Dominic Vautier
11/2006
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Henry Armstrong and Richard Gerard wrote the song Sweet Adeline in 1903 but they couldn’t get anybody to publish it. At first, they called the song Sweet Rosalie. Unfortunately a lot of other Rosalie type songs were on the market, but they were still undeterred. Nevertheless Sweet Rosalie laid around for seven years gathering dust. Gerard was just about ready to give up when he learned that his friend, Fred Rycroft, needed a good quartet song for his new barbershop quartet, The Quaker City Four. When Gerard changed the name of the song to Sweet Adeline, the new chemistry propelled the song into immortality.
Sweet Adeline,
My Adeline,
At night sweet heart,
For you I pine.
In all my dreams,
Your fair face beams,
You’re the flower of my heart,
Sweet Adeline.
The song completely went off the
charts. From that day
forward we have been blessed with the flowing strains of the barbershop song of all time. In
Boston, John J. Fitzgerald ran for Mayor using Adeline
as his theme song but soon,
whenever he appeared at rallies or gatherings, everyone spontaneously
burst into close harmony. This
practice spread of course to the inebriated, and the citizens of Boston
were treated to a constant spectacle of drunken singers
un-harmoniously attempting to perform this song at all hours of the day
and night. Things got so bad
that Boston
officials even considered passing an ordinance that would outlaw
the singing of Sweet Adeline
within the city limits. Sweet
Adeline came close to being the only song banned in