76 Trombones Revisited
Just about everyone in the world can sing the first verse of the classic song 76 Trombones:
Seventy six trombones led the big parade!
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand!
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos,
the cream of every famous band!
It's an amazingly jolly little verse to a bouncy rumpy pumpy sort of tune and it's great fun to burst out with suddenly at full voice while you're pushing a stroller along, for example, or while you're doing any of dozens of equally good other things.
But research reveals that the jolliness level of the subsequent verses drops off considerably. I looked them up; they're OK at best, nowhere near the infectious power of the first verse. The author can certainly be forgiven for this drop-off. I mean, after writing a first verse like that, he could dine out on it for the rest of his life. He probably wrote the rest of it quite impatiently, resenting the further taxation of his genius.
Take the second verse, for example:
Seventy six trombones caught the morning sun
With a hundred and ten cornets right behind
There were more than a thousand reeds springing up like weeds,
There were horns of every shape and kind
Well, it's not awful, but we can see his imagination is already beginning to wane because the first two lines borrow liberally from the first verse. He's already told us about the trombones and the cornets. The only new information is that it was sunny, and we had already inferred that from the tune. The third line is rhythmically awkward, although admittedly a bit jolly. The fourth line is pure throw-away. We begin to sense that in the author's mind, he's already done.
Here's the rest of it:
There were copper bottom tympani in horse platoons
Thundering, thundering, all along the way
Double bell euphoniums and big bassoons
Each bassoon having his big fat say
There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery
Thundering, thundering, louder than before
Clarinets of every size and trumpeters who'd improvise
A full octave higher than the score
Seventy six trombones hit the counter point
While a hundred and ten cornets played the air
To the rhythm of 'Harch Harch Harch!'
All the kids began to march
And they're marching still, right today
Rhythmic catastrophes, lazy repetitions, these are lyrics scribbled hastily off onto a napkin on his way to the meeting with the producer. And what's this bit about the kids marching still today? This adds an unwelcome mystical element. What does it mean? It seems vaguely religious and somehow nightmarish. More likely it's just tossed off because it sounded "end-ish" and he was already late for the meeting. Mind you, it's the lazy hasty scribblings of a genius, so it's not outright awful. No, it's just that our expectations had been raised so high by the startling charm of the first verse, that these others just seem to be cut from an inferior cloth.
"It's easy enough to stand around and criticize the work of others, Johnny," you may be thinking. "If you're so clever why don't you try to do better?"
Well, all right, I'll have a go, it's only fair. I humbly submit for your consideration the following alternative:
76 TROMBONES: REVISED
Seventy six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos;
the cream of every famous band.
No fewer than eighty-two alto saxophones
with a handful of flugel horns just for fun
And playing a hundred oboes, rejuvenated hoboes
A thing that's very rarely done
I'd swear there were ninety-four on euphonium
with no more than eighty-six on the drums
The seventy-three et demi who were playing timpani
Seemed to be the very best of chums
Seventy sousaphone and a glockenspiel
positively were just as good as it gets
I hear there were two bassoon that were slightly out of tune
They were drowned out by the clarinets
Well, I'll leave it for you and for history to judge. In the meantime, it strikes me that the Dies Irae movement of Mozart's Requiem Mass in D Minor drags a bit in parts. I'd better roll up my sleeves here and get to work...
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