Good-By Old Stamp, Good-By (1883)

Thought some SCF members might find this interesting:




Anyone ever seen the sheet music shown at this link?

http://www.library.jhu.edu/collecti...o/stamp.html

Now I wonder what the lyrics were?

Found the lyrics at another web site:

http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/vie...y=THREE-CENT

wt1,

How fascinating! I would love to get a copy of the sheet music and try it out on the piano. Thanks for the head's up- I will definitely be on the lookout for this and if I ever find it, I will post it.

I found it interesting that Eugene Field wrote the lyrics. He is probably most famous for "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," one of my favorites.

Thanks so much for sharing this. You always come up with the most interesting posts!

Just found the music online at the same site wt1 mentioned earlier.

https://jscholarship.library.jhu.ed.../1774.2/4707

I'm off to the piano!

All right, wt1! I should be teaching my boys school right now, and you've got me hooked on this song!



I found a newspaper article from 1975 that mentions the song and also brings up another that I have never heard of: "The Postal Card Gallop."




After playing "Good-by Old Stamp, Good-by" on the piano, I have to agree with the author of the newspaper article:

I'm not musically inclined, so I can't speak for the music. The lyrics are kind of ridiculous sounding, but I guess some of that may have to be attributed to the period in which they were written.

What I do find intriguing is that the sheet music suggests that the song was written by "Uncle Sam" and makes no mention of the poem I posted from another site, attributing some of the lyrics to Eugene Field. In fact, I went over the sheet music and compared it to the Eugene Field poem, and only the first two verses are similar (with a word or two changed in-between) ... but the other verses are completely different (and the sheet music includes a chorus).

I just chalk it up to another interesting item that one can uncover in stamp collecting (or music?) history.