Talk:Bert & I

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Dubious[edit]

We have

A number of well-worn sayings and rehashed jokes have their roots in Bert & I stories. One common phrase ... "You can't get there from here" [is an example].

I am willing to scream "false, false, false", as the only other plausible account is that a reasonable reader will infer too much in reading the editor's intent, as i have done; in that case the editor was reckless even if not technically in error. In fact, a probable example is the statement on tonite's broadcast of Says You!' that "You can't get there from here" originated from Dodge's work.
   I'm working on finding the scholarly sources (the death in 1884 of the greatest star of Kit, the Arkansas Traveller is a lead twd hard evidence of earlier origination), and; Catherine Marshall Vineyard's thesis is likely to push it back much further. It's also unlikely that Jimmie Driftwood (1907–1998) started including that line to his recordings of the fiddle-piece/dialogue act after 1950.
--Jerzy•t 04:12 & 07:35, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

   Kit, the Arkansas Traveller "is a lead twd hard evidence of earlier origination" probably only in this sense: that it, or the tradition including the fiddle tune that i consider a sources for the "Bert & I" routine in question, probably made "Arkansas Travel[l]er" a familiar phrase inviting imitation by the second of them to use it: Kit is a dramatic or melodramatic stage work, and if content from the tradition resembles part of the play's content, that part of the play would have to be comic relief, or the tradition to be a parody of a portion of the play. I am striking thru my previously saved claim, hoping to reduce readers' burdens.
--Jerzy•t 07:35, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
   This further research turns out to not pan out in any helpful way: At a pg w/ the lyrics for "Arkansas Traveler" [performed by Jimmy Driftwood] (1907–1998) the track providing the lyrics is described with
Time: 02:03
Track #3 from the album Run Johnny Run.
Written by: LOMBARDO, TRADITIONAL
Published by: Lyrics © KENDOR MUSIC, INC., EMI Music Publishing
and one exchange is
Hey farmer, how do you get to Little Rock?
Listen stranger, you can't get there from here.
Now, frankly i expected that to be an album from early in Driftwood's career, and to find out that it came out early enuf to necessarily precede "Bert and I" and give the singer priority. And that's not the case: Kendor started in business, contrary to my hopes, not very long before 1954, and if that weren't bad enuf news, the arrangement by Lombardo that they handle is (for flute trio, not a problem for most professionals who record), but by Ricky Lombardo, born 1946, who -- tho he did compose and arrange in high school -- didn't take up the flute until 7th grade (c. 1958). Him doing professional arranging by '60 would be surprising.
   On the other hand, this does help my case: in " 'Arkansas Traveler' Skit First One-Liners", under the heading "A typical routine" we find
A typical routine was recorded by the Edison Company in 1890 on a wax cylinder.
and
T[raveler] - How far is it to the next tavern.
S[quatter] - It's so far you can't get thar from here.
That's not the same joke, but wording from it appears (in a different accent) in the "Bert and I" routine, making it clearly a variation on the American theme best known as "The Arkansas Traveler".
   Oh look, i wasn't using MD's name as a search term, but this'll do for tonite: Folk Songs of the Catskills By Norman Cazden, Herbert Haufrecht, Norman Studer, p. 435 (434 not available, so some preceding context is lost):
... Catskills to accompany a square dance in which the active gent swings "with the girl from Arkansas." Marshall Dodge has incorporated some of the conversational byplay into his renderings of typical "Downeast lore" from Maine....
   The tale of The Arkansas Traveler is not so much a set narrative as a frame for improvisation. The expandable elements of the story consist of a series of painfully obtuse replies to reasonable questions.
Not all of that and the ensuing few pages are likely to be of use to us, but beyond the accompanying article, they should provide the info needed for a serious rework of "The Arkansas Traveler" (song), distinguishing variants of the same song from distinct songs sharing the same tune, and probably splitting the content among several new articles and/or SIAs. They give 1840 for the supposed historic basis for the tale, a claim of 1845 for the tune, 1847 for the tune's publication, and 1850 (or 1840??) for the first staging of the tale! They also note an otherwise unrelated song with the same title (which is closely related to "The Rock Island Line").
   Oh, and finally, i think they make it likeliest that Kit, ... was, ca. 1869, titled to trade on the familiar title.
--Jerzy•t 10:25, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Non sequitur[edit]

   Dubiousness of the origination of some stock phrases aside, the claim of origination of "can't get there from here" is clearly mistaken, and the rest of the paragraph falls apart without the example to unite it.
   On the principle of preserving as much of the material as is practical, i'm breaking up the 'graph, without prejudice to claims that more material should be removed: i don't care to try to make the case for removals, and welcome colleagues to hash that out. I'm probably going end up removing the dubious tag (on reflection it was the juxtaposition of a generalization with a suspect example that was dubious; i consider the example disproven and the generalization now screaming for scholarly verification that may or not include a different, and verifiable, example.
--Jerzy•t 09:32, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bluebird & its successors[edit]

   I've never heard more than, maybe, one or two sketches in recorded form, and that may be why i was surprised by the language implying there was no Bluebird 3: having already been prepared with a sketch where Bluebird gets destroyed due to a bizarre chain of bad operational decisions, starting a sketch with

Bert and I stahtted up the Bluebird. 3.

practically guarantees this audience-disinhibiting train of thot:

"Bluebird."
[Ah, the aforesaid fishing boat, presumably having been repaired.]
"3"
[No, replaced, as the destruction sketch might suggest. No! You'd replace it with Bluebird 2 .... Oh, and not having learned anything from the first wreck, eventually with Bluebird 3! They didn't learn anything, ha-ha-...]
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA...
[OMG everyone else here just went thru the same thot process as me, what fun!]

But with a recording, the many small audiences don't hear each other, and i suspect a performer polished enuf to get that timing right wouldn't waste that line on the dead audiences, but save it for live performances only.
   Of course, i'm just speculating about

  1. the article's failure to mention Blbd 3 (or was it 4?) resulting from more than the editor's incomplete knowledge, and
  2. the pattern i suggest reflecting that performance strategy rather than happenstance,

so we need research to confirm any such pattern, and locate interviews or professional analyses of his style that support my armchair theory.
--Jerzy•t 07:40, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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