I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

DESCRIPTION: "At the end of the rainbow there's happiness And to find it how often I've tried But my life is a race just a wild goose chase...." "I'm always chasing rainbows, Watching clouds drifting by." Nothing the singer tries ever works out
AUTHOR: Words: Joseph McCarthy / Music: Harry Carroll (source: sheet music) (tune based on Chopin's "Fantaisie-Impromptu") (source: Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar)
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (source: Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar)
KEYWORDS: hardtimes | rainbow
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REFERENCES (1 citation):
Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar, p. 291, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" (1 text)
NOTES [110 words]: Made popular by its appearance in the play "Oh, Look!" of 1917, and apparently (according to its Wikipedia entry) used in several movies, but I have no reason to think it was ever traditional.
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, p. 218, estimates that this was the third most popular song in America in 1917, peaking at #1 in January 1919 (#1 for 1918 being J. Will Callahan and Lee G. Roberts's "Smiles"); the song had another hot spell in 1946, when it reached #4 in February of that year (perhaps as a result of its use in the film "The Dolly Sisters"). - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: PSoS291

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