School Days (1907 song)
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- For the Chuck Berry song see School Days (song)
"School Days", also known as "School Days (When We Were a Couple of Kids)", is an American popular song written in 1907 by Will Cobb and Gus Edwards. Its subject is a mature man and woman looking back sentimentally on their lifelong friendship and their days in primary school.
The best known part of the song is its chorus:
- School days, school days
- Dear old Golden Rule days
- 'Reading and 'riting and 'rithmetic
- Taught to the tune of the hick'ry stick
- You were my queen in calico
- I was your bashful, barefoot beau
- You wrote on my slate, "I Love You, Joe"
- When we were a couple o' kids
[edit] Recordings
"School Days" has been recorded many times over the years. Byron G. Harlan was an early recording star who made it a hit. Billy Murray and Ada Jones also sang it as memorable duet, referenced decades later by Tiny Tim on one of his albums, in which he sang both parts, invoking his famous falsetto voice.
Louis Jordan recorded a jump blues version of "School Days" in 1949 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 was replaced with a twelve bar blues and the lyrics of most of the verses were replaced with nursery rhymes.
[edit] References in popular culture
- The kids are singing "School Days" at the very beginning of the South Park episodes "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" and "Cancelled".
- In the 1995 movie Forget Paris, the characters played by Billy Crystal and Debra Winger come out of a theater viewing of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. Crystal's character says he was not impressed with the music, specifically citing the Phantom's "main number" ("The Music of the Night") as being a "rip-off" of "School Days". As proof, he sings the first verses of "School Days" to show the apparent similarity between the two melodies.
