Russian song title

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

Hello Bob,
What memories your words bring!  I can still hear you singing this music
back in the '70s (on some radio program).  And how many of us got into the
Russian field because of this wonderfully schmaltzy Russian music!  Has
someone written the authoritative study on this subject?  If not, well,
here is a task that would be well worth the effort....

Regards,
Daniel

At 03:14 PM 1/12/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>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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Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
Professor of Russian
University of California
One Shields Ave.
Davis, CA 95616 USA
530-752-4999
darancourlaferriere at ucdavis.edu

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