Fight Songs Research Articles

Tracking Down Elusive Songs

Abstract Finding the text of, a recording of, or accurate historical data on obscure or poorly documented songs is a continual problem for music libraries. Some practical tips on resolving this problem for U.S. popular songs, U.S. state songs, U.S. college fight songs, and Christmas songs are presented.

College Fight Songs

Abstract Although most of us are familiar with them, American college fight songs have not received much attention in print. An essay and bibliography on college fight songs is presented.

American college fight songs: History and historiography

(1995). American college fight songs: History and historiography. Popular Music and Society: Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 125-130.

Tracking Down the Elusive College Fight Song

Finding the text or a recording of college fight songs can be difficult, as is discovering accurate historical data on them. This essay discusses the problems and offers some practical advice solving them

On Wisconsin women: working for their rights from settlement to suffrage

Wisconsin is known as the home of the Progressive party. But, in the words of a suffragist as late as 1912, the last thing a man becomes progressive about is the activities of his wife. In On Wisconsin Women, Genevieve McBride traces women s work in reform movements in the state s politics and especially in its press. Even before Wisconsin became a state in 1848, women s news and opinions appeared in abolitionist journals and temperance sheets, if often anonymously. But the first paper in Wisconsin published under a woman s name, however, was boycotted by Milwaukee printers and failed in 1853.From the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 to the state s historic ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, Wisconsin women were never at a loss for words nor a newspaper to print them. Among women who would be heard were Mathilde Fransziska Anneke, Emma Brown, Lavinia Goodell, Emma Bascom, Olympia Brown, Belle Case La Follette, Ada L. James, and Theodora Winton Youmans. McBride brings their voices vividly to life, in their own words on their lifelong work for woman s rights.Nowhere was the struggle fought for so long and so hard as in Wisconsin. While women elsewhere sang suffrage hymns, women in the Badger State marched to a fight song with a familiar tune but sung in their own words lyrics too long forgotten until now.

Come Quiet Please

he manipulated the dials with scientific care until he knew he was zeroed in to a station. Then he switched on the powerful Zenith overrider and caught four channels, four conversations on his row of monitors. Gently he lifted the accordion from its case and turned it on. He hummed as it gathered force, then depressed a resonant chord. "Howdy, out there," he spoke into the microphone. "I know you have things to say to each other, you travelers of the night and truckers and bored people on the hill with the big antennas. This is the first time I've had full power since lightning run in on the old set last year, but I've got it up to where it ought to be now, and I can get my messages through to a whole world. That's good, and all I have for you folks is a song. It's gonna last about six or seven minutes, and then I'll be out of here. I want to dedicate it to the memory of Marjorie, and I guess the song could be called 'Marione,' even though she'd roll over if she knew I was doing this. This is Wade Timberly, and this is music for Miss Margie." It was a beautiful song, and he made it up as he played it. He used all the dexterity and complexity he had picked up from three decades of playing hymns and fight songs and polkas, but he used it to create an almost-transcendent simplicity. A song about clouds and rivers, about wind misbehaving in the trees and a blue heron lifting a fish in its beak. Dunes changed shape in the distance, and trawlers lifted their laden nets against the winter-blurred sun. A grackle lit on a garden trellis. Beach Elum blossoms were followed by fruit right as medallions and not at all sour. Migrating birds arced through the notes. Static from the CB cracked and sparkled, the puzzled voices of late-night listeners seeking information or solace or his attention through the chilling air. He didn't need for them to listen, but he didn't mind. He squeezed the bellows and his fingers danced a courtly dance of life wildly on the worn white keys. Come Quiet Please Come quiet please and hold my hand; Make haste for there is no more day; The shadows weave a wedding band Around a cloud of darkest grey. My lover's gone and left me now, My love, my dear, my sweetest face, And now I seek with my own words To fill that empty hollow place. My love, he loved me for a time When I was young and time was strong; Now silently a leaden chime Admits he did me somehow wrong. There's nothing left for me to love, No heart within to justify, No thought, no mind, no reason why And naught but grief left for a sky. -Barbara Deatherage 35 ...