Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag

DESCRIPTION: "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag And smile, smile, smile! While you've a Lucifer to light your fag, Smile, boys, that's the style; What's the use of worrying, It never was worthwhile; So pack up your troubles in your old kit bag...."
AUTHOR: Words: "George Asaf" (George Henry Powell) / Music: Felix Powell
EARLIEST DATE: 1915
KEYWORDS: nonballad war drugs campsong
FOUND IN: US Canada Ireland
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, p, 21, "Pack Up Your Troubles" (1 text, 1 tune)
Arthur-WhenThisBloodyWarIsOver, pp. 29-30, "Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag" (1 text)
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 184, "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag" (1 text)
Scott-TheBalladOfAmerica, p. 334, "Pack Up Your Troubles" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colonial-Dames-AmericanWarSongs, p. 160, "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile" (1 text)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, p. 419, "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag"
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 168, "Pack Up Your Troubles" (notes only)
Roud #24977
SAME TUNE:
Pack Up Your Dishes ("Pack up your dishes on your pantry shelves") (Harbin-Parodology, #263, p. 65; Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 124)
Pack Up Your Wieners ("Pack up your wieners in your old knapsack and hike, hike, hike") (Harbin-Parodology, #246, p. 61; Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 124; cf. Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 168)
Pack Up Your Duffle (Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 168)
Pack Up Your Trouble in Your Little Compact (Harbin-Parodology, #4, p. 9)
Dump All Your Troubles ("Dump all your troubles in your own back yard And boost, boost, boost") (Harbin-Parodology, #143, p. 43)
Pack Up Your Troubles (Scouting Version) ("Pack p your troubles in your old kit-bag And smile, smile, smile. Now we're a-hiking on the old Scout trail") (BoyScoutSongbook1997, p. 59)
NOTES [166 words]: This song is a rare example of a contest winner that went on to be really big. Francis, Day & Hunter was one of the major British music publishers of the early twentieth century, publishing forty to fifty pieces per month. "From the hour war was declared in 1914, a feverish search for new hits broke out. Francis & Day organized a competition for a wartime song, and first prize was taken by 'Pack Yp Your Troubles in You Old Kit Bag" (Mullen, p. 18).
According to Hischak, p. 271, this "is the British hit song that was equally popular with American troops during World War One. Adele Rowland sang the Felix Powell (music) and George Asaf (lyric) marching song in Her Soldier Boy (1916), and the next year there were popular recordings by James F. Harrison and the Knickerbocker Quartet and by Reginald Werrenrath.
Gardner, p. 317, estimates that this was the eleventh most popular song in America in 1917, peaking at #2 in June 1917 (#1 for the year being George M. Cohan's "Over There"). - RBW
Bibliography

Gardner: Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000
Hischak: Thomas S. Hischak, The American Musical Theatre Song Encyclopedia (with a Foreword by Gerald Bordman), Greenwood Press, 1995
Mullen: John Mullen, The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain during the First World War, French edition 2012; English edition, Ashgate, 2015

Last updated in version 6.8
File: SBoA334

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