Recently I was thinking about that wonderful old Ahlert and Young song I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter, and I wanted to make sure I had the lyrics right. So I did what most people do these days: I did an internet search. And I discovered, to my utter disbelief, that on the internet the lyrics did not exist.
Oh sure, there’s a Wikipedia page, where you can learn that Fats Waller had a huge hit with this song in 1935, and that since then it has been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Bing Crosby to Billy Williams (#3 on the charts) to Nat King Cole, Barry Manilow, Dean Martin, Scatman Crothers, and even Bill Haley (in a rock and roll version, of course). And if you type “I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter” into Google – with the quotes – you get about 136000 hits. But not a single one of those pages has the actual song lyrics themselves. Not one.
I was mentioning this over dinner recently to a group that consisted mainly of hip New York new media artists. They were pretty unanimous in their response of “Who cares?” Around the table there was general dismissal of my concern that great popular culture of eras past should be alive and celebrated on the internet. To me their attitude was incomprehensible. What are we here for if not to inspire those who come after, to pass the torch of what is best in our time and in times before, so that its light might illuminate the minds of the future?
Yes, I know you can purchase these recordings and transcribe the words for yourself, and I’m sure there are books with the lyrics printed in them. But we think of the internet as a vast and growing reflection of our culture; yet it has these sorts of strange and inexplicable holes in it. And it seems that many of the intellectuals of this new medium simply do not care.
Today I mentioned the strange absence of these song lyrics to my uncle Artie, who is in his seventies. He knew exactly what I was talking about, and seemed rather appalled that anyone would think of great song lyrics as disposable. Of course they were all right there in his head, fresh as the first day he heard them. And what did he do? He sat right down and wrote me out the lyrics:
I’m gonna sit right down
And write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you
I’m gonna whisper words so sweet
Gonna sweep me off my feet
Some kisses on the Bottom
I’ll be glad I got ’em
I’ll write and say I hope you’re feeling better
And close with love the way you do
I’m gonna sit right down
And write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you.
So there you have it – now he song is on the internet. Soon it will be up on Google. Then I’m gonna sit right down and search there for this lyric. And make believe it came from you.
I do those internet searches for lyrics frequently and the other thing that’s desperately sad about the results is how very wrong they often are. In my mind’s eye I imagine some 13-year-old girl sitting down and writing out what she hears as she listens to the song the second or third time and so often the result are like those amusing mishearings you make when you’re very young.
But lo and behold, if the real lyrics are lost forever, at least the misheard ones are saved! Whilst looking for a good example, I ran across this: http://www.kissthisguy.com/
Named for their number one misheard lyric, Jimi Henrix’, Purple Haze: “‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy.”
Hi Ken,
Thank you for doing this work and I’d like to add the two verses and correct the lyrics-your uncle got it almost right (from the original sheet music, lyrics by Joe Young and music by Fred E. Ahlert-Fats often collaborated with him.) Fats Waller did not write this great song, but he made it a hit, as he did with almost any song he performed, such was his popularity.
I’m doing a Fats Waller project in the Ottawa Jazz Festival, Ottawa, Canada (http://www.ottawajazzfestival.com/en/events) on June 21, 2008 with another vocalist and a five piece band. We’re calling it ” Helen Glover Fats Waller Project – Fun with Fats”. And he certainly did have fun.
Just check him out on You Tube.
I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter (1935)
Verse 1:
The mailman passes by and I just wonder why
He never stops to ring my front door bell
There’s not a single line from that dear old love of mine
No, not a word since I last heard “farewell”.
Chorus:
I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you
I’m gonna write words, oh, so sweet
They’re gonna knock me off my feet
A lot of kisses on the bottom
I’ll be glad I got ’em
I’m gonna smile and say, “I hope you’re feeling better”
And close “with love” the way you do
I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you
Verse 2:
Since you stopped writing me I’m worried as can be
I miss each little love word now and then
You’re in my ev’ry thought, you don’t know how much I’ve fought
To find a way to feel O.K. again
Chorus: I’m gonna sit right down etc
I hope this can be posted on the Internet, wherever you’re going to put it.
“One never knows, do one”. Fats Waller
Keep up the good work,
Helen Glover
“There’s a bathroom on the right…”
(There’s a bad moon on the rise.)
Apparently, John Fogerty of CCR thinks it’s hilarious that people mistake that lyric.
I had a similar “Looking for one thing, could only find the other” moment last week. Have you seen the new “Paradise by the GoPhone Light” commercial starring Meatloaf? In showing it to my kids, I decided to look up the original “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” video. Turns out that it’s all over on the Web.
In watching that video, we got to wondering, “Who is singing the female part in the video?” That turns out to be a really hard thing to Google for. Every query that says anything about “Meatloaf” and “Paradise” only comes up with yet another of the dozens of links to the video! I finally did figure out how to find it — Wikipedia turns out to play a significant role. It helps that there’s an oddity about this video. The woman singing is not the woman in the video. (Hint: Dig into this one and see if you can figure out the connection between Meatloaf and Robbie Benson.)
What’s interesting about my hunt and yours, Ken, is that Google is giving you what it thinks you want, what the most popular search results are for that query. But if you’re looking for something strange, the algorithm really makes it hard to hunt around it.
The version of Write Myself A Letter sung by Billy Williams in the mid 50s will remain in my heart forever!!
Ken: I came across your website looking, duh, for these lyrics! I have been a fan of the song for a long time, but saw a local guitar and sax duo perform it last night and need, need, needed to know the lyrics today. I was shocked when none of the big lyric houses gave me any results. Thank you! And yes, google is a menace. And yes, I still use it constantly.