Carl Wiser (Songfacts): The book sounds fascinating. I'm really glad somebody kind of cracked the code on this, because I'm also a huge sports fan in addition to being a music buff.

Jerry Silverman (Jerry): Well, that's what I do, as a musicologist and a folklorist, as well as a guitarist and a folk singer, I always look around for the less-than-obvious repertoire. Although I've done a lot of simple "how to play the guitar" books and a little collection of American folk songs. But I've always been interested in stuff that's a little bit off the beaten path. It's amazing to think that baseball songs are off the beaten path. I mean, it's the American sport.

Songfacts: Yeah, it's always struck me that there haven't been many popular baseball songs over the last 50 years or so. If you're looking for any kind of baseball reference you have to go back to Simon and Garfunkel and think about how Joe DiMaggio gets mentioned.

Jerry: And that's not even a baseball song. It just happens to mention Joe DiMaggio. When you say "baseball song," everybody says, "Oh yeah, Take Me Out To The Ball Game." And they think that's the be-all end-all of baseball songs. And it's not the be-all end-all, it's just the middle - the mid point, you might say, in the history of it, although somehow that one miraculously, mysteriously, caught on and became the national anthem of baseball songs. Who knows why? That's the way it was. Or the way it is.

Songfacts: Now, what's the origin of that song?

Jerry: Well, the origin is it was composed by a Tin Pan Alley composer. It's as simple as that. I mean, Jack Norworth, who wrote it, was the composer of many, many songs. And that was just one of the songs that he wrote. Some of them are popular, were popular in his day, some of them were less than popular, I suppose. It's just somehow or other that one clicked. I'm just trying to see how… looking up… if I can think of some other songs that he wrote. Yeah, he wrote such immortals as, "Put Your Arms Around Me Honey, Hold Me Tight," "I'll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time," "Shine On Harvest Moon," and the unforgettable, "Oh, How She Could Yacky Hacky Wicky Wacky Woo" in 1960. How's that for an unforgettable title? I'm not sure what that's all about. But that sounded like it was a precursor to the Hawaiian song craze of the late '20s, with pseudo-Hawaiian lyrics.

Songfacts: So Jack Norworth he was doing his job, he was writing a hit song…

Jerry: He was a Tin Pan Alley composer, cranking 'em out. And his wife was Nora Bays who was a very, very famous vaudeville singer. So that's a good combination. You write the songs and your wife sings them, and by golly, you… it's a hit machine.

Songfacts: Was the object in the Tin Pan Alley days to sell sheet music?

Jerry: Yeah. I mean, that was the name of the game, and it is the name of the game. I mean, only now sheet music is called CDs, but it's the principle of creating a product in whatever format the era presents, whether it's sheet music, or 78 RPM discs, or tape, or whatever, and then hope somebody will buy it. The way they promoted them, of course, was to have some guy play the piano in a music store, and sing the song, and bang it out, and hope that people would listen to it. By 1908 there were recordings already. I mean, scratchy ones by our standards. But the record industry was kicked in and people were buying records. People were playing the piano and learning the songs from the sheet music. They never dreamed that 50 years later people would be playing the guitar and singing these songs, so they wrote them in keys that guitar players these days only could play in. What I've done with my book, the baseball songbook, is transpose songs where necessary into guitar-friendly keys, which every guitar player will recognize when he sees it, or she sees it. Nothing like E-flat or B-flat, but all just nice, simple guitar keys of C, D, G, A, and E.

Songfacts: Do you know how this song became a 7th-inning stretch song?

Jerry: No, I really don't. I think that the song itself was so popular that it just became identified with baseball, and I don't know if it was always a 7th-inning stretch song. I really don't know specifics, but it's really impossible to say why any one song in any genre becomes a hit. I mean, now the 7th-inning stretch song is "God Bless America." Go figure that one out. I mean, that's a sign of the times. It's pushed "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" off center field and into left field, so to speak, for a while. I hope it comes back, though. I'm getting tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" every time. Nothing wrong with Kate Smith, but I don't think she belongs in every ball game.

Songfacts: The chorus… has it remained the same over the years, or have there been any modifications?

Jerry: As far as I know, it's the same. The format of most pop songs, up to but not including the present day, the standard Tin Pan Alley pop songs, always included what you might call an intro, which nobody ever sings, and a verse which is the make-or-break part of the song. And that's exactly the case with "Take Me Out To The Ball Game." There's a whole introduction where the fellow is singing to his girl, inviting her to go here or go there, but all she wants to do is - and then comes the chorus - take me out to the ball game.

Songfacts: Okay. But even the Cracker Jacks, for instance...

Jerry: Well, Cracker Jack was being sold at the ball park, and it's a rhyme, it's a kind of a simple little rhyme, "Cracker Jack" and "never come back." But interestingly enough, this very same year, 1908, when "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" was written, and we're coming up to the 100th anniversary of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" next year, but the very same year another song was written by another great pop Tin Pan Alley composer, George M. Cohan, who wrote "Give My Regards To Broadway," and "Over There," and many other songs of the teens. It was called "Take Your Girl To The Ball Game."

And it's exactly... I mean, if there ever was a rip-off of the popular success of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," it's "Take Your Girl To The Ball Game." It has the same meter, you can almost sing the words "take your girl to the ball game" to the melody of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game." I mean, it's the same: It has the same number of syllables, the same stresses. It's a guy trying to take his girlfriend to Coney Island and other places. But all she wants to do is go to the ball game. So poor old George M. Cohan tried to cash in on the success of the previous song, and it didn't make it.

