Granny’s old arm chair

AKA Grandmother’s chair
The old armchair
Lyrics John Read Music John Read Roud RN1195

Music Hall performers Frank B Carr 1880s
Tony Pastor 1880s
Frank Crumit 1930s
Folk performances Fred Jordan 1959
Ned Wheeler 1961
Walter Pardon 1960s		 

My grandmother she, at the age of eighty-three
One day in May was taken ill and died;
And after she was dead, the will of course was read,
By a lawyer as we all stood by his side;
To my brother it was found, she had left a hundred pounds,
The same unto my sister I declare,
But when it came to me, the lawyer said, "I see,
She has left to you her Old arm chair."

And how they titter'd! how they chaff'd!
How my brother and sister laugh'd,
When they heard the lawyer declare,
Granny had only left to me her Old arm chair.

I tho't it hardly fair, still I said I did not care,
And in the ev'ning took the chair away;
The neighbors they me chaff'd my brother at me laugh'd
And said "It will be useful John some day;
When you settle down in life, find some girl to be your wife,
You'll find it very handy I declare,
On a cold and frosty night, when the fire is burning bright,
You can then sit in your old arm chair."

What my brother said was true, for in a year or two,
Strange to say I settl'd down in married life;
I first a girl did court, and then the ring I bought,
Took her to church and when she was my wife;
The old girl and me, were as happy as could be,
For when my work was over I declare,
I ne'er abroad would roam, but each night would stay home,
And be seated in my old arm chair.

One night the chair fell down, when I pick'd it up I found,
The seat had fallen out up[-]on the floor;
And there to my surprise I saw before my eyes,
A lot of notes, two thousand pounds or more;
When my brother heard of this, the fellow I confess,
Went nearly mad with rage, and tore his hair,
But I only laugh'd at him, then said unto him
"Jem, Don't you wish you had the old arm chair?"

Widely collected from the source singing on both sides of the Atlantic, usually in the 2nd half of the 20th century, this song appears in dozens of English, American and Scottish song collections going back to the 1880s. (There are over 130 entries in the VWML database,collected from 69 different singers!)

The song was first published in 1879/1880, with two different composers/lyricists credited: Frank B Carr and John Read. However, in histories of the British Music Hall, the song is routinely credited to John Read (1839 to 1920), and a British library catalogue entry credits Read as writer/composer when Charles Sheard published the song in 1879. Read was widely admired for his good looks and sharp dressing: he routinely wore a huge diamond stud on his white shirt front. He was chairman of Collin’s Music Hall for a time, and claimed to have sung the song between 10 and 20,000 times.

The song seems to have remained popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and was widely sung during the folk revival of the 1960s and after. It’s possible that these performers were remembering the recording made by the American vaudeville performer Frank Crumit in 1929.

This song is sometimes confused with the extremely popular song based on Eliza Cook‘s sentimental poem The Old Arm Chair (RN13966). Kilgarriff, for example, lists The Old Arm Chair as part of John Read’s repertoire. The only contemporary description of him singing it that I can find is in The Era (April 6 1879), suggesting that “A story in verse about ‘an old armchair’ was tunefully told by Mr John Read“. To me it seems very likely that this describes the song here rather than Eliza Cook’s song.

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