"The Music Man" is a popular cumulative folksong among children, rugby players, and Hash House Harriers.
"The Music Man" is a free translation of the original German folksong from Silesia "German: Ich bin ein Musikante|italics=no" ('I am a musician'), collected by Ludwig Erk and Wilhelm Irmer, and published in German: Die deutschen Volkslieder mit ihren Singweisen (1838).[1]
"The Music Man" was translated and arranged by George Coote and Harold Packham in 1951, for the Tonic Music Company of London.[2] It was recorded in May that year by Billy Cotton and his band,[3] and in October by The Radio Revellers.[4] The Irish Rovers covered the song for Children of the Unicorn (1976). By the time of Barbara Ireson and Christopher Rowe's book Over and Over Again (1978), it was thought to be a traditional song.[5] The song was recorded by Black Lace, a British pop group from Ossett in West Yorkshire, in 1989 and reached #52 in the UK singles charts.[6]
Another translation of the same song is "I Am a Fine Musician". This was first translated by Felix Günther for The Children's Record Guild (starting "I am a fine musician, I travel through the world"), and sung by George Rasely and Mardi Bryant as "The Musicians" on the record Sing Along (1949).[7] Charles Randolph Grean decided to produce a version of this song; he recruited Tom Glazer to write it (starting "I am a fine musician, I practice every day"), and it was performed by Dinah Shore, Betty Hutton, Tony Martin, and Phil Harris as The Musicians (1951). This was later performed on The Dick Van Dyke Show (6 March and 18 December 1963),[8] and Sesame Street (21 November 1969). A variant of the song, ("I am a fine musician, I travel round the world") was included in Marion Grayson's Let's Do Fingerplays (1962),[9] and was mentioned by Henry Miller.[10] A related version "I am a young musician, from London I have come", was published in German: Die schönsten Lieder 2 (1995), with the first line rhyming with the instrument ("from London I have come ... drum"; "I come from old Berlin ... violin", and so on).[11]
Other similar songs, perhaps based to varying extents on the original German version, include Peter Kennedy's "The German Musicianer" in Folk Songs of Britain and Northern Ireland (1975),[12] and Walter Greenaway's "The Wonderful Musician" (1871), which has a chorus that begins: "A big drum, a kettle drum, the fiddle, flute, and piccolo, piano, harp, harmonium and many more beside".
Each verse begins with the following chorus lines, divided between the lead singer ("The Music Man") and the audience. There are variations which follow roughly the same tune:
The Music Man: "I am the music man, And I come from down your way and I can play!"
Audience: "What can you play?"[13]
The line "I come from down your way" is found in the original 1951 recordings.[3] Some later versions change this line to "I come from far away".[5]
For each verse the participants act out different instruments with specific actions. Some of the actions for the adult version can be rude or crude. They may also attempt to imitate the sound of each instrument. It is sometimes performed in cabaret with the audience challenging the artistes to ever more extravagant – and difficult – renditions of, for example, the flugelhorn.
After each verse, singers sing the previous verses in reverse order before singing the main chorus lines again.