You can catch him in films like To Have and Have Not (1944) and Young Man With a Horn (1950). The Armstrong/Teagarden version is the best. Old Rockin’ Chair, composed in 1929 by Hoagy Carmichael, has been performed by Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, Maria Muldaur, Mildred Bailey, and the composer himself. As the singer/narrator says of the old man on the park bench: “Who knows if you’ve won all the races you’ve run.” Or as he says of himself: “What treasure then will I hold when I grow old?”Ħ. This is one of my favorite songs about aging. Goes to Washington” album recorded live in late 1964. Tower of Time, composed by singer/actor/songwriter Oscar Brown, Jr. Among the notable versions are Jerry Lee Lewis, Paul Robeson, and Sons of the Pioneers.ĥ. It is a stereotypical view of the old black servant from the point of view of a white romanticizing plantation life and servitude itself, but what is interesting is that in 19 th-century America one of the most common and important icons for the aged was the black male servant. “I’m coming, for my head is bending low.”) Interestingly, the song is not written in dialect. Old Black Joe, composed by Stephen Foster, published in 1853, is another of the plaintive songs of the plantation, this time toldįrom the point of view of a faithful but aged black servant who hears the gentle voices calling. Robeson sings the line, “Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,” just as it is written in the original.Ĥ. Paul Robeson’s version is also noteworthy. Tom Roush sings the song with the original lyrics.
The song is the narrator having aged out of his childhood and youth at home as much as it is about the settled order of the old folks one left behind. It is a song about spiritual and physical exile. The song is about a young man (the singer could be a woman as well) rootless and forlorn in the larger world who wishes he (or she) could return to the plantation and “the old folks at home,” a peaceful past that can exist only in the past, only as a memory. Clearly, the song shows that the romantic yearnings about life in the South predated the moonlight-and-magnolia writings of Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris, among others. It manages to say something deeper about the human condition than its maudlin and self-pitying lyrics might lead to suspect it could. It is also, without question, the most evocative song about homesickness in all of American popular music. Old Folks at Home, composed by Stephen Foster in 1851, is the state song of Florida, where the Sewanee River is located. (“One day we will be old folks too.”) In sensibility, the Milsap song is closer to Robison’s tune than Brel’s, although with a line like “Blessed is the child of yesterday,” the song succeeds, like the other two, in condescending while it romanticizes.ģ. The narrative frame of this song is the same as the other two: a clearer younger narrator is singing to the audience about an older person (Robison) and generally about old age (Brel). Neither Brel nor Robison is to be confused with Mike Reid’s ” Old Folks,” which was a big country hit for Ronnie Milsap.
Unlike “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” the singer of either Robison’s or Brel’s “Old Folks” is not old himself or herself.
#OLD RONNIE MILSAP SONGS FULL#
The problem with the lyrics to both songs is that they give the listener that the old are self-pitying because the lyrics are so full of pity. The translated lyrics are better, more richly poetic than the lyrics for Robison’s tune but still audiences may find them patronizing and even piteous. Brel’s “Old Folks” was most famously sung for American audiences by John Denver.
Robison’s tune is not to be confused with Jacques Brel’s “Old Folks (Les Vieux)” which American audiences grew to love from the 1968 Off-Broadway show, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Robison’s tune is very popular with jazz musicians, and the version on Keith Jarrett’s 1990 album, “The Cure,” is particularly outstanding, lyrical and gripping without ever being sentimental. Most listeners today would find the lyrics a bit patronizing about the life of an old man called “Old Folks.” (“You needn’t be ashamed of him.”) Among the most noted versions of it are Lou Rawls’s, Miles Davis’s, and Mildred Bailey’s. Old Folks, introduced by the Larry Clinton Orchestra in 1938, composed by Willard Robison and Dedette Lee Hill, it is one of the few hits Robison ever had. Among the most famous versions of the song are Nat King Cole’s, Linda Ronstadt’s, Doris Day’s, and the Everly Brothers’.Ģ.
It is a touching song about an old couple’s devotion and about memory, as one spouse sings about remembering the other after the other is gone, even if the survivor can remember nothing else.