When You and I Were Young, Maggie

"When You and I Were Young, Maggie" is a famous folk song, popular song and standard. Though Springtown, Tennessee, has a small monument outside an old mill claiming the song was written by a local George Johnson, in 1864, for his Maggie, the truth is that its lyrics were written as a poem by the Canadian school teacher George Washington Johnson from Hamilton, Ontario. Margaret "Maggie" Clark was his pupil. They fell in love and during a period of illness, George walked to the edge of the Niagara escarpment, overlooking what is now downtown Hamilton, and composed the poem. The general tone is perhaps one of melancholy and consolation over lost youth rather than mere sentimentality or a fear of aging. It was published in 1864 in a collection of his poems entitled Maple Leaves. They were married in 1864 but Maggie's health deteriorated and she died on May 12, 1865. James Austin Butterfield set the poem to music and it became popular all over the world. George Washington Johnson died in 1917. The schoolhouse where the two lovers met still stands on the escarpment above Hamilton, and a plaque bearing the name of the song has been erected in front of the old building. In 2005, the song was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Some claim that the song was first sung by Frank Dumont "as the Duprez & Benedict's Minstrels programs, dated, will show" in 1870. The song was first recorded by Corinne Morgan and Frank C. Stanley in 1905 and has been recorded since by many famous artists including opera tenors John McCormack and Jan Peerce, early country singer Fiddlin' John Carson, country singer Slim Whitman, bluegrass musicians Stanley Brothers, Reno and Smiley, Mac Wiseman, David Grisman and James Alan Shelton, crooners Perry Como and Gene Autry and popular singers such as Will Oakland, Henry Burr, Harry MacDonough and Frank Dunn. Instrumental recordings of Butterfield's melody are also numerous, and date as far back as the 1930s. Notable recordings include those of jazzmen Benny Goodman, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson and Sidney Bechet and ragtime pianist Johnny Maddox and Country guitar, Speedy Haworth. "Maggie" has been re-scored as "When You and I Were Young, Maggie Blues", by Jack Frost and Jimmy McHugh. Mills Music Inc. published this edition in 1922, and again in 1949 with Guy Lombardo's picture on the cover. This was a 1951 hit for father and son Bing Crosby and Gary Crosby reaching the No. 8 spot in the Billboard charts and for the duet team of Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely. John W. Schaum arranged "When you and I were young Maggie Boogie" and had it published by Belwin Inc. in 1952. The song is also considered as a standard of dixieland.

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