THE BOOK AND THE NUMBERS 35
out tonight with me / Honey, here’s the way its going to be,”
but let us concentrate on the chorus to the song, which is the
part everyone knows. The stanzas of the chorus fall into the
standard AABA pattern. The music of A is repeated immedi-
ately in the second A, then new musical material forms B (the
release or the bridge), then the A tune is heard for a third time.
The rhyme pattern also shifts in B from the couplet plus re-
frain of A to a quatrain, as follows:
A
Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry
When I take you out in the surrey,
When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top!
A
Watch thet fringe and see how it flutters
When I drive them high-steppin’ strutters!
Nosey-pokes’ll peek through their shutters and their eyes will pop!
B
The wheels are yeller, the upholstery’s brown,
The dashboard’s genuine leather,
With isinglass curtains y’c’n roll right down
In case there’s a change in the weather;
A
Two bright side lights, winkin’ and blinkin,’
Ain’t no finer rig, I’m a-thinkin’!
You c’n keep yer rig if you’re thinkin’ ’at I’d keer to swap
Fer that shiny little surrey with the fringe on the top!Hammerstein’s lyric reads the play’s dialogue closely and clev-
erly, with the isinglass windows turning into isinglass curtains,
succession of verses. Twentieth-century songs do away with the narrative pur-
pose of the verse, which is typically heard only once and is introductory, and
concentrate on the chorus (now usually sung by the solo vocalist), which car-
ries the main burden of the tune. Jerome Kern actually called the chorus “the
burthen.” The standard authority on the history of popular songs is Hamm,
Yesterdays: Popular Song in America.