Cadence Calls

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Teresa calling from San Antonio.

Well, hello, Teresa. What can we do for you? My question has to do with my father. My father was a member of the Great Generation. He was born in 1913, and when he was 18 years old, he joined the Army National Guard, and then he also served in World War II.

And something happened years ago when he was about 93 years old. We were driving around town running errands. And I told him that our last stop was right around the corner. And then out of the blue, he started singing a song. And I had never heard it before. And I asked him, I said, what is that song? And he said, well, that’s the song we used to sing when I was marching in the army, when we would march on base. And so I had him sing it for me a couple of times. It was kind of cute. And I have a very nice memory of that.

But I was just curious to know if anyone had maybe collected those songs, because I know that they sing when they march. And I was especially interested in the songs of the Great Generation because, you know, we have fewer and fewer of those soldiers around. And I just thought it’d be sad to lose that. So I didn’t know if somebody had maybe put a collection of those together.

Oh, great question, Teresa. Do you remember the song then?

Actually, yes.

Oh, will you sing it?

I’m singing it for my family.

Yeah, we’d love to hear it if you don’t mind singing it.

Oh, no, that’d be fine. I’ll apologize in advance in case it offends anybody. But this is how it went.

So he sang, around the corner and under a tree, a sergeant major proposed to me. Who would marry you? I would like to know. For every time I look at your face, it makes me want to go around the corner and under a tree. And it just keeps going.

That’s nice.

Oh, my. That’s one of the cleanest of those songs I’ve ever heard.

Yeah, there are quite a few of them.

Oh, is it? Pretty, pretty obscene.

Yeah.

You know, I don’t know of a collective work of these. I know a little bit of folklore work has been done. I’ve seen a few papers about this. There’s the odd recording here and there, some articles and stuff. But I don’t know of any comprehensive effort to collect all of them before they’re all gone. I do know that there’s plenty of them out there. But, man, these are cadence calls is what they’re known as. They’re Jody calls sometimes because Jody is the guy who’s at home sleeping with your girl when you’re out fighting wars, driving a Cadillac.

Yeah.

I’ve heard these a lot. They’re still sung, by the way, just so you know. They’re still sung in the military, usually the cleaner versions. I’ve heard them in Balboa Park here in San Diego, the sailors running time all the way up from the water up through the park and back around again. It’s really quite uplifting. It kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. You kind of want to join in.

Yeah, I remember hearing a bunch of them when I was working as a newspaper reporter and following a soldier through basic training at Fort Knox. And boy, I mean, they tried to clean it up when the lady reporter was there, but I heard some pretty filthy stuff. I mean, he’s very creative. Don’t get me wrong. He’s very creative. But wow. But granted, it surprises me that nobody’s gone and collected all those.

Well, that’s the best that I know. I mean, I’m not in the folklore business. If one of our listeners is, surely they will set us correct on that. But now is the time, probably. One thing you might be interested in, Teresa, is that these actually aren’t that old. The current kind of way that we think of these cadence calls, these songs for marching, really kind of came about during World War II. And we believe we know the guy who started it. Do you know this story?

Generally understood in the folklore business that his name was Willie Duckworth. Apparently in 1944, they were marching and somebody caught wind of this particular group that was singing the song. And Willie Duckworth was African-American. And so it’s a direct connection to the work songs used in the South that come from the slave tradition, which is really interesting. These songs that you would all sing together so that you had the timing right when you were working in the field. You had the timing right when you were working in the meals. You had the timing right when you were doing whatever. Chain gangs. Yeah, if you didn’t have the timing right, it could mean an injury because somebody’s hammer was going to come down where your hand just was. Also, it makes the spirits lift and it makes the time pass. So it’s really, really interesting stuff.

I get that. It’s just a very special memory for me. And he’s passed away now, but I think about all the great men and the Great Generation that we revere. And I would hate for some of that to be lost. It’s kind of a lost art, I guess. So maybe somebody will think about that. But I’ll always remember that moment when he sang that particular song, out of the blue. And it’s a very special memory for me.

One of the things I would encourage you to do, there is a recording out there, a very early recording. I believe it’s called V Records. I might have that wrong, where they have a very early version of these cadence calls. It’s a clean version. And you can find it on YouTube and a couple other places. It sounds like it was done in a studio and not recorded in the field, but really, really interesting. Obviously, if somebody records this, it needs to be a book and it needs to be a video or at least an audio recording, right?

Absolutely.

I hope grant proposals are being written as we speak.

I hope so. That would be nice.

Yes. Thank you so much, Teresa, for sharing this memory.

Oh, I loved it. Thank you so much for hearing me out.

Sure thing.

Thank you.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

All righty. Bye-bye.

Actually, it’s called V-Disc. Look for it from 1944. And it actually comes with some narration where they’re actually talking about the cadence calls and how they discover them. This is one of the ways that we know probably this is where this really got started in the American military.

Very cool.

Yeah, VDISC, just the letter V-D-I-S-C.

Okay.

And look for the name Willie Duckworth and you’ll find it.

Willie Duckworth.

That’s so cool.

Well, bring us your linguistic heirlooms and share them with everybody else. 877-929-9673 is the number to call. Or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.