Aura Lee: A Song History

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"Aura Lea," also spelled "Aura Lee," is a courting song published in Cincinnati in 1861 by J. Church Jr., with words by W. W. Fosdick and music by George R. Poulton.[1][2] Its title page is dedicated to S. C. Campbell of Hooley & Campbell's Minstrels, and the Morgan Library considers its own copy probably the first edition.[1][2] In the song a suitor sings of a fair-haired girl so lovely that a blackbird seems to celebrate her, and ends by proposing.[3]

Winslow Homer wood engraving of cadets in uniform dancing with women in hoop skirts at a ball at West Point

Winslow Homer, A Cadet Hop at West Point, wood engraving from Harper's Weekly, September 3, 1859. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Drawn two years before the song was published; shown for its West Point setting.

The song came out just as the Civil War began, and it travelled on both sides of the lines: the Traditional Ballad Index reports that its verses were printed by Union and Confederate presses alike.[3] One choral arrangement, by Joseph Kelp, was published in Richmond, the Confederate capital, in 1864.[4] At West Point the tune became "Army Blue," in the Ballad Index's view the earliest parody of real note; the Class of 1865 was the first to take it up, and West Point tradition, as recorded in the 1947 Bugle Notes, credits its first six stanzas to L. W. Becklaw.[3][5]

The melody found its largest audience in 1956. Ken Darby, musical supervisor of Elvis Presley's debut picture at 20th Century Fox (first planned as The Reno Brothers), fitted new words to the old tune, and both song and film became Love Me Tender. The record named Presley and Vera Matson, Darby's wife, as writers, though neither had written it. Under the Presley camp's usual arrangement Presley took half the songwriting royalties, and Darby put the other half in his wife's name, remarking, "She didn't write it either." Recorded in August 1956, it went to number one.[6]

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Sources

  1. Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection (Johns Hopkins University): "Aura Lea. Song & Chorus.".
  2. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Aura Lea: song & chorus".
  3. Traditional Ballad Index: "Aura Lea".
  4. IMSLP: "Aura Lea (Poulton, George R.)".
  5. West-Point.org: "U S Military Academy at West Point" (songs).
  6. WKNO FM: "How Love Me Tender Trumped The Aura Lee And Reno Brothers".