Russian song title

[Robert A. Rothstein]

A few more details on "Dorogoi dlinnoiu":
    The text was by Konstantin Nikolaevich Podrevski, the music by Boris
Ivanovich Fomin (1900-1948).  Fomin, a descendent of Lomonosov, was a
prolific and popular composer. Among his other well-known songs are "Ei,
drug gitara," "Tol'ko raz," "Tvoi glaza zelenye," "Proshchai, moi tabor"
and the World War II song "Zhdi menia."  In the period before the war
some 300 of his works were published, but he fell into disfavor in the
post-war period and his compositions could no longer be published.
Podrevskii wrote texts to melodies by several composers and, apparently,
several versions of "Dorogoi dlinnoiu," or at least several versions
were published over his name.  The "canonical" version (from 1926 or
1927) is the one published in _Mass Culture in Soviet Russia_, ed. James
von Geldern and Richard Stites (Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 118.

    The song was popularized in the Soviet Union by the "Gypsy" singer
Tamara Semenovna Tsereteli (1900-1968) and in emigre circles by
Aleksandr Vertinskii, who sang his own version of the text.  (Exercise
for students of Russian: compare and contrast Vertinskii's version,
which begins "Ezdili na troike s bubentsami..." with the original text,
which begins "Ekhali na troike s bubentsami...").  It's not quite true,
pace von Geldern and Stites, that the song "became legal [in the
U.S.S.R.] only after [Vertinskii's] return to Russia in 1943."  In fact
the _Repertuarnyi ukazatel'_ of 1929 includes it in its "Spisok
vokal'nykh proizvedenii, razreshennykh GRK [Glavnym Repetuarnym
Komitetom], obychno na mestakh zapreshchavshikhsia gublitami."  It was
listed, however, in category "V": "kategoriia proizvedenii, dopuskaemykh
k ispolneniiu; po svoei sotsial'no-bytovoi i khudozhestvennoi
znachimosti naimenee tsennye i poetomu razreshaemye k ispolneniiu v
programmakh i kontsertakh v ogranichennom kolichestve."
    Gene Raskin, who borrowed Fomin's melody for "Those Were the Days,"
also wrote a song called "The Kretchma," which begins
     When you hear Russian songs, do you suffer?
     Does your heart start to pound in your chest?
     If you do, then come down to the Kretchma:
     It costs plenty, but it's from the best.

Raskin recorded it (as part of the duo Gene and Francesca), but it was
probably better known in Theodore Bikel's rendition (on his record
_Bravo Bikel_).

            Bob Rothstein

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