Today’s song is ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’. This popular song was written by James Thornton and was published in 1898. Inspired and sung by the composer's wife, the ballad quickly became a hit song in vaudeville. It has a long recording history that includes numerous popular singers, has been heard on film, and is considered a standard of barbershop quartets.
James Thornton was a vaudevillian who was best-known during his life for his comedy monologues. However, he composed numerous popular songs, especially in the 1880s and 1890s. ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’, published in 1898, was inspired by Thornton's wife, Bonnie, when she asked her husband if he still loved her. Thornton replied, "I love you like I did when you were sweet sixteen." Bonnie Thornton, a popular vaudeville singer who sang many of her husband's compositions then introduced the song in her act.
‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ sold over a million copies of sheet music: a fantastic number of music sheets for its time. Thornton had sold the song to two publishers, ‘M. Witmark & Sons’ and ‘Joseph W. Stern and Co.’ and the song consequently became the subject of a lengthy ownership lawsuit.
The lyrics of ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ are typical of the sentimental ballads of the 1890s. The form is stropic, (two verses with a chorus).
‘I love you as I never lov'd before,
Since first I met you on the village green
Come to me, or my dream of love is o'er.
I love you as I lov'd you
When you were sweet, when you were sweet sixteen.’
‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ was the number one record in 1900. First recorded by Jere Mahoney on ‘Edison Records’, it became the Number 1 record in April and held the spot for five weeks. Another recording of the song by George J. Gaskin on ‘Columbia Records’ rose to Number 1 as well, remaining so for eight weeks.
The song has been covered over the past century by too many artists to name, but a few include: Perry Como (1947): Al Jolson (1947): Josef Locke (1948): Etta Jones(1975): The Fureys (1981): Glen Campbell (1985): Barry Manilow (2010): Daniel O’Donnell (2011) and many others.
It is not often that the popularity of any song endures from one century to the next, but this song has so far been alive for 122 years. In my youth, all the nation whistled while they relaxed, and they also whistled while they worked. The postman and the milkman and every other man whistled as they went through their day. Indeed, one of the most popular wartime radio programmes was called, ‘Whistle While You Work’.
My father was no different where the love of whistling was concerned. Indeed, dad loved to hear the world’s greatest whistler, Ronnie Ronalde making his wonderful bird noises over the radio and whistling/singing his beautiful songs. Ronalde’s combination of whistling and singing was simply marvellous. Dad would have been so pleased to know that Ronnie Ronalde was to become a friend of his firstborn during the early 2000s. Ronnie sent me an autographed biography of his life as my wedding present in 2012, plus one of his signed CDs. He died three years later in 2015. His whistling imitations of bird song led to his greatest hits like ‘If I Was a Blackbird’ and ‘In a Monastery Garden’.
I was born the oldest of seven children. My father was a relatively uneducated man who’d been born into abject poverty in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Dad was only 12 years old when he left school to start work. My father was a simple man who kept his own company and never drank alcohol; presumably, because his father was an alcoholic. Dad was the most independent man I ever knew, along with being the most modest man I ever met. He was strict in discipline and was one of the most stubborn men alive.
Dad was also a great footballer and played soccer for County Kilkenny before he was twenty years old. He then went on to play soccer for both the first and second eleven of the Irish national team. I had often seen a framed photograph of a football team in the lounge, but it was never specifically discussed in the family until my tenth year of life, and my mother never once mentioned its importance in my father’s football career.
It was a photograph of the Irish National Second Eleven and my father was seated at its centre with the football between his legs (Captain of Ireland’s Second Eleven Soccer Team). It was later revealed that my father also made it into the Irish National First Eleven soccer squad on a number of occasions. My father’s regular absence from home after he’d married mum was seemingly a source of constant conflict during their first five years of marriage. Being the wife of a man who played football for Ireland then wasn’t like the Wags of today.
First, the national football players for Ireland received no wage in the mid-thirties; only travel and out of pocket expenses. Such financial circumstances were apparently to prevail in Eire until after the ‘Second World War’. My mother would not have minded being a football widow for the first five years of her married life had dad been receiving a significant wage in remuneration, but she presumably found being the wife of an absent soccer husband and the mother of three young children with virtually no money to live on from a crowded rented flat not much to cheer about.
My dad played football for the glory of the sport and his reward was the pride of playing for his county and country. He wasn’t as bothered about the lack of wage as my lonely mother was about the constant absence of her football husband from herself and his three children. Hence; dad’s footballing career was always a bone of contention between them and was therefore never spoken of in front of myself and sisters, Mary and Eileen.
