Henry Purcell's 1686 quickstepLillibullero, but others were once popular in North America.
An 1887 editorial in Boston's The Musical Herald mentions "Rock-a-bye-baby" as being part of the street band repertoire, while in that same year The Times carried an advertisement for a performance in London by the Moore and Burgess Minstrels, featuring among others "the great American song of ROCK-A-BYE". Newspapers of the period credited the tune to two separate persons, both resident in Boston. One was Effie D. Canning, who in 1872 wrote an original composition using the lullaby as a returning refrain after each of its three verses. This, however, was not published until "probably 1884" under the pseudonym Effie I. Canning. The other candidate was Charles Dupee Blake (1847-1903), a prolific composer of popular music, of which "his best known work is Rock-a-Bye Baby".
It is difficult to say which one of the many contemporary songs bearing that title and of varied authorship was really the subject of the news reports. The one reproduced under that title in Clara L. Mateaux's Through Picture Land (1876) is a two-stanza work that is different in wording and form. Another in St Nicholas Magazine for 1881 and ascribed to M. E. Wilkins begins with the words of the traditional lullaby, which are then followed by fourteen stanzas of more varied form. Still another appears in the Franklin Square Song Collection for 1885 under the title "American Cradle Song" in a version by R. J. Burdette. More lullabies followed in much the same format, including variations on the completely separate song "Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green" (Opie #23), until the ultimate transformation into Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody from the musical Sinbad of 1918.
In 1874 the sculptor Jules Dalou exhibited a terracotta statuette titled "Hush-a-bye Baby" at that year's Royal Academy exhibition. This portrayed a singing mother cradling her baby and seated in a rocking chair, with the rhyme’s first two lines quoted on the base. A commission followed in 1875 to carve the composition in marble.
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"Ring a Ring o' Roses", "Ring a Ring o' Rosie", or (in the United States) "Ring Around the Rosie", is anursery rhyme,folk songandplaygroundsinging game. Descriptions first emerge in the mid-19th century, but are reported as dating from decades before, and similar rhymes are known from across Europe, with various lyrics. It has aRoud Folk Song Indexnumber of 7925.
The origin of the song is unknown. There is no evidence for the popular 20th-century interpretation which relates it to the Great Plague, or earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague, in England.
It is unknown what the earliest wording of the rhyme was or when it began. Many versions of the game have a group of children form a ring, dance in a circle around a person, and stoop or curtsy with the final line. The slowest child to do so is faced with a penalty or becomes the "rosie" (literally: rose tree, from the French rosier) and takes their place in the center of the ring.
Common British versions include:
Ring-a-ring o' roses, A pocket full of posies. A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down!
Common American versions include:
Ring around the rosie, A pocket full of posies. Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!
Some versions replace the third line with "Red Bird Blue Bird", "Green Grass-Yellow Grass" or substitute as ending "Sweet bread, rye bread,/ Squat!" Godey's Lady's Book (1882) explains what happens here, giving the variation as "One, two, three—squat!" Before the last line, the children stop suddenly, then exclaim it together, "suiting the action to the word with unfailing hilarity and complete satisfaction".
An Indian version ends with: "Husha busha! / We all fall down!"
Variations, corruptions, and vulgarized versions were noted to be in use long before the earliest printed publications. One such variation was dated to be in use in Connecticut in the 1840s. A novel of 1855, The Old Homestead by Ann S. Stephens, records the variation
A ring – a ring of roses, Laps full of posies; Awake – awake! Now come and make A ring – a ring of roses.
Another early record of the rhyme was in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes (1881):
Ring-a-ring-a-roses, A pocket full of posies; Hush! hush! hush! hush! We're all tumbled down.
In his Games and Songs of American Children (1883), William Wells Newell reports several variants, one of which he provides with a melody and dates to New Bedford, Massachusetts around 1790:
Ring a ring a Rosie, A bottle full of posie, All the girls in our town Ring for little Josie.
Newell writes that "[a]t the end of the words the children suddenly stoop, and the last to get down undergoes some penalty, or has to take the place of the child in the centre, who represents the 'rosie' (rose-tree; French, rosier)." A different penalty was recorded in an 1846 article from the Brooklyn Eagle describing the game named Ring o' Roses. A group of young children form a ring, from which a boy takes out a girl and kisses her.
An 1883 collection of Shropshire folk-lore includes the following version:
A ring, a ring o' roses, A pocket-full o' posies; One for Jack and one for Jim and one for little Moses! A-tisha! a-tisha! a-tisha!
