Word: ballading
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...swift antics by a trio of abject, greasy nondescripts whose entrance prompts Mr. Healy to remark: "The pool rooms are empty." This group becomes embroiled with a wrestling bear which seems more human than any of them except Mr. Healy. Later the wrestlers try a fearsome barber-shop ballad to the accompaniment of Mr. Healy's orchestra. These scenes are blunt, vulgar, hilarious. A plump-cheeked brunette, Betsy Rees, might well be given more time...
...whaddya wanna do, sing 'Sonny Boy?'"That is Broadway's latest wisecrack to victims who complain unduly, or to friends grown maudlin in their cups. In England, "Sonny Boy," a super-saccharine ballad of child love introduced by Blackface Singer Al Jolson in his latest sound film, is still new and popular. More, it has become a Conservative campaign song...
...custom of singing carols had a definite Christian origin. Early Franciscan friars, strolling through Italy, put the tale of the birth of the Babe into homely ballad form, the better to win simple hearts. Over the Alps they went, throughout the World, singing of the sweet mystery of Bethlehem. Their songs lingered behind them. The Spanish peasant added episodes out of his dark Moorish imagination. In one group of Spanish carols the three wise men become gypsies, who read the palms and tell the fortunes of Jesus, Mary, Joseph. In Germany an ancient custom still endures, in some old-world...
Much of Professor Smith's volume is given over to a thorough discussion of the development of the popular ballad...
Poet Rudyard Kipling insulted Queen Victoria with a Barrack Room Ballad. It hailed, "the Widow at Windsor," rollicked that she sent her soldiers to "barbarious wars," bellowed that she had bought " 'alf 'o Creation" with English blood...