[78-L] Last Long Mile

Eòin f jfleming63 at msn.com.invalid
Mon Oct 23 19:15:11 PDT 2017


It's funny how one thing leads to another. Someone in the comments section of a blog I follow made the joke:

What kind of pants do Bostonians use to activate their cars?
Khakis
The joke only works if you say kah-kee, not kack-kee, which made me wonder how it was pronounced on recordings of  "The Last Long Mile". Of course, "kack" has to rhyme with "pack", but what about "khaki colored dust". Not feeling like trying to dig up my own copy, I searched the web and found this version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToQTmUl_6XA

The poster lists no information about the recording itself. The singer more like Charles Hart than Arthur Fields, but he is clearly singing "Clinton County dust", which Hart is not on my copy. The change in lyrics is explainable (as I commented on the site) by the song being subtitled "Plattsburg marching song, 1917" (sic), and is "Dedicated to the 17th Co., 18th P. T. R.". Plattsburgh is the county seat of Clinton County.

DAHR lists several takes of the Hart version, two of which seem to have been issued with the same label number. Is this one of the two issued takes (meaning that buyers would never be quite sure until they played it which lyrics they were going to get), the Fields recording, or what?






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