Oyster Bay, October 12, 2005, Wednesday

Oysters To Sing About

By Sylvia Carter
Staff Writer

This is a different kind of food story. It is a story about the dozens of songs inspired by just one fabled food, oysters.

Even today, in the age of rap, Cole Porter's famous line about oysters in Oyster Bay, from "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)" endure:

"Romantic sponges, they say, do it,
Oysters down in Oyster Bay do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love."

Cole Porter penned more than one song about oysters in that bay, and if Stephen V. Walker, a music teacher who is a lifelong resident of Oyster Bay, has his way, that other song, along with dozens more ballads about the town and its legendary bivalves, will become better known.

Walker spent five years locating old sheet music and obtaining permission to use it, and his book, "What Kind of a Noise Annoys an Oyster?" has just been published. (Say it aloud a couple of times if you didn't get it the first time.) The book, $20, put out by the Oyster Bay Historical Society, includes a list of more than 100 tunes.

The zany title song comes from a song written by novelty singer Frank Crumit and Billy Curtis and popularized by Crumit.

The book is a fundraiser for the society, and its publication right before the 22nd annual Oyster Festival, to be held Saturday and Sunday in Oyster Bay, is well timed. Yet, oddly, a couple of weeks ago, nobody had suggested a sing-along of the mollusk ditties at the festival, which has been known to draw 200,000 and more oyster fanciers.

Perhaps the powers that be do not think a music teacher and a scholar who painstakingly researched this book would take to such a notion. If so, they are wrong. Walker is the kindly sort of musician who encourages everyone to sing and have a good time. Apparently, years of teaching seventh-graders to play the clarinet and the saxophone have imbued him with a stoic tolerance for off-key singers and horn players.

Lovers of food songs, if they dote on oysters, need look no further than this book. In some songs, the oyster is for eating, and in others it is a metaphor. Some songs are anonymous or are folk songs of uncertain derivation.

In 1849, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote "Ballad of the Oysterman." "Champagne and Oysters" dates from 1878, and "Oyster and Wine at 2 A.M." from 1873. "Oysters and Clams (The Rag-Time Oyster Man)" is from 1904. "You're Not the Only Oyster in the Stew," popularized by Fats Waller, was written in 1934 by Johnny Burke and Harold Spina. And the illustration on the front of the sheet music of what is billed (tongue in cheek) as a "characteristic sand dance" called "Dance of the Oyster and the Clam," by Ed A. Dicey, shows the bivalves frolicking at the beach.

Walker's search began with the 125th anniversary of the birth of Oyster Bay's Theodore Roosevelt in 1983 and led him to the Houghton Library at Harvard, where there were three boxes, about 100 pieces, of sheet music that mentioned Roosevelt. "What Kind of Noise?" is subtitled "An Oyster Songster featuring Ballads, Songs and Novelties About Oysters and Oyster Bay," and one novelty is from a speech Roosevelt made in 1910, upon returning from a yearlong safari and visit to the capitals of Europe. He was greeted by fireworks, bands and a children's choir.

"I am glad to see you all again," he declared, "men, women and little oysters . . . " by which he may have meant the children or the actual oysters he was looking forward to eating -- or both. Sing-along concerts were organized around the themes of Roosevelt and Oyster Bay in 1983 and 1988.

By the time Walker proposed the new book to the historical society in 1999, he knew of three or four oyster songs, but he never imagined he would find so many. The book is dedicated to Walker's godparents, John Francis and Mamie Connell. "Captain Jack" Connell fished the waters off Oyster Bay for 50 years, for Waldron Bayles and later Butler Flower, owners of well-known oyster companies.

Early on, the estate of Cole Porter granted permission to use the composer's two oyster songs. The lesser-known one, "The Tale of the Oyster," is the ballad of a lonesome oyster who longed to see the world. He made it to a plate in a fancy restaurant, and the story continues:

"Hearing the wives of millionaires
Discuss their marriages and their love affairs
Thrilled little oyster!
See that bivalve social climber
Feeding the rich Mrs. Hoggenheimer.
Think of his joy as he gaily glides
Down to the middle of her gilded insides.
Proud little oyster! . . . "

Then Mrs. Hoggenheimer feels unwell and takes her yacht back to Oyster Bay. On the troubled waters, the young oyster "finds that it's time he should quit his cloister" and "Up comes the oyster!" to dramatic music.

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.

Produced in the The Webshop@servenet.com. Please report problems to the Webmaster. Last update: 10/11/2005.