58. Only An Old Beer Bottle This is another popular favorite known by both college men and women, which is sung at almost any kind of informal campus song fest. ¥, Edson Richmond reports learning this song as far back as 1930 from an aunt who sang it in the 1920's, The earliest variant I have discovered is a text collected by James Breckenridge in New York in 1945 (NYSHAFA Br), set to the tune of "Aloha Oe". Printed appearances, none of them very much different from one another textually, include the IOCA Song Fest (1948, p, 9), the New Song Fest (1955, p. 116), and Songs For Swingin' Housemothers (1961, p, 14), The song is also given in "Old American Ballads" (1952, p, 36), and there are over twenty texts collected at Michigan State in the IUFA, Isolated variants have also been reported from Indiana University, Western Kentucky and elsewhere. Variation in the lyrics of this song, in common with others of a similar semi-popular nature among college students (#56-64 in this collection), is noticeable but distinctly minor in character. An excerpt from a text collected by Phyllis Southman at Michigan State in 1948, when compared to the field item below, illustrates this kind of secondary textual change: Just an old beer bottle Floating in from sea: Just an old beer bottle Came floating in to me... The tune most often listed by the students at Michigan State for these lyrics is "Sing A Song of Colleges (or Cities)," a piece with which I am unfamiliar. The reader will note, however, that the music is very close to that used for the B text of "Just Put Her in the Corner" (#3). 58, Clay McMullen, Ray Brandell, and Forest Redding learned this variant in the Indiana University Kappa Delta Rho fraternity. They sang it on December 6, 1963. 'Twas only an old beer bottle A' floating on the foam, 'Twas only an old beer bottle A thousand miles from home. And in it was a message With these words written on: "Whoever finds this bottle Find the beer all gone," An Annotated Field Collection of Songs from the American College Student Oral Tradition by Richard Reuss. Pgs 299-301. See online here: https://archive.org/details/1965annotatedfieldcollectionofsongs/page/299/mode/2up?q=%22old+beer+bottle%22
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