Things I Don't Like to See

DESCRIPTION: "I don't like things that look queer to the eye" like ladies reading sonnets or wearing bonnets or corsets, or young boys smoking cigars exclaiming "I'm one of the boys," or broke Broadway dandies, or finely dressed wives of bankrupt men.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1865 (broadside, LOCSinging sb40560b)
KEYWORDS: vanity marriage clothes nonballad children drugs
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Owens-TexasFolkSongs-1ed, pp. 232-233, "I Don't Like to See Boys" (1 text, 1 tune)
Owens-TexasFolkSongs-2ed, pp. 126-127, "I Don't Like to See Boys" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #2556, p. 173, "What I Don't Like to See" (1 reference)
Roud #21057
RECORDINGS:
Uncle Dave Macon, "Things I Don't Like to See" (Blue Bird B-8279, 1939; rec. 1938)
BROADSIDES:
LOCSinging, sb40560b, "What I Don't Like To See" ("A song I'll sing now in jingle and rhymes"), H. De Marsan (New York), 1861-1864
SAME TUNE:
What We Want ("What we want is reform, all the people well know") (Foner, p. 138)
Things You Don't Often See ("Kind friends, once again I appear before you, And as you seem craving for something that's new") (by Charles R. Thatcher) (Thatcher-ColonialMinstrel-Songsters, pp. 160-161)
NOTES [101 words]: Owens-TexasFolkSongs-2ed is close to the LOCSinging broadside and shows no influence of the Uncle Dave Macon recording. Most telling is that Owens-TexasFolkSongs-2ed retains the four-line refrain, rather than Macon's two-line refrain. The two Owens-TexasFolkSongs-2ed verses are shared by the broadside and the recording, so verses found only in the broadside or only in the recording are not in the book.
Broadside LOCSinging sb40560b: H. De Marsan dating per Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS
Last updated in version 5.0
File: Ow2E126

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