"Molly Malone" is a song set in Dublin, Ireland, which has become its unofficial anthem.
"Beautiful Dreamer" is a parlor song by American songwriter Stephen Foster. It was published posthumously in March 1864, by Wm. A. Pond & Co. of New York. The first edition states on its title page that it is "the last song ever written by Stephen C. Foster, composed but a few days prior to his death." However, Carol Kimball, the author of Song, points out that the first edition's copyright is dated 1862, which suggests, she writes, that the song was composed and readied for publication two years before Foster's death. There are at least 20 songs, she observes, that claim to be Foster's last, and it is unknown which is indeed his last. The song is set in 9
8 time with a broken chord accompaniment.
The Rose of Tralee International Festival is an event which is celebrated among Irish communities all over the world. The festival, held annually in the town of Tralee in County Kerry, takes its inspiration from a 19th-century ballad of the same name about a woman called Mary, who because of her beauty was called "The Rose of Tralee". The words of the song are credited to C. Mordaunt Spencer and the music to Charles William Glover, but a story circulated in connection with the festival claims that the song was written by William Pembroke Mulchinock, a wealthy Protestant, out of love for Mary O'Connor, a poor Catholic maid in service to his parents.
"The Last Rose of Summer" is a poem by the Irish poet Thomas Moore. He wrote it in 1805, while staying at Jenkinstown Castle in County Kilkenny, Ireland, where he was said to have been inspired by a specimen of Rosa 'Old Blush'. The poem is set to a traditional tune called "Aisling an Óigfhear", or "The Young Man's Dream", which was transcribed by Edward Bunting in 1792, based on a performance by harper Denis Hempson at the Belfast Harp Festival. The poem and the tune together were published in December 1813 in volume 5 of Thomas Moore's A Selection of Irish Melodies. The original piano accompaniment was written by John Andrew Stevenson, several other arrangements followed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
"Danny Boy" is a traditional song, with lyrics written by English lawyer Frederic Weatherly in 1910, and set to the traditional Irish melody of "Londonderry Air" in 1913.
"You'll Never Know", sometimes referred to as "You'll Never Know " in later years, is a popular song with music written by Harry Warren and the lyrics by Mack Gordon. The song is based on a poem written by a young Oklahoma war bride named Dorothy Fern Norris.
"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.
"Streets of Laredo", also known as "The Dying Cowboy", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying ranger tells his story to another cowboy. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
"Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1854. Foster wrote the song with his estranged wife Jane McDowell in mind. The lyrics allude to a permanent separation.
"The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is an Irish ballad written by Robert Dwyer Joyce (1836–1883), a Limerick-born poet and professor of English literature. The song is written from the perspective of a doomed young Wexford rebel who is about to sacrifice his relationship with his loved one and plunge into the cauldron of violence associated with the 1798 rebellion in Ireland. The references to barley in the song derive from the fact that the rebels frequently carried barley or oats in their pockets as provisions for when on the march. This gave rise to the post-rebellion phenomenon of barley growing and marking the "croppy-holes," unmarked mass graves into which rebel casualties were thrown. To many Irish nationalists, these "croppy-holes" symbolised the regenerative nature of resistance to British rule in Ireland. Barley growing every spring was said by nationalists authors to symbolize continuous Irish resistance to British rule, particularly in nationalist literature and poetry written about the rebellion.
"The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond", or "Loch Lomond" for short, is a Scottish song. The song prominently features Loch Lomond, the largest Scottish loch, located between the council areas of West Dunbartonshire, Stirling and Argyll and Bute. In Scots, "bonnie" means "attractive", "beloved", or "dear".
"Let Me Call You Sweetheart" is a popular song, with music by Leo Friedman and lyrics by Beth Slater Whitson. The song was published in 1910 and was a huge hit for the Peerless Quartet in 1911. A recording by Arthur Clough was very popular the same year too. A 1924 recording identifies a Spanish title, "Déjame llamarte mía".
"I Love You Truly" is a parlor song written by Carrie Jacobs-Bond. Since its publication in 1901 it has been sung at weddings, recorded by numerous artists over many decades, and heard on film and television.
Rhythm on the River is a 1940 musical comedy film directed by Victor Schertzinger and starring Bing Crosby and Mary Martin as ghostwriters whose songs are credited to a composer played by Basil Rathbone. Crosby and Martin sang "Only Forever", for which James V. Monaco (music) and Johnny Burke (lyrics) were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Alice O'Sullivan is the first ever winner of The Rose of Tralee, having been crowned in 1959. In 2009, she was one of the judges for the fiftieth anniversary of the festival. Rosita Boland of The Irish Times commented on O'Sullivan's admission that she had not watched any of the television coverage of the event in the years since her win: "This has to make her perspective tonight and tomorrow—on the annual mini-dramas of frocks, party pieces and lovely girls—unique among all past and present Rose of Tralee judges".
She Loves Me Not is a 1934 American comedy film directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Bing Crosby and Miriam Hopkins. Based on the novel She Loves Me Not by Edward Hope and the subsequent play by Howard Lindsay, the film is about a cabaret dancer who witnesses a murder and is forced to hide from gangsters by disguising herself as a male Princeton student. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film has been remade twice as True to the Army (1942) and as How to Be Very, Very Popular in (1955), the latter starring Betty Grable. The film is notable for containing one of the first major performances of Bing Crosby, and it helped launch him to future stardom. This was also the last film that Miriam Hopkins made under her contract to Paramount Pictures, which began in the early 1930s upon her arrival in Hollywood. In 1935, the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Love in Bloom", theme song of comedian Jack Benny.
Top o' the Morning is a 1949 American romantic comedy film directed by David Miller and starring Bing Crosby, Ann Blyth, and Barry Fitzgerald. Written by Edmund Beloin and Richard L. Breen, the film is about a singing insurance investigator who comes to Ireland to recover the stolen Blarney Stone—and romance the local policeman's daughter.
St. Patrick's Day is a compilation album of phonograph records by Bing Crosby released in 1947 featuring songs with an Irish theme. This includes one of Crosby's most-beloved songs, "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral" which was number four on the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 weeks, and topped the Australian charts for an entire month, on shellac disc record. This version, the 1945 re-recording, was released earlier in another Crosby album, Selections from Going My Way.
Bing Crosby Sings the Song Hits from Broadway Shows is a Decca Records compilation 78rpm album of phonograph records by Bing Crosby featuring some of the hits from Broadway musicals.
