The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1912-05-25
FAMOUS CAMPAIGN SONGS
"Houn' Dawg" Ballad Recalls Quaint
Ditties That Had Their Influence
In Big Political Battles.

1t was only from the Ozark Noun.
tain or some other delightfully."- simple
and primitive region of the republic
that such an archaic thing as a cam
paign song could be expected in these
days of long-word issues and tuneless
meaningless cheers. But the "houn
dawg" ballad from the Missouri hills
age and authorship unknown, cannot
be considered as marking revival
of political verse. 1t is only a re-
minder that there was such a thing a
generation ago, when mass meetings
were more spontaneous and when ap.
plause was not a detail arranged be-
forehand and guaranteed to last so
many minutes by the stop watches of
the under bosses.
For the sake of speculation the de-
cline of the campaign song may be
attributed to any one of dozen
causes. Perhaps it is because the
crowd no longer knows how to sing, a
needless accomplishment, since every
family in the land, by saving enough
laundry soap coupons, can get a phon-
ograph machine to do it's singing for
it. 1t may be that the nomenclature
of modern issues does not lend itself
to combination with modern ragtime.
How could any score writer of Tin
Pan alley produce anything, for in
stance, to fit a merry jingle about
"the recall of judicial decisions" or
"the initiative, referendum and re-
call" There are possibilities, it is
true, in third term, but no song writer
seems to care for them, and it is a
sign of these unmusical days in poll
tics hat none of the managers of a
million other booms has ordered dit
ty to Offset the "houn dawg" that
Champ Clark seems to have in leash
for his own trailing of delegates.
Nevertheless, American politics have
long anthology of song, running way
back in Washington's til ,, when
Robert Treat Paine wrote the follow
ing about the first President:
Should the tempest of war over
shadow our land,
It's bolts could ne'er rend Freedoms
temples asunder;
For unmoved at its portals would
Washington stand,
And repulse with his breast the as
saults of the thunder.
His sword from the sleep
Of it's scabbard would leap,
And conduct with it's point every flash
to the deep!
For ne'er shall the sons of Column
bia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant or the
sea rolls a wave
AS the country grew older, its songs
became much less staid than the
Paine verses on Washington, and with
the beginning, early in the last cen
tury of rival party campaigns, as they
are known now, the jingle came into
existence for campaign purposes.
Here is what the supporters lof
Thomas Jefferson sang when he was
the candidate for President in 1900:
The Federalists are down at last,
The Monarchists completely cast,
The Aristocrats are stripped of power
Storms DER the British faction lower.
Soon we Republicans shall see
Columbia's sons from bondage free!
Lord! How the Federalists will stare
At Jefferson in Adams's chair!
AS in Grants campaign, forty years
later, the song-writers for Andrew
Jackson, in 1928, made the most out
of their candidates record as a sol
der, and one of the best songs of
that period was based on JacksonIs
defeat of the British under Lord PAX
enham at New Orleans in 1915. Two
stanzas of it were:
You've heard, I s'pose of New Or
leans,
It's famed for youth and beauty;
There are girls of every hue 1t seems, |
From snowy white to sooty
Now Pakenham made his brags,
If he that day was lucky,
He'd have the girls and cotton bags
In spite of Old Kentucky!
But Jackson, he was wide awake,
And was not scared at trifes,
For well he knew Kentucky boys, !
with their death-dealing rifles.
He led them down to cypress swamp,
The ground was low and mucky,
There stood John Bull in martial pomp,
And here stood Old Kentucky.
Twelve years later the campaign
5ong-writers were a trihe more frivo-
Ious, and the poets working for viii
liam Henry Harrison and John Tyler
in their log cabin and hard cider cam
Daign in 1910, produced this against
Martin Van Buren,, the Democratic
President, a candidate for second
ERIN;