Tweet Name That Tune!!

Can anyone identify the waltz tune being played by Spike Jones & His City Slickers in this clip from the Colgate Comedy Hour? The song begins at about 2:35 into the clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8QduGMC ... re=related

I thought it might be the "Zenda Waltz," but other than that, I really have no idea. But I believe it would be a pretty standard number for vaudeville adagio teams (as is being satirized here by Spike), magicians and the like. SETH

Hmmmm, I was sure that somebody would come up with the title of this number relatively quickly.

It can't be ALL that obscure, can it? SETH

Sorry, I was too busy admiring the dress worn by Sir Fredrick Gas . . .

And here I thought it was Spike's "cowbell" earrings that everyone was admiring!! SETH

That waltz is from an operetta called "The Pink Lady" (1911) by Ivan Caryll. You can see a nice performance of it at the beginning of the film "The Actress" (1953)

Fear of puking on my computer stopped me from enduring more than a second or two of the Spike Jones debacle, so I still haven't heard this waltz. No Pink Lady selections by Caryll on YT, but here's another waltz of his from several years earlier, played by the inimitable Colonel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUbsykP5IG0

Gee, I admit Spike's kind of low humor, but puke?

That said, I still watch Breakfast In Hollywood more for the King Cole Trio than for Spike and his City Slickers.

Thanks, Eric, for the tip of the composer's name and the operetta in which the song appeared!

A few minutes with Google and Wikipedia turned up the following website, www.halhkmusic.com/pinklady.html, at which some enterprising soul has made MIDI re-creations of many turn-of-the-century operettas, including "The Pink Lady." Further rummaging around in Act II located the MIDI version of the song in question!

As a result, I now know that the number is called "The Kiss Waltz." Hopefully this will result in my obtaining the sheet music shortly. BTW, I also discovered another song, also titled "The Kiss Waltz," but it was written in 1930 by Joe Burke, published by Witmark, and the melody is completely different.

Thanks again for helping to solve an interesting mystery!! SETH

Gee, I admit Spike's kind of low humor, but puke?

Maybe even the old dry-heaves...which haven't afflicted me since high-school wine-tastings.

A website devoted to operetta? WHERE have you been hiding all my life?

The waltz often goes as the Pink Lady Waltz, or "Beautiful Lady" after the lyrics "To you, beautiful lady I raise my glass"

I agree that Spike Jones is sort of an acquired taste, but I would point out two things:

1. I believe it was H.L. Mencken who said that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public"; and

2. There are probably a great many professional musicians who might have trouble playing Spike's charts. He made it look easy, as though he and his musicians were just goofing around, but it took expert musicianship to execute most of that stuff. Spike was a studio musician and a session drummer for most of the 1930's, and he clearly had the musical chops and knew exactly what he was doing. SETH

I believe it was H.L. Mencken who said that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public"

And he wasn't wrong: that there was a paying audience (Mencken's "boobsoisie) for Spike's atrocities proves it.

Game Over: https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/ha ... 74.2/16586

That's the website for the original sheet music. Thanks for all the help in locating this!! SETH

BTW, in the process of locating this tune, I discovered that there are many more songs entitled "The Kiss Waltz," including one by Johann Strauss, as well as an entire 1911 play of the same name by Ziehrer (perhaps an attempt to cash in on the Pink Lady version?).

I guess many people associated the waltz rhythm with romance and thus with kisses. I also know that for the same reason, some people thought the waltz was immoral and promoted loose and lascivious behavior. Of course, some people said the same thing about ragtime ("an instrument of the Devil"), 1920's jazz, swing music and early rock-and-roll, but all of these are now considered simply to be quaint. Perhaps someday rap music will also be considered quaint, although I doubt it (I'm not even sure that it's music!). SETH