One year when my father went back to Kilkenny for a rare holiday break, he was met at the railway station when he alighted the train with a welcoming brass band that greeted the return of a ‘football hero from Kilkenny’, before being triumphantly marched through the city centre. He’d gone on that holiday alone, and we never would have known of the soccer hero’s welcome he’s received had not a Kilkenny family friend sent the newspaper cutting to my mother a month later that mum showed us.
At the age of ten years old, I was an excellent football player and I even played in the school adult team with 13 and 14 years old. Our school soccer team at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic School’ in Heckmondwike had just obtained a new team shirt. It’s pattern was one of green and white squares and the cost of purchasing a shirt was £2: 10 shillings. Such a sizable amount was an impossible amount for my family to purchase as it represented one-fifth of my father’s weekly wage as a miner.
Before dad left for work and knowing that his oldest son would be embarrassed that day to be the only player running around the football field in a green T-shirt instead of the official school soccer strip, he presented me with an old football shirt which he wore in his twenties. The shirt was the shirt he’d worn when he played soccer for Eire (Southern Ireland). Its size naturally buried me and fell far beneath my waist, but wearing it proudly made me the happiest and most envied player in ‘St. Patrick’s School Football Team’ that memorable day in 1951.
Dad was not only disciplined in the severest of ways, but he was also very stubborn and principled. When he made up his mind, he never changed it (even when he was wrong). When he shook hands with another man and gave his word, he kept it, whatever the cost. He was Calvinistic in the great importance he placed upon the value of hard work, and he had little time for the merits of education. Dad believed that ‘hard manual work’ carried out through the sweat of one’s brow and the aching of one’s arms, was the way to heaven. He also strongly believed that no type of work was beneath the dignity of any good man and that the first duty of every married man and father was to provide food for his wife and children.
My father worked hard all his life from boyhood to his retirement age. He was a miner for over fifteen years after the family first migrated to England for a more prosperous life in the mid-40s. I will never forget when I was young and the pit he worked at went on strike. The strike was 99 % supported by its workers, with the exception of one person, my father. Dad was the only man to walk through the picket line. This lonely act took great courage for any worker to do at the time and would always result in the strike-breaker being sent to Coventry when the men returned to work. This did not occur in my father’s case, and although my father was respected among his workmates, he did not remain scot-free.
After the strike ended and the miners returned to work, one huge sized man over 6 foot tall called Horace Housecroft from Seventh Avenue, Windybank Estate, attempted to physically assault my father (who stood no taller than 5 feet and seven inches and weighed five stones less in weight). When Horace came to physically attack my father, determined to do him damage, my father took the only action he could think of on the spot. Knowing that he hadn’t a cat in hell's chance of fighting his opponent off long enough to prevent being beaten to a pulp by Horace’s shovelled-sized fists, he raised a pit shovel and flattened his giant attacker to the ground.
Horace was rendered unconscious and taken to hospital with head injuries and although Horace didn’t return to work for two months, by the time he did, dad was working in a foundry, having been ‘laid off.’ Paradoxically, Horace and my father became the best of friends for the rest of their lives, and for many years after on Windybank Estate Paddy Forde was known as that man who flattened Horace Housecroft of Seventh Avenue. Nobody ever messed with dad again!
As the father of seven children, dad never had a choice of how he responded to ‘going’ or ‘not going’ on strike as a miner. For dad, putting food on the family table came first. Dad used to say that principles were the luxury of the rich; they never fed the poor of the land.
When dad came home from working at the pit face after an 8-hour shift, he’d be as black as black could be, covered and caked in coal dust. After he’d taken off his clogs, he’d go upstairs to spend half an hour in the bath. Dad loved the new council house ceramic bath (we all did). Until we got a new council house, the bathing receptacle for the entire family was a large tin bath that hung on the wall between uses.
As dad bathed, me and sisters Mary and Eileen would listen outside the door and giggle as we heard him quietly sing. The bathroom was the only place in the world that anyone ever heard my shy father sing. Dad might be heard whistling often (like all the men of the time, but he only ever sang two songs, ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ and ‘Some Enchanted Evening’.
In loving memory of your heavenly birthday, Dad, I sing you one of your favourite songs, ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’. Your firstborn Billy xxx
Love and peace Bill xxx