Grandfather's Clock: A Song History

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"Grandfather's Clock" is a popular song by Henry Clay Work (1832–1884), a Connecticut-born printer who taught himself music and made his name with Civil War songs.[1] C. M. Cady of New York issued it in 1876 for voice and piano, with a tall clock pictured on the cover.[2] The verses tell of a clock bought on the day its owner was born, which keeps time through his whole life and stops for good when he dies, while the chorus mimics its ticking.[2][3] It became Work's biggest seller and a hit of the 1880s, though sales estimates differ, from about 800,000 copies of sheet music to roughly a million.[1][4][5]

1876 sheet-music cover for Grandfather's Clock by Henry C. Work, with an engraving of a tall case clock

Henry C. Work, Grandfather’s Clock, sheet music cover, C. M. Cady, New York, 1876. Music Division, Library of Congress. Public domain.

The song left a mark on the English language: tall pendulum longcase clocks came to be called "grandfather clocks" after it caught on.[6][7] The Library of Congress, presenting a 1998 performance, calls it the greatest of the “furniture songs.”[7] It also passed into oral tradition. The Roud index lists it as number 4326; fourteen of its sixteen entries there come from the United States or Canada, while the other two are recordings of English singers, among them Charlie Pitman of Cornwall.[8]

Bluegrass and folk musicians recorded it in the twentieth century as well. A live performance by the Country Gentlemen appears on the Smithsonian Folkways reissue of On the Road, a concert album that Folkways first released in 1963.[9] Ed Trickett sang it to his own hammered dulcimer accompaniment on Gently Down the Stream of Time (Folk-Legacy, 1977).[10] It also appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[11]

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Sources

  1. Songwriters Hall of Fame: "Henry C. Work".
  2. Mississippi State University Libraries, Charles H. Templeton Sr. Sheet Music Collection: "Grandfather's Clock" by Henry Clay Work.
  3. Song of America: "Grandfather's Clock".
  4. Today in Connecticut History: "June 8: The Man Whose Songs the Soldiers Sang Dies in Hartford".
  5. The Historical Marker Database: "Henry Clay Work".
  6. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Grandfather clock".
  7. Library of Congress: "Grandfather's clock" (Music for the Nation performance, 1998).
  8. Mainly Norfolk: "My Grandfather's Clock [Henry Clay Work] (Roud 4326)".
  9. Bear Family Records: "Country Gentlemen: On the Road (And More)".
  10. Smithsonian Folkways: "Grandfather's Clock" (Ed Trickett).
  11. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".