Thoughts on Gail Kubik (not a girl) and Polly-Wolly-Doodle (also not a girl).

When my choir the Cherry Creek Chorale sang an arrangement of “Polly Wolly Doodle” by someone named Gail Kubik. I assumed that “Gail” indicated a woman. But Gail is a guy, and he lived in the 20th century, He wrote three operas, several violin concertos, and a number of film scores, including one for the Dr. Seuss animated film “Gerald McBoing Boing” for which he won an Oscar in 1951. But he didn’t rest on his laurels, no sir-ee. In 1952 he won the Pulitzer Prize in music for his “Sinfonia Concertante.” He kept busy throughout his life with teaching and commissions. “Polly” was commissioned by the Robert Shaw Chorale during the 1950’s. Kubik entered into the playful tone of the song, as you’ll be able to see if you watch the performance video at the bottom of this post.

On to Polly! You may have wondered why the song mentions not only a “Polly,” but a “Sal,” and a “Susyanna.” Or maybe not. I may be the only one who ever thinks about such things. We can at least take Polly out of the mix, as that name doesn’t refer to a person but is part of a set of nonsense syllables, putting “Polly-Wolly-Doodle” into the same general category as “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” or “Tirra-Lirra-Lirra.” The song follows the classic call-and-response format of many folk songs, in which there’s a chorus, or response (in this case, “Sing Polly-Wolly-Doodle all the day”) that’s used to go with an almost infinite set of calls, or verses. This type of song has often been used in work gangs, specifically in America with slave labor out in the fields or with railroad building. Someone with a good strong voice booms out the verses and everyone else joins in on the chorus. New verses can be made up on the spot.

Unlike a true folk song, though, this one has at least a possible known origin, a truly fascinating one, dating back to the 1840’s. So, there was this European singing group called the Tyrolese Minstrels who toured the US singing “mittel-European” folk songs and were apparently quite successful. A group of four white unemployed actors got the idea (why? how?) to do their own minstrel show but in blackface, the origin as far as we know of this type of performance, and called themselves “Dan Emmett’s Virginia Minstrels.” Here’s a description of their performance:

The minstrels, in their wide-eyed, large-lipped, ragged-costumed absurdity, rolled onto the stage in a thundercloud of energy which hardly ever dissipated. They insulted each other, they baited each other, they made mincemeat of the language, they took the audience into their fun, and, in one night, they added a new form to show business in America – in fact, the world. (from Lee Davis, Scandals and Follies: The Rise and Fall of the Great Broadway Revue (New York: Limelight Editions, 2000), p. 31.)

So, if I’m reading this correctly, “PWD” was a song that the leader of this group, Dan Emmett, came up with as an example of the type of music black slaves would sing on the plantations. It seems from further descriptions of this original minstrel group that much of the material was improvised on the spot. So there are various versions of the song, and many verses. No printed version of the song appeared until the 1880’s. We don’t know where Emmett got his original inspiration, or if the syllables just popped into his head one day.

We won’t worry too much about making sense of the lyrics. The speaker is going to see his gal Sal, but then he says he’s really going to see someone called “Susyanna” (which rhymes with “Louisiana”) and then we veer off into a la-la land of grasshoppers picking their teeth and feet sticking out from the end of a too-short bed. And what of the phrase “fairy fay”? “Fay” could also be spelled “fey,” which means “fairy-like,” so the phrase would mean “fairly-like fairy.” Huh. Your guess is as good as mine here, but I’m wondering if this wording is something left over from the European folksongs performed by that original minstrel show that toured the US, since fairies played a big part in European folklore but not so much in that of America..

While there’s not a whole lot more to be said about our song itself, there’s tons to be said about minstrel shows. I wrote quite a bit about this type of musical performance in a post about the Copland piece “Ching-a-Ring-Chaw” that the Chorale sang in May 2015, and if you’re interested in this subject I’d encourage you to take a loo at it.

On the whole, though, it’s fair to say that we can just enjoy the song as is. Kubik’s arrangement has only a few of the many possible verses. Below are two videos, the first of the actual Kubik version and the second from the 1935 Shirley Temple film The Littlest Rebel. Cute as a button, that girl! I’d also say about the film’s plot that, like the song’s deeper meaning, we won’t worry about it too much.

Here’s one possible set of lyrics: