"School Days", also known as "School Days (When We Were a Couple of Kids)", is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 popular song

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

 written in 1907

1907 in music

-Events:*February 21 - Frederick Delius's opera A Village Romeo and Juliet is premiered in Berlin.* General Porfirio Díaz legendarily orders a mariachi band to wear upper-class clothing when they played for the visiting United States Secretary of State Elihu Root; this is the beginning of modern...

 by Will Cobb and Gus Edwards

Gus Edwards (songwriter)

Gus Edwards was an American songwriter and vaudevillian. He also organised his own theatre companies and was a music publisher.-Early life:...

. Its subject is a mature man and woman looking back sentimentally on their lifelong friendship and their days in primary school

Primary education

A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...

.

The best known part of the song is its chorus

Refrain

A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...

:

School days, school days

Dear old Golden Rule

Ethic of reciprocity

The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim, ethical code, or moralitythat essentially states either of the following:* : One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself....

 days

'Reading and 'riting and 'rithmetic

The three Rs

The three Rs are the foundations of a basic skills-orientated education program within schools: Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic.The phrase is attributed to a toast given by Sir William Curtis around 1825...

Taught to the tune of the hick'ry stick

You were my queen in calico

Calico (fabric)

Calico is a plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may contain unseparated husk parts, for example. The fabric is less coarse and thick than canvas or denim, but owing to its unfinished and undyed appearance, it is still very cheap. Originally from the...

I was your bashful, barefoot beau

And you wrote on my slate

Slate (writing)

A writing slate is a piece of flat material used as a medium for writing.In the 19th century, writing slates were made of slate, which is more durable than paper and was cheap at the time when paper was expensive. It was used to allow children to practice writing...

, "I Love You So"

When we were a couple o' kids

Recordings

"School Days" has been recorded many times over the years. Byron G. Harlan

Byron G. Harlan

Byron G. Harlan was an American singer from Kansas, a comic minstrel singer and balladeer who often recorded with Arthur Collins. The two together were often billed as "Collins & Harlan".-Solo recordings:1899...

 was an early recording star who made it a hit. Billy Murray

Billy Murray (singer)

William Thomas "Billy" Murray was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century...

 and Ada Jones

Ada Jones

Ada Jones was a popular mezzo-soprano who recorded from 1905 to the early 1920s. She was born in Lancashire, England but moved with her family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of six in 1879...

 also sang it as memorable duet

Duet (music)

A duet is a musical composition for two performers. In classical music, the term is most often used for a composition for two singers or pianists; with other instruments, the word duo is also often used. A piece performed by two pianists performing together on the same piano is referred to as...

, referenced decades later by Tiny Tim

Tiny Tim (musician)

Tiny Tim , , born in Manhattan, was an American singer and ukulele player. He was most famous for his rendition of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" sung in a distinctive high falsetto/vibrato voice.-Rise to fame:Born to Lebanese parents in 1932, Khaury displayed musical talent at a very young age...

 on one of his albums, in which he sang both parts, invoking his famous falsetto

Falsetto

Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...

 voice.

Louis Jordan

Louis Jordan

Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...

 recorded a jump blues

Jump blues

Jump blues is an up-tempo blues usually played by small groups and featuring horns. It was very popular in the 1940s, and the movement was a precursor to the arrival of rhythm and blues and rock and roll...

 version of "School Days" in 1949

1949 in music

-Events:*February 4 – Ljuba Welitsch makes her Metropolitan Opera début in Salome.*September 5 - Wagnerian tenor Walter Widdop appears at The Proms, singing "Lohengrin's Farewell", the day before his sudden death at the age of 51....

 under the title "School Days (When We Were Kids)". Although it credited the original songwriters, Jordan's record had little in common with earlier versions of the song other than the words of the chorus. The original melody

Melody

A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

 was replaced with a twelve bar blues

Twelve bar blues

The 12-bar blues is one of the most popular chord progressions in popular music, including the blues. The blues progression has a distinctive form in lyrics and phrase and chord structure and duration...

 and the lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

 of most of the verses were replaced with nursery rhyme

Nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...

s.

External links

• "School Days", Byron G. Harlan
  Byron G. Harlan
  Byron G. Harlan was an American singer from Kansas, a comic minstrel singer and balladeer who often recorded with Arthur Collins. The two together were often billed as "Collins & Harlan".-Solo recordings:1899...
  
  (Edison Gold Moulded 9562, 1907)—Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.
• "School Days" (Sheet music)"—The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Johns Hopkins University.
• "School Days" lyrics
• Lyrics to the Louis Jordan version
• Parody lyrics written by Harry H. Montgomery
• Original 1907 Edition