Songfacts: Okay. And what do you think is the next most popular baseball song after this one?

Jerry: I don't think there is any. I think it's that and nothing. I mean, have you ever heard a baseball song before, other than "Take Me Out To The Ball Game"? I never did.

Songfacts: You know, I remember going into the Baseball Hall of Fame up in Cooperstown, and you'd hear, I think, "Centerfield" by John Fogerty.

Jerry: Yeah, I'm being a little bit too brusque about this. Yes, there are some more recent songs. I mean, "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit The Ball," or "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio." But they never really caught on, as far as I can imagine. But they follow the tradition of pop songwriters saying, "Okay, now I think I'll write a song about baseball." But they never entered into the icon, or the iconic status of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game." It just didn't happen. Just as 99 percent of pop songs of any era just disappear, they sink to the bottom and only one remains.

Songfacts: In all your study of music, is there anything structurally about the song that you think lends itself to being so timeless?

Jerry: Well, it's an easy song to sing, obviously. It's a nice, catchy melody, a nice bouncing three-quarter-time song. But there's no intrinsic value to the song. I mean, it's just another pop song. The one by George M. Cohan could have been the song, "Take Your Girl To The Ball Game." I mean, melodically it's just as interesting, it tells virtually the same story, and who knows why that didn't make it? It's just one of these intangibles of popular taste that you just can't put your finger on. It's very hard to make an objective statement as to why one song is better.

Now, for example, there's a song that was written in 1906 called, "It's Great At A Baseball Game." And it was also written by two great American songwriters. One was Fred Fisher, who wrote "Peg Of My Heart," for example. And Richard Whiting, who wrote "Sleepytime Gal" and "Beyond The Blue Horizon," that was Bing Crosby's theme song, and "On The Good Ship Lollipop," that was Shirley Temple's theme song. So they wrote a song called "It's Great At A Baseball Game." And guess what? It's also a waltz in three-quarter time. And halfway through the chorus, it says, "get your hot buttered popcorn and peanuts." So they're also plugging the menu that you can have at a baseball game. It's not Cracker Jack, it's buttered popcorn and peanuts.

So, everybody had the same idea. And that's the one, "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" was the one that everybody remembers, and "It's Great At A Baseball Game" no one remembers. Although it's just as good a song.

Songfacts: Must have been a very shared experience, going to a baseball game, even back then.

Jerry: Well, you had to, because you couldn't listen to it on the radio, so either you went to a ball game, or you didn't go to a ball game. That was the end of it. There was no choice. When I was growing up, being a Dodger fan in the Bronx, of all places, I remember listening to Red Barber broadcasting the Dodger games. Now, when they were playing at Ebbets Field, the broadcast was live, so you could hear all the excitement. When they played out of town - I'm talking now about in the '40s - there was no live hookup to out-of-town baseball games. There was a tickertape. So you would hear "click-click-click-click-click" like a Wall Street stock ticker. And there was these long silences where you could imagine Red Barber is reading the tickertape. And then out comes from Red his very excited voice saying something like, "Musial hits a hot one to short; Pee Wee Reese scoops it up, throws it to first, to Dixie Walker; bang-bang play at first base." He didn't know anything about that. Probably what the tickertape said was "grounder to short, out at first." And he had to just dress it up.

There's a song in the book called "Toll Between Ticks," which in a kind of a sentimental way talks about listening to things over the tickertape, and one of the verses is about baseball. And "everything is told between ticks," that's the refrain. So in other words, you tell your story, whatever it is, and then you wait for the next tickertape little couple of inches of tape to come through, and you make up your story based upon that. So, songwriters picked up on what was going on at the time. If it was tickertape, they talked about tickertape. If it was kids playing hooky from school and rushing off to the ball game, there were songs about that. If there were songs about kill the umpire, they did that. There's all kinds of little references to the spirit of the times.

The songs that came right after the Civil War in the 1860s have a very military martial air. They sound like Civil War marching songs, and they talk about, "it's a bloodless sport." In other words, with a reference back to the bloody sport of the Civil War, and how we're all brothers again. So each era had its own point of reference.

Songfacts: And, these songs, at least "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," that's entered the public domain, right?

Jerry: Well, anything up to 1922 is in the public domain. The reason that the collection stops at 1922 is because after that they're not in the public domain, and it becomes a hassle with copyright clearances, with payment royalties, with getting permissions. And it's just not worth it. There were so many good songs that are in the public domain that it doesn't pay to look for trouble trying to get the one extra song that will land you in a lawsuit for infringement.

Songfacts: Okay, so you've performed a lot of these songs.

Jerry: Well, I'm starting to perform them. I actually have never performed them. I do lots of other kinds of performances. I mean, I'm a guitarist and a folk singer from way back. And I have been touring the country for the past few years with a very, very different kind of a project. I have a book called "The Undying Flame: Ballads And Songs Of The Holocaust." And I've been performing all over the country readings and songs from that collection. So that's been my performing concentration. But the baseball songs, I'm actually learning them as I'm going along now. I'm just like everybody else, the only song I ever heard was "Take Me Out To The Ball Game."

November 27, 2008

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