"POOR BUTTERFLY" - Victor Military Band (1916)

POOR BUTTERFLY - Fox Trot
(New York Hippodrome Hits)
1. "Poor Butterfly"
2. "Come on Down to Ragtime Town"
3. "The Hippodrome Street Parade"
4. "Poor Butterfly" (reprise)
Victor Military Band
Victor, 35605-B, 1916.

Please watch in High Definition for better picture quality!

"Poor Butterfly," a song based on the opera "Madame Butterfly," was first performed at the New York Hippodrome on August 31, 1916 in the revue, "The Big Show," which ran until the following May. It soon became one of the most popular songs of the year. This rendition by the Victor Military Band (really a medley of three songs from the show) was recorded on November 29, 1916.

This video is a companion piece to my previous posting of "Pretty Baby." These two 12-inch Victor records, with the energetic performances of the Victor Military Band, seem to me to evoke images of a band concert on a long-ago Sunday afternoon in the park.

The illustrations depict a "Sunday afternoon" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In keeping with the Japanese theme of the song, I have included postcards of the Japanese Tea Garden in the park. This beautiful and popular park attraction was created in 1894 as the "Japanese Village" for the California Mid-Winter Fair, and was retained after the fair closed. It was renamed the "Japanese Tea Garden" and expanded in size. Makoto Hagiwara was the designer of the garden, which is the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States. It lies directly across the roadway from the Temple of Music and one can imagine the strains of "Poor Butterfly," perhaps, drifting through the pines into the Tea Garden on a Sunday afternoon in 1916.

I have also included a photograph of my great-grandmother in about 1916 with fellow-members of the San Francisco Tea Club enjoying tea in the tea house on a special day when the Club rented the Tea Garden for their own use.

Here are some the words to "Poor Butterfly":

There's a story told of a little Japanese
Sitting demurely 'neath the cherry blossom trees.
Miss Butterfly, her name.
A sweet little incocent child was she,
'Til a fine young American from the sea
To her garden came.

They met 'neath the cherry blossoms every day
And he taught her how to love in the 'Merican way,
To love with her soul, 'twas easy to learn;
Then he sailed away with a promise to return.

Poor Butterfly! 'neath the blossoms waiting,
Poor Butterfly! For she loved him so.
The moments pass into hours,
The hours pass into years,
And as she smiles through her tears,
She murmurs low,
"The moon and I know that he be faithful,
I'm sure he'll come to me, bye and bye.
But if he don't come back,
Then I never sigh or cry:
I just must die, poor Butterfly."