Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers

DESCRIPTION: Tongue-twister. "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts For Soldiers, Sister Susie's sewing in the kitchen on a 'Singer'...." ""Sister Susie's sewing... Such skill at sewing shirts Our shy young sister Susie shows!" Some soldiers complain. She sews other things
AUTHOR: Words: R. P. Weston / Music: Herman Darewski (1883-1947) (source: Wikipedia)
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: clothes wordplay soldier humorous
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar, pp. 243-244, "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers" (1 text)
Silverman-BalladsAndSongsOfWWI, pp. 28-30, "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT SISUSIE
RECORDINGS:
Al Jolson, "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers" (Columbia A-1671, 1915?)
SAME TUNE:
Dirty Danny's Digging Deeper Dug-outs (File: AWTBW118)
Sniper Sandy ("Sniper Sandy's Slaying Saxon Soldiers") (Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar, p. 380)
NOTES [255 words]: For the long list of songs by R. P. Weston, see the notes to "Goodbye-ee." Herman Darewski's other big hit was another wordplay song, "K-K-K-Katy."
I have no evidence that this song went into tradition, but it inspired enough added verses that I decided to list it for the Same Tune references. It was a hit for Al Jolson, whose name is mentioned on the sheet music.
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, p. 309, estimates that this was the twenty-fifth most popular song in America in 1915, peaking at #9 in February 1915 (#1 for the year being "A Little Bit of Heaven").
John Mullen, The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain during the First World War, French edition 2012; English edition, Ashgate, 2015, p. 90, implies that this song was the first of a fad for tongue-twisting songs; he lists eleven others that were popular from 1915-1917. Typical examples are "Which Switch is the Switch, Miss, for Ipswich?" and "Are Your Sighs the Same Size as My Sighs."
Weston and Darewski combined again to produce "Mother's Sitting Knitting Little Mittens for the Navy" in 1915, which can be found in Silverman-BalladsAndSongsOfWWI, pp. 66-69, which I'm sure was inspired by this song and in fact refers back to it; the chorus includes the lines "Sister Cissy's knitting socks, and Susie's sewing shirts for soldiers; Still, poor Papa props his pants up with a pin." But that song doesn't seem to have been nearly as popular. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: RcSSSSfS

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