Spanish Is the Loving Tongue (A Border Affair)

DESCRIPTION: The singer tells of his love for (and language lessons from) a Mexican girl. "But one time I had to fly For a foolish gambling fight." Though the affair may have been a mistake, he still misses her and remembers her last words to him: "Adios, mi corazon."
AUTHOR: Words: Charles Badger Clark
EARLIEST DATE: 1920; apparently copyrighted 1919. Set to music by Bill Simon in 1925
KEYWORDS: love separation abandonment gambling fight foreigner
FOUND IN: US(Ro,SW)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Thorp/Logsdon-SongsOfTheCowboys, pp. 10-11, "A Border Affair" (1 text)
Fife/Fife-CowboyAndWesternSongs 52, "Border Affair" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, p. 404, "A Border Affair" (1 text)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 278-279, "Spanish Is a Loving Tongue" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 141, "Spanish Is The Loving Tongue" (1 text)
DT, SPANLOVE*
ADDITIONAL: John I. White, _Git Along, Little Dogies: Songs and Songmakers of the American West_, 1975 (page references are to the 1989 University of Illinois Press edition), pp. 126-136, "Badger Clark, Poet of Yesterday's West" (1 text, 1 tune plus discussion and a short biography of Clark)
Roud #11085
RECORDINGS:
Tex Fletcher, "The Border Affair (Mi Amor, Mi Corazon)" (Decca 5300, 1936)
Pete Seeger, "Spanish is the Loving Tongue" (on PeteSeeger30)
NOTES [60 words]: A version of this is printed in volume 38, number 2 of Sing Out! (1993), p. 70 credits the music to Billy Simon. This seems to be based on the statements of Katie Lee, but the information in the Sing Out! article by itself is not sufficient for me to credit Simon. But White supports the attribution to Simon, which strikes me as much better evidence. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: FCW052

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