| "Aura Lea" | |
|---|---|
 Cover of Confederate version (1864) | |
| Song | |
| Language | English |
| Published | 1861 by John Church Company |
| Genre | sentimental ballad |
| Composer(s) | George R. Poulton |
| Lyricist(s) | W. W. Fosdick |
"Aura Lea" (sometimes spelled "Aura Lee") is an American Civil War song about a maiden. It was written by W. W. Fosdick (lyrics) and George R. Poulton (music). The melody was used in Elvis Presley's 1956 hit song "Love Me Tender".
Aura Lea was published by Poulton, an Englishman who had come to America with his family as a boy in 1838, and Fosdick in 1861. It was a sentimental ballad at a time when upbeat and cheerful songs were more popular in the music halls. [1] It became popular as a minstrel song, and the tune was also taken up by the U.S. Military Academy as a graduating class song, called "Army Blue"; new lyrics by L. W. Becklaw were sung to the original melody. [1]
The Civil War began shortly after the song's release, "Aura Lea" was adopted by soldiers on both sides, and was often sung around campfires. [1]
The tune is familiar to modern audiences from the 1956 Elvis Presley #1 hit "Love Me Tender" with new lyrics by Ken Darby, a derivative adaptation of the original. A later Presley recording for the film The Trouble with Girls entitled "Violet (Flower of N.Y.U.)" also used the melody of "Aura Lea".
The lyrics as written by Fosdick:
When the blackbird in the Spring,
Neath the willow tree,
Sat and rock'd, I heard him sing,
Sing of Aura Lea.
Aura Lea, Aura Lea,
Maid of golden hair;
Sunshine came along with thee,
And swallows in the air.
Chorus:
Aura Lea, Aura Lea,
Maid of golden hair;
Sunshine came along with thee,
And swallows in the air.
In thy blush the rose was born,
Music, when you spake,
Through thine azure eye the morn,
Sparkling seemed to break.
Aura Lea, Aura Lea,
Birds of crimson wing,
Never song have sung to me,
As in that sweet spring.
(Chorus)
Aura Lea! the bird may flee,
The willow's golden hair
Swing through winter fitfully,
On the stormy air.
Yet if thy blue eyes I see,
Gloom will soon depart;
For to me, sweet Aura Lea
Is sunshine through the heart.
(Chorus)
When the mistletoe was green,
Midst the winter's snows,
Sunshine in thy face was seen,
Kissing lips of rose.
Aura Lea, Aura Lea,
Take my golden ring;
Love and light return with thee,
And swallows with the spring.
(Chorus)
"Aura Lee" was sung by Frances Farmer and a male chorus in the 1936 film Come and Get It , based on Edna Ferber's novel. [1]
Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album Join Bing and Sing Along (1959)
Diana Muldaur sings the song to David Carradine in the episode "The Elixir" of Kung Fu .
Jerry Lanning performed the song in "Big Star", a 1962 episode of The Donna Reed Show .
The television cavalry comedy F Troop used a variation of the song to welcome saloon singer Laura Lee in the episode "She's Only a Build in a Girdled Cage" (cf. "She's only a bird in a gilded cage").
The television western The Young Riders used the song in its series finale, which took place in 1861 and showed how the American Civil War was affecting its characters' lives.
It is the running theme music in the background of the 1954 John Ford film The Long Gray Line . [1]
Allan Sherman topicalized the song in his "Shticks of One and a Half Dozen of the Other" (on the album My Son, The Celebrity, 1963 Warner Records Inc) with this polio-based version:
Every time you take vaccine, take it orally [a pun on "Aura Lea"]
As you know the other way is more painfully![ citation needed ]
An episode of The Rockford Files is called "Aura Lee Farewell". However the few lyrics that are recited are actually from the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe.
On the show Beverly Hills 90210 on the episode The Real McCoy (05/10/95), Dylan McKay Luke Perry was led into a past life in the wild wild west through hypnotic regression with his hypnotherapist. During his hypnosis session, he imagined that he walked into a saloon, where a hurdy gurdy girl was singing "Aura Lea."
The tune is used by the Cartoon Planet Band in the song "I Love Almost Everybody", which was also found on the associated album, Space Ghost's Musical Bar-B-Que .
Caitlín R. Kiernan's 2007 novel Daughter of Hounds has a character singing the winter verse of "Aura Lee" during a snowstorm.
Oona Laurence sings the song in the Sofia Coppola film The Beguiled (2017).
The melody is also used in the Welsh hymn "Os Wyt Eisiau Bod yn Llon"
The 1983 film Trading Places includes Ivy League stockbrokers at their racquet club singing a sexualized parody of this song about their college days and their fraternity's conquest of various women on locations at campus, with the refrain changed to "Constance Frye." The television show How I Met Your Mother 2009 episode (season 5 episode 22) "Robots Versus Wrestlers" features Ted Mosby at an upper-class party singing the Trading Places "Constance Frye" version along with film director Peter Bogdanovich and The New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz.
In Revenge of the Nerds , Betty Childs and the other girls from her sorority sing a parody (though not the exact tune) to the Tri-Lambs.
In Thomas Pynchon's 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49 , employees of Yoyodyne sing a parodic version of "Aura Lee", entitled "Glee", with lyrics about the company's position in the defense industry.
Appears in the song “The Work Song” written by Kate McGarrigle on the 1982 album “Love Over and Over” by Kate & Anna McGarrigle. First recorded by Maria Muldaur on her 1973 album “Maria Muldaur”. Also covered by Margaret RoadKnight and Justin Vivian Bond.
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of North American baseball, although neither of its authors had attended a game before writing the song. The song's chorus is traditionally sung as part of the seventh-inning stretch of a baseball game. Fans are generally encouraged to sing along, and at some ballparks, the words "home team" are replaced with the team name.
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Broadway Melody of 1938 is a 1937 American musical film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film is essentially a backstage musical revue, featuring high-budget sets and cinematography in the MGM musical tradition. The film stars Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor and features Buddy Ebsen, George Murphy, Judy Garland, Sophie Tucker, Raymond Walburn, Robert Benchley and Binnie Barnes.
"Love Me Tender" is a 1956 ballad song recorded by Elvis Presley and published by "Elvis Presley Music" from the 20th Century Fox film of the same name. Lyrics are credited to "Vera Matson". The melody is identical to the sentimental Civil War ballad "Aura Lea" and therefore credited to Aura Lea's composer, the Englishman George R. Poulton. The RCA Victor recording by Elvis Presley was No. 1 on both the Billboard and Cashbox charts in 1956.
"The Army Goes Rolling Along" is the official song of the United States Army and is typically called "The Army Song". It is adapted from an earlier work titled the "U.S. Field Artillery March".
"Pretty Baby" is a song written by Tony Jackson during the Ragtime era. The song was remembered as being prominent in Jackson's repertory before he left New Orleans in 1912, but was not published until 1916.
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"Little Brown Jug" is a song written in 1869 by Joseph Eastburn Winner, originally published in Philadelphia with the author listed as Winner's middle name "Eastburn".
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