"What Has Become of 'Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo'"
by Bernard and Robinson (The Dixie Stars)
Record courtesy of Clarence Johnson |
"What Has Become of Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo" is evidence of that hopeless search for the past. Among all of the Great War songs, the most famous was the unpublished, often scurrilous, multi-versed French ditty, "Mademoiselle From Armentieres." It told the tale, variously related, of an inn-keeper's daughter who is chaste and virginal and loose and available by turns—according to who is singing. The original went something like this:
Mademoiselle from Armentieres
Parlez Vou?
Mademoiselle from Armentieres
Parlez Vou?
You might forget the shot and shell
But you'll never forget the Mademoiselle.
Hinky Dinky Parlez Vou.
Dissertations could be filled with the variations of this simple ditty. But in 1924, the question is "What Has Become of Hinky Dinky Parley Voo?" The essence of this stage-routine song is the loss of the camaraderie and companionship developed in the trenches. The bon vivant feeling of standing shoulder to shoulder with your mates and fighting the evil Boche is built into the memory of the song that was sung while the battle raged. There is a sadness inherent in this light-hearted lyric that was probably not intended. It is the same sadness that attends the moment, in Paris, only months after the Armistice, when Teddy Roosevelt, Jr and twenty A.E.F. officers founded the American Legion "to preserve the memories and incidents of our association in the great war . . . to consecrate and sanctify our comradeship." The nostalgia of the recording seeks the same "romantic idiom," as it has been called, that fostered the name of "Legion." "Crusaders" was the only alternative, the record shows, that was offered.
Listen: Streaming Real Audio | Windows Media Audio
