Tinman brought up "Richard Corey" in the "Poetic Read" thread which, as I assume you know, was transformed into a very popular song by Paul Simon some 30 or so years ago.

The competition? How many songs can you name that started out their lives as literature of some sort?

The only one I can think of at the moment is "Alley Oop," the song about the caveman from the Sunday funnies which, if you stretch the definition a bit, could count as literature.

The score so far:
Me - minus 1 (One point for "Richard Corey" and a negative two for that lame "Alley Oop"!)
Everybody else - 0

quote:

---

How many songs can you name that started out their lives as literature of some sort?

---

You seem to be suggesting that songs are not literature, C.J.

Milton allegedly said (or wrote) that "Literature is the lasting expression in words of the meaning of life." He didn't specifically omit songs.

Flow Gently Sweet Afton comes to mind.

Excellent question, CJ. And two points for you: that Alley Oop is perfectly legitimate and deserves a positive, not a negative.

Friedrich Schiller's poem Ode to Joy became the lyrics to the chorale in Beethoven's 9th.

Oh! Oh!

About 35 years ago the Chad Mitchell Trio did James James Morrison Morrison, by A. A. Milne, as a song.

Ooh..ooh...ohhh.


I know, I know

er.. White Rabbit !

Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Here are more than 150 Poems of W. S. Gilbert, most of which became songs.

Music Inspired by Alice

Surely I have to get some kind of monomania award for that particular link !

Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

quote:

---

Originally posted by C J Strolin:
Tinman brought up "Richard Corey" in the "Poetic Read" thread which, as I assume you know, was transformed into a very popular song by Paul Simon some 30 or so years ago.

---

I'm feeling in a generous mood today, so I won't take any points off for misspelling "Richard Cory". I didn't know about the song.

Tinman

And of course we shouldn't forget this, should we CJ ?

Glaubt es mir - das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Rats!!

When I posted this competition I had "White Rabbit" (by the Jefferson Airplane, sometimes mistakenly referred to as "Go Ask Alice") in mind but I purposely didn't list it. My plan was to wait a week or so, post it then, and give myself double credit for an answer that should have been posted by some other nameless Wordcrafter. Curses!!!

And regarding that link? I love Rush (the band, definitely not the Limbaugh) but I dislike "Kubla Khan." I'm conflicted!

Lastly, reports that Thomas Edison's autobiography was later transformed into Debbie Boone's ultra-sappy "You Light Up My Life" are unfounded.

quote:

---

Originally posted by C J Strolin:
The competition? How many songs can you name that started out their lives as literature of some sort?

---

Of course, many musicals started out as literature, and so you could say that all songs in the musical began as literature. Examples would include

• My Fair Lady - from the play Pygmalion, and ultimately from the ancient Greek myth
• Man of La Mancha - from Don Quixote
• Fiddler on the Roof - from the stories of Sholom Aleichem
• Jesus Christ, Superstar - from the New Testament

But using those feels like cheating.

quote:

---

Originally posted by shufitz:
About 35 years ago the Chad Mitchell Trio did _James James Morrison Morrison,_ by A. A. Milne, as a song.

---

And in the 1940s there was an album recorded by Frank Luther: mostly the Hums of Pooh, but a bunch of the poems from Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young, too, sung to music by H. Fraser-Simpson, and a charming accompaniment for violin and clarinet. Long since out of print (though I did see them on LPs in the 70s) and quite lovely. Someday wiv a little bit o' luck I'll come across them again. There were other recordings by other artists too, but Frank Luther was special.

Quite agree, quite agree! (spoken as Graham Chapman doing "the colonel.") My original thought was to go for more "Richard Cory" type songs, in other words primarily tunes you might hear on pop radio stations that were taken directly from literature. "Richard Cory" is a great example (and thanks, Shufitz, but I'm still moderately ashamed of "Alley Oop") though I'm surprised we haven't come up with more.

How about we agree with Hic that songs from musicals (like the love theme from "Jesus Christ, My Fair Man is Fiddling on the Roof!") and Gilbert & Sullivan etc won't apply here BUT that made-up links between literature and music WILL.


For instance, not many people realize that Lassie's show business auto-biography was later turned into the song "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."

(Plus, for that matter, most fans of the show don't know that while "Lassie" is, of course, a term for "girl," the actual animal used on that show was a male zebra. ...No, really!)

quote:

---

Originally posted by C J Strolin:
Quite agree, quite agree! (spoken as Graham Chapman doing "the colonel.")

---

This was in ref to Hic's post. Haberdasher and I apparently were tapping out our posts at roughly the same time.

Another song comes to mind: Country singer Bobby Bare recorded "The Giving Tree" which was, musically, almost word for word from the Shel Silverstein short (very) story.

Are you familiar with this piece? It's one of those things that people either love or loathe. Bobby Bare's rendition makes it even schmaltzier that it is in print so I prefer Silverstein's version to Bare's but that's just me.


(Sidenote: "Schmaltz" is one of those great Yiddish words and literally means "chicken fat." Metaphorically it conveys the feeling of "Oh my God is he spreading it on thick!" coming from, I'm told, the best way to eat chicken fat on rye bread. (I'll take their word for it...)

quote:

---

Originally posted by C J Strolin:
while "Lassie" is, of course, a term for "girl," the actual animal used on that [TV]show was a male zebra. ...No, really!)

---

"Male" is correct; "zebra" is obviously facetious; but "a" is mistaken. A series of male collies, six of them I believe, had that role over the years.

Making them the first (and to the best of my knowledge the only) female impersonators to play a major continuing role in a major-network TV series.