Okay, short and sweet…does anyone know the name of this song, that a truckload of Russians can be heard briefly singing in the 1969 Hitchcock film Topaz, and/or this song (a different one) featured in a medley (“Help Arrives”) at the end of 1963’s 55 Days at Peking?
I’ve wondered about both of them for a few years, now, and I just realized they were starting to blend in my hazy memory. 'Probably a good time to get them sorted out before I get too creaky.
The second one appears to be called “Help Arrives” ! From the original
soundtrack of that film.
'Sorry, looks like I messed up with that second link—the mystery Russian song included in the “Help Arrives” medley would be at this point in the track.
…could I fire up my one allotted “bump,” to open up the work week?
I’ll get Inna on it later today… she grew up in the Soviet Union and may know these.
Just sounds like movie wallpaper.
Fair point.
In the soundtrack of a movie, it’s not always easy to tell sometimes what music was pre-existing and what was written for the film.
#1. Traditional Russian folk tune. Name unknown, sorry.
#2. Russian march music, familiar to Inna. She noted that whoever was playing/singing had a non-Russian accent. This one was a common march in the Imperial (Tsar era) army.
The second song is about two singing birds, one of them a canary the other a nightingale.
Wait! She found the original to #2…
Stupid discourse…
And on Spotify…
#1 is a Cossack tune. 43 seconds in and you will hear the melody…
Fantastic! Thank you so much, JohnT and Inna! Спасибо!
You are welcome! She enjoyed doing the research and was able to find #1 through the lyrics. One of her findings was one of these songs being sung by a hero of the Red Revolution (1917-1921).
Going to bump this for the opposite cross-cultural exchange. Apparently, it was a thing in Soviet Russia for musicians to get immigration visas to the US and UK, bump around for a year or three doing bar and coffee shop gigs, and then come back to the USSR and achieve success with all the amazing songs they “wrote”.
This is one of them:
Михаил Шуфутинский - Третье сентября (Песня '94) - YouTube
Now the above is a post-Soviet concert, but the song was big in the USSR at least five years prior to this. I swear it sounds AWFULLY FAMILIAR, but I just can’t place the original.
Anyone else recognize it?