While watching the Kentucky Derby I heard the folks singing “My Old Kentucky Home” Of course there have been some changes to the lyrics to make it PC for our current world.
But that got me to thinking, where does one go to get original lyrics to songs that have been altered? Or to check which of two versions is original?
For example, in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” I always remember singing a certain line as “As he died to make men holy let us die to make men free” but not I’ll hear it as “As he died to make us holy let us live to make men free”
Or in the Christmas carol “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” I would sing “Born to raise the sons of earth” and now it’s “Born to raise each child of earth”
So, if I don’t know which is earliest, where do I go to find out?
In Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene he wrote “If Irene turns her back on me/ I’m gonna take morphine and die.” When the Weavers sang it for a big hit, the morphine was gone.
In the late 80s, George Thoroughgood had a hit called “You Talk Too Much” (lyrics) that was an unapologetically misogynist rant about his girlfriend never shutting her big mouth. Several years later, the song became a semi-classic rock staple, but significantly changed. Now the song was “You Drink Too Much”, and it became an anti-alcoholic rant.
Krusty the Clown: It’s great to have you guys on the show, but the network has requested that you make one little change to one of your songs.
Red Hot Chili Pepper #1: No way, man!
Chili Pepper #2: Our music is sacred!
Krusty: Okay. But here where it say, “What I got I want to get it, put it in you,” how about if you changed that to, “What I got I want to get it, hug and kiss you?”
Pepper #2: Why, that’s much better!
Pepper #1: Yeah! Now it’s a song everyone can enjoy!
:dubious: Can you post a link to this version? I’ve never known Thorogood to be anti-drinking in his lyrics, what with “I Drink Alone” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” In fact, one of his hits after “You Talk Too Much” was called If You Don’t Start Drinking (I’m Gonna Leave).
The original manuscript version has “die to make men free.” That made sense, since the poem* was written during the Civil War, when people were dying.
I don’t believe there’s much record as to when the lyrics were changed. Certainly after the war ended, and it was common for congregations to change lyrics of hymns as they saw necessary to make them more relevant.
To add to the example, the original Broadway lyrics to “I Get a Kick Out of You,” started the second verse as “I get no kick from cocaine.” When they made the show in to a movie in 1936, the Hayes Code would not allow any reference to illegal drugs, so Porter changed the lyrics to “Some like the perfumes in Spain.” Actually, the change may even have been before that, so the song could get radio airplay, but the movie is definitive.
*It was originally just a poem. But it fit into an existing rhyme scheme of the song “John Brown’s Body,” so became a song, much like “The Star Spangled Banner” was.
My church changes hymns frequently to make them PC.
It shows up during Advent and Christmas since everyone know the words to Christmas carols.
Here’s some of the PC versions:
Hark! The herald angels sing. Glory to the Christ child, bring.
O Come all ye faithful. O come in adoration.
Joy to the world! Let earth with praises ring.
In the 80’s the church I attended had a hymnal that had the “die” lyrics, and it wasn’t a very old hymnal, so I imagine changing that word to “live” is fairly recent.
Sometimes it wasn’t censorship but shifting political attitudes that made Cole Porter change his songs. The original lyrics for “You’re the Top” contained a positive reference to Benito Mussolini. However, events during the 1930’s soon made such sentiments unpopular and the line was changed.
