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After The Ball
Words and music by Charles K. Harris; Air, Waltz or Quadrille. Pa., Arizona, Widely known.
ARTIST: Early version by Vernon Dalhart; Bradley Kincaid; Fiddlin’ John Carson and Blue Sky Boys;
CATEGORY: Jazz, blues and Tin Pan Alley songs; DATE: 1892;
RECORDING INFO: Vernon Dalhart 1925- Co 15030-D; Bradley Kincaid 1929- GE 15738-A; Fiddlin’ John Carson 1930- W 404620-B; Blue Sky Boys. In Concert, 1964, Rounder 0236, LP (1989), cut# 5; Fontanna and his Orchestra. Gay Nineties, Palace M-653, LP (196?), cut#A.06; Kincaid, Bradley. Mountain Ballads and Old Time Songs, Old Homestead OHCS-107, LP (197?), cut#B.06; John Fahey (After the Ball- 2001);
OTHER NAMES: “After the Ball Is Over”; "Life On the Ocean Wave," "Over the Ocean Waves," "After the Roundup."
SOURCES: Read 'Em and Weep, Arco, Sof (1959/1926), p169; McCullough (Pa.), 1959 [Bayard]. Bayard (Dance to the Fiddle), 1981; No. 637B, pg. 561. Ruth (Pioneer Western Folk Tunes), 1948; No. 133, pg. 47. (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc).
NOTES: "C Major (Kartchner): G Major (Bayard). Standard. ABB. Played by Arizona fiddler Kenner C. Kartchner, who said "I remember this back to 1892. Guess it is much older." In fact, the song was not at all older, having been copyrighted in November, 1892, the composition of Poughkeepsie, New York, born composer, banjo player and lyricist Charles K. Harris (Fuld)." (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc). The 1890s witnessed the emergence of a commercial popular music industry in the United States. Sales of sheet music, enabling consumers to play and sing songs in their own parlors, skyrocketed during the “Gay Nineties,” led by Tin Pan Alley, the narrow street in midtown Manhattan that housed the country’s major music publishers and producers. Although Tin Pan Alley was established in the 1880s, it only achieved national prominence with the first “platinum” song hit in American music history—Charles K. Harris’s “After the Ball”—that sold two million pieces of sheet music in 1892 alone. “After the Ball’s” sentimentality ultimately helped sell over five million copies of sheet music, making it the biggest hit in Tin Pan Alley’s long history. Typical of most popular 1890s tunes, the song was a tearjerker, a melodramatic evocation of lost love. Numerous parodies were written to this sentimental favorite, reducing it to nonsense.
A little maiden climbed an old man's knee
Begged for a story, "Do, uncle, please!"
Why are you single? Why live alone?
Have you no babies? Have you no home?"
"I had a sweetheart, years, years ago
Where she is now, pet, you will soon know.
List to the story, I'll tell it all
I believ'd her faithless, after the ball."
Chorus: After the ball is over,
After the break of morn,
After the dancers' leaving
After the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching
If you could read them all
Many the hopes that have vanished
After the ball.
Bright lights were flashing in the grand ballroom,
Softly the music playing sweet tunes;
There came my sweetheart, my love, my own,
"I wish some water, leave me alone."
When I returned, dear, there stood a man
Kissing my sweetheart, as lovers can.
Down fell the glass, pet, broken, that's all
Just as my heart was, after the ball.
Long years have passed, child, I've never wed
True to my lost love, though she is dead.
She tried to tell me, tried to explain
I would not listen, pleadings were vain.
One day a letter came from that man,
He was her brother, the letter ran;
That's why I'm lonely, no home at all
I broke her heart, pet, after the ball.
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