American Music 1850-1870. David L. Downing - Free and Easy (1861) | Текст песни и Аккорды

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• American Music 1850-1870. David L. Downing
• Free and Easy (1861)

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"Free and Easy" (Band). A cornet medley arranged by David L. Downing (ca. 1861).

From the manuscript band books of the Manchester Cornet Band (founded in 1854), second set, no. 82.

The medley consists of six tunes, which are identified in the first E-flat soprano part: "Free and Easy," "Neapolitan," "Get Out of the Wilderness," "Wake Up Mose," "Good Bye," and "Crow Out Shanghai."

"Free and Easy" must have been a tune so well known in 1861 that almost everyone could be expected to recognize it. Such an assertion would not be made merely on the evidence of Downing's medley. The clue to its familiarity is as striking as the contemporary sources for the tune were elusive. In a two-page panorama entitled "The Songs of War," which Winslow Homer designed for the November 23, 1861, issue of Harper's Weekly, six of the seven titles are still familiar. The seventh is "We'll be free and easy still," and the accompanying illustration depicts the imbibing of stong spirits and its possible consequences. In Homer's design it is followed directly, and probably not accidentally, by the "Rogue's March."

The source for the tune appears to have been the chorus of "'Gay and Happy.' Composed and sung by Miss Fanny Forrest (with unbounded applause)" (Baltimore: Henry McCaffrey [1860]). The words inspired a variety of parodies, including one by Miss Forrest herself, in which the opening line, "I'm the happy girl that's gay and happy," becomes "I'm the girl that's free and easy." In 1862, the original text of "Gay and Happy" was printed together with another parody entitled "Free and Easy" in The Camp-fire Songster (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald). This version, or one similar to it, was almost certainly what Winslow Homer had in mind:

I'm the lad that's free and easy,
Wheresoe'er I chance to be;
And I'll do my best to please ye,
If you will but list to me.

Chorus.--So let the world jog along as it will,
I'll be free and easy still.

Some there are who meet their troubles,
Others drown their cares in drink, etc.

But Downing might have had a more patriotic parody in mind. A Library Company of Philadelphia catalog (Edwin Wolf II, American Songsheets, Slip Ballads and Poetical Broadsides, 1850-1870. A Catalogue of the Collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia. [Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1963]) lists a broadside under the title "Free and Easy of Our Union.--Listen to the cannons roaring." Whatever his source, Downing's treatment of this tune seems itself to be quite free and easy.

"Neapolitan," which lives up to its title, was not an Italian song but the composition of George Alexander Lee (1802-51), an English composer and singer. The earliest American edition is "I Am Dreaming of Thee. Napolitaine." (Louisville: Peters, Webb & Co. [1850]).

"Get Out of the Wilderness" seems to have been associated for a time with "Dixie," since they apear together in several publications (e.g., Paul Jones, arr., Get Out of the Wilderness and Dixey's Land. Two popular airs as played by Capt. A. Menter and his American Cornet Band [Cincinnati: John Church, Jr., 1860]). The listener will be struck by the second strain of Downing's arrangement, which adheres rather closely to most known versions of the tune. For us, it is the familiar "Old Grey Mare," of which there appear to have been at least two "Wilderness" text variants: "First Little Lady in the Wilderness" (see Irwin Silber. Songs of the Civil War. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1960]. Downing's highly syncopated treatment is interesting, as it foreshadows the cake-walk and ragtime rhythms that appear more than three decades later.

The words to "Wake Up Mose&