"The Streets of New York" is a song originally published by M. Witmark & Sons. The song was from the musical comedy The Red Mill . The song was composed by Victor Herbert and typically plays at the end of Act II in The Red Mill. [1] [2]
The song was composed by Victor Herbert to lyrics by Henry Blossom for The Red Mill in 1906.
The melody inspired the Oklahoma State University fight song, “Ride em’ Cowboys”, which was first published in by John K. Hall in 1923. The song is typically played by the Oklahoma State University Cowboy Marching Band during games. [3] [4]
(Verse 1)
In dear old New York it's remarkable very!
The name on the lamp-post is unnecessary!
You merely have to see the girls
To know what street you're on!
Fifth Avenue beauties and dear old Broadway girls!
The tailor made shoppers the Avenue A girls,
They're strictly all right but they're different quite
In the diff'rent parts of town.
(Refrain)
In Old New York! In old New York!
The peach crop's always fine!
They're sweet and fair and on the square!
The maids of Manhattan for mine!
You cannot see in gay Paree,
In London or in Cork!
The queens you'll meet on any street
In old New York!
(Verse 2)
If a spare afternoon you should happen to have and you
Start on a leisurely stroll up Fifth Avenue,
There is where with haughty air
You'll see them as they walk!
With velvets and laces and sable enfolding them,
Really you'll nearly fall dead on beholding them,
Lucky's the earl that can marry a girl
From Fifth Avenue New York.
(Repeat refrain)
In Old New York! In old New York!
The peach crop's always fine!
They're sweet and fair and on the square!
The maids of Manhattan for mine!
You cannot see in gay Paree,
In London or in Cork!
The queens you'll meet on any street
In old New York!
(Verse 3)
Whatever the weather is shining or showery,
That doesn't cut any ice on the Bowery.
Ev'ry night till broad daylight,
They dance and sing and talk!
The girls are all game and they're jolly good fellows,
They're not very swell but they're none of them jealous,
They go it alone in a style of their own
On the Bowery in New York.
M. Witmark & Sons was a leading publisher of sheet music for the United States "Tin Pan Alley" music industry.
Victor August Herbert was an American composer, cellist and conductor of English and Irish ancestry and German training. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the Tin Pan Alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music.
Alexander Dubin was an American lyricist. He is best known for his collaborations with the composer Harry Warren.
William Denight Cobb was an American lyricist and composer. He and a partner, Ren Shields, produced several popular musicals and musical comedies in the early 20th century. Cobb also had a long-run collaboration with Gus Edwards.
"The Teddy Bears' Picnic" is a song consisting of a melody written in 1907 by American composer John Walter Bratton, and lyrics added in 1932 by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy. It remains popular in Ireland and the United Kingdom as a children's song, having been recorded by numerous artists over the decades. Kennedy lived at Staplegrove Elm and is buried in Staplegrove Church, in Taunton, Somerset, England. Local folklore has it that the small wooded area between the church and Staplegrove Scout Hut was the inspiration for his lyrics.
Ada Jane Jones was an English-American popular singer who made her first recordings in 1893 on Edison cylinders. She is among the earliest female singers to be recorded.
William Austin Dillon was an American songwriter and Vaudevillian. He is best known as the lyricist for the song "I Want A Girl " (1911), written in collaboration with Harry Von Tilzer., which can be heard in Show Business (1944) and The Jolson Story (1946).
Henry Martyn Blossom Jr. was an American writer, playwright, novelist, opera librettist, and lyricist. He first gained wide attention for his second novel, Checkers: A Hard Luck Story (1896), which was successfully adapted by Blossom into a 1903 Broadway play, Checkers. It was Blossom's first stage work and his first critical success in the theatre. The play in turn was adapted by others creatives into two silent films, one in 1913 and the other in 1919, and the play was the basis for the 1920 Broadway musical Honey Girl. Checkers was soon followed by Blossom's first critical success as a lyricist, the comic opera The Yankee Consul (1903), on which he collaborated with fellow Saint Louis resident and composer Alfred G. Robyn. This work was also adapted into a silent film in 1921. He later collaborated with Robyn again; writing the book and lyrics for their 1912 musical All for the Ladies.
Amy Ella Blanchard was a prolific American writer of children's literature.
"Sweet Betsy from Pike" is an American ballad about the trials of a pioneer named Betsy and her lover Ike who migrate from Pike County to California. This Gold Rush-era song, with lyrics published by John A. Stone in 1858, was collected and published in Carl Sandburg's 1927 American Songbag. It was recorded by Burl Ives on February 11, 1941, for his debut album Okeh Presents the Wayfaring Stranger.
Daniel William Quinn was an American tenor. He was one of the first American singers to become popular in the new medium of recorded music. Quinn was a very successful recording artist whose career spanned from 1892 to 1918. Quinn recorded many of his hits in the legendary Tin Pan Alley of New York City.
"Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" is a vaudeville and music hall song first performed by the 1880s. It was included in Henry J. Sayers' 1891 revue Tuxedo in Boston, Massachusetts. The song became widely known in the 1892 version sung by Lottie Collins in London music halls, and also became popular in France.
"Red Wing" is a popular song written in 1907 with music by F.A Mills and lyrics by Thurland Chattaway. Mills adapted the music of the verse from Robert Schumann's piano composition "The Happy Farmer, Returning From Work" from his 1848 Album for the Young, Opus 68. The song tells of a young Indian girl's loss of her sweetheart who has died in battle.
"Hiawatha " is a song written by Neil Moret in 1901. James J. O'Dea (1870–1914) added lyrics in 1903 and the music was re-subtitled "(His Song to Minnehaha)".
"After the Ball" is a popular song written in 1891 by Charles K. Harris. The song is a classic waltz in 3/4 time. In the song, an uncle tells his niece why he has never married. He saw his sweetheart kissing another man at a ball, and he refused to listen to her explanation. Many years later, after the woman had died, he discovered that the man was her brother.
"I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)" (sometimes shortened to "I Want a Girl") is a popular song of 1911 composed by Harry Von Tilzer and with lyrics by William Dillon, which has become a barbershop quartet standard.
"The Yama Yama Man" was a comical song for the Broadway show The Three Twins, published in 1908 by M. Witmark & Sons with music by Karl Hoschna and lyrics by Collin Davis. It became popular after Bessie McCoy's animated performance in a satin Pierrot clown costume with floppy gloves and a cone hat. At age 20, she became an overnight sensation on Broadway and was known thereafter as the "Yama Yama Girl"; it became her lifelong theme song. The show ran for 288 performances. The lyrics contain topical references of the era such as street cars and ladies' fashion while the refrain is about a comical bogeyman—the Yama Yama Man—who is "ready to spring out at you unaware". Bessie McCoy's song and dance routine was a standard into the 1930s with a prestigious lineage of imitators including Ada Jones, Marilyn Miller, Irene Castle and Ginger Rogers.
Love Me and the World Is Mine is an American ballad published in 1906 with music by Ernest R. Ball, and lyrics by Dave Reed Jr. The original recordings from the 1900s by various singers are now in the public domain per the Music Modernization Act.