Grandfather's Clock

DESCRIPTION: A description of the relations between grandfather and clock. The clock ran for the entire length of the old man's life, celebrating happy occasions and never complaining. "But it stopp'd -- short -- never to go again When the old man died."
AUTHOR: Henry Clay Work
EARLIEST DATE: 1876 (sheet music published by C. M. Cady of New York)
KEYWORDS: technology family nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (3 citations):
RJackson-19CPop, pp. 76-79, "Grandfather's Clock" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 251, "Grandfather's Clock" (1 text)
DT, GRANCLOK*
ST RJ19076 (Full)
Roud #4326
RECORDINGS:
Carolina Buddies, "Grandfather's Clock" (Decca 5142, 1935)
[?] Clark & [Walter] Scanlan, "Grandfather's Clock" (Edison 50979, 1922)
Frank Crumit, "Grandfather's Clock" (Victor 19945, 1926)
Edison Male Quartette, "Grandfather's Clock" (CYL: Edison 8967, 1905)
Chubby Parker, "Grandfather's Clock" (Supertone 9732, 1930)
Tom & Roy, "Grandfather's Clock, Part 1/Part 2" (Montgomery Ward M-4242, 1933)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Grandfather's Cock" (tune, form)
cf. "His Grandfather's Hat" (tune, form)
NOTES: Soon after the Civil War, Henry Clay Work retired from songwriting (presumably because of the poor pay). In 1871, however, the Chicago fire burned down the offices of Root and Cady (the publishing firm), and Chauncy M. Cady asked his friend Work to write some songs to help him re-establish his business.
One of the songs Work turned in was "Grandfather's Clock," which had been gathering dust in his files for some years. The song sold some 800,000 copies, and earned Work about $4,000 in royalties (at that time, easily enough to retire on).
Folklore has it that, until this song was published, floor clocks were just "floor clocks" or "tall clocks." Since then, they have been known as "Grandfather clocks." This strikes me as more reasonable than many folk derivations, but I cannot verify this from any of my linguistic sources.
Incidentally, there was one famous instance of something rather like this actually happening, though I doubt it inspired Work's song. The story is of the famous Captain Cook and his final voyage of exploration. One of the reasons Cook was such a great explorer was that he was among the first officials to actually be able to tell longitude; in recent decades, enough astronomical data had been gathered to make it possible to navigate by the stars -- plus the chronometer (the first timepieces accurate enough to tell time while at sea) had been invented.
True chronometers were still very rare in Cook's time, since they had to be hand-made with incredible accuracy. John Harrison (1693-1776) had invented the device and built a handful; Larcum Kendall had made a handful in imitation of Harrison. Kendall's first machine, known as K-1, was used by Cook on his voyages. And, according to Dava Sobel, Longitude (new edition with a foreward by Neil Armstrong, 2005; I use the 2007 Walker paperback edition), p, 151, "Almost at the instant the captain died in 1779, according to an account kept at the time, K-1 also stopped ticking." - RBW
Parodies of this piece have been common. Paul Stamler tells us of "His Grandfather's Hat," which likely will not make it into this collection: "'His Grandfather's Hat' is a parody of 'Grandfather's Clock,' referring to candidate Benjamin Harrison [elected in 1888, but defeated in 1892], grandson of President William Henry Harrison: 'His grandfather's hat is too big for his head/But Ben puts it on just the same.'" - PJS, RBW
Last updated in version 2.6
File: RJ19076

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