On the last line "they stand and imitate sneezing". In their Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes the Opies record similar variations over time.
A German rhyme first printed in 1796 closely resembles "Ring a ring o' roses" in its first stanzaand accompanies the same actions (with sitting rather than falling as the concluding action):
Ringel ringel reihen, Wir sind der Kinder dreien, Sitzen unter'm Hollerbusch Und machen alle Husch husch husch!
Loosely translated this says: "Round about in rings / We children three/ Sit beneath an elderbush / And 'Shoo, shoo, shoo' go we!" The rhyme (as in the popular collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn) is well known in Germany and has many local variants.
Another German version runs:
Ringel, Ringel, Rosen, Schöne Aprikosen, Veilchen blau, Vergissmeinnicht, Alle Kinder setzen sich!
In translation: "A ring, a ring o' roses,/ Lovely apricots,/ Violets blue, forget-me-nots,/ Sit down, children all!"
Swiss versions have the children dancing round a rosebush. Other European singing games with a strong resemblance include "Roze, roze, meie" ("Rose, rose, May") from The Netherlands with a similar tune to "Ring a ring o' roses" and "Gira, gira rosa" ("Circle, circle, rose"), recorded in Venice in 1874, in which girls danced around the girl in the middle who skipped and curtsied as demanded by the verses and at the end kissed the one she liked best, so choosing her for the middle.
Evidence of similar children's round-dances appears in continental paintings. For example, Hans Thoma's Kinderreigen (children dancing in a ring) of 1872 takes place in an Alpine meadow, while his later version of the game has the children dancing round a tree. The Florentine Raffaello Sorbi transported the scene to the Renaissance in his 1877 Girotondo (Round-dance), in which young maidens circle a child at the center to an instrumental accompaniment.
The words to which these children danced are not referred to, but their opening is quoted by the English artists who pictured similar scenes in the 19th century. In Thomas Webster's "Ring o' Roses" of about 1850 the children dance to the music of a seated clarinetist, while in Frederick Morgan's "Ring a Ring of Roses" (the title under which it was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1885) the children dance around a tree. Two other artists connected with the Newlyn School also depicted the game: Elizabeth Adela Forbes in 1880 and Harold Harvey later.
The origins and meanings of the game have long been unknown and subject to speculation. Folklore scholars regard the popular Great Plague explanation, common since the mid-20th century, as baseless.
In 1898, A Dictionary of British Folklore considered the game to be of pagan origin, based on the Sheffield Glossary comparison of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, relating it to pagan myths and citing a passage which reads "Gifted children of fortune have the power to laugh roses, as Freyja wept gold." It claimed the first instance to be indicative of pagan beings of light. Another suggestion is more literal, that it was making a "ring" around the roses and bowing with the "all fall down" as a curtsy. In 1892, the American writer, Eugene Field wrote a poem titled Teeny-Weeny that specifically referred to fay folk playing ring-a-rosie.
According to Games and Songs of American Children, published in 1883, the "rosie" was a reference to the French word for rose tree and the children would dance and stoop to the person in the center. Variations, especially more literal ones, were identified and noted with the literal falling down that would sever the connections to the game-rhyme. Again in 1898, sneezing was then noted to be indicative of many superstitious and supernatural beliefs across differing cultures.
Since the Second World War, the rhyme has often been associated with the Great Plague which happened in England in 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of the bubonic plague in England. Interpreters of the rhyme before World War II make no mention of this; by 1951, however, it seems to have become well established as an explanation for the form of the rhyme that had become standard in the United Kingdom. Peter and Iona Opie, the leading authorities on nursery rhymes, remarked:
The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and "all fall down" was exactly what happened.
The line Ashes, Ashes in colonial versions of the rhyme is claimed to refer variously to cremation of the bodies, the burning of victims' houses, or blackening of their skin, and the theory has been adapted to be applied to other versions of the rhyme.
In its various forms, the interpretation has entered into popular culture and has been used elsewhere to make oblique reference to the plague. In 1949, a parodist composed a version alluding to radiation sickness:
In March 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the traditional rhyme was jokingly proposed as the "ideal choice" of song to accompany hand-washing in order to ward off infection.
Folklore scholars regard the Great Plague explanation of the rhyme as baseless:
The plague explanation did not appear until the mid-twentieth century.
The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague.
The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme.
European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.
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