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Aunt Clara

  • (Anon / Bud Willis ?)

    Chorus:
    So we never mention Aunt Clara
    Her picture is turned to the wall
    Though she lives on the French Riviera
    Mother says she is dead to us all

    She used to sing hymns in the old village choir
    She taught the Sunday school class
    At playing the church organ she never did tire
    But those days are over, alas
    She practised the organ most every day
    While the minister pumped up and down
    Till the minister's wife caught him pumping one day
    That's when Aunt Clara left town

    They said she would have to work night and day
    She'd have to scrub floors for her bread
    Inside of a week she discovered a way
    Of earning her bread lying in bed
    They said to garments of sackcloth she'd sink
    Ashes all over her head
    But just at the moment it's silk and it's mink
    And a diamond tiara instead

    They say she has sunk, they say she has fell
    From a narrow and virtuous path
    But her French formal garden is sunken as well
    And so is her pink marble bath
    They said that Aunt Clara would come to no good
    But the paper last week showed a snap
    Of Aunt Clara in Nice with a prince of the blood
    And a bishop asleep in her lap

    The good things in life always come to the pure
    The Sunday school classes all teach
    But I wonder when I see a photogravure
    Of her eight-bedroomed house on the beach
    They said that hell-fire would punish her sin
    She would burn for her carryings on
    But just at the moment she's toasting her skin
    On the beaches of Deauville and Cannes

    My poor mother's life has been pious and meek
    She drives a second hand Ford
    Aunt Clara received for her birthday last week
    A Rolls Royce, a Stutz and a Cord
    My mother does all the housework alone
    She washes our clothes on a board
    It strikes me that virtue is not only its own
    It's also its only reward

    Final chorus:
    So we never mention Aunt Clara
    But I think that when I grow up tall
    I shall head for the French Riviera
    And let Mother turn me to the wall

    (as sung by Hamish Imlach and Kate Kramer)

Susannes Folksong-Notizen

  • [1995:] Learnt from the singing of Mal Waite who I met at Cleckheaton Folk Festival in the late 80s. She says it comes from America but has no idea from which singer or author. Stutz, Cord - expensive American cars of the 1920/30s. (Notes Hamish Imlach, 'More and Merrier')

See also
We never mention aunt Clara for a longer version
Aunt Clara / Mary Alice Jones: Authors?
Help: 'We Never Mention Aunt Clara' origin?
We Always Mention Aunt Clara
Sherlockian.Net: Irene Adler under "Did they have an affair?"

Quelle: USA

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01.04.2003, aktualisiert am 02.04.2010, 19.04.2009