PKT25: Serenading & The Sweetheart Song
Serenading is really weird when I look back at it. In short, we had a book full of songs to sing. That wasn't particularly weird, but where we actually sang them was unusual.
The most normal of those songs requires some context around dating at the fraternity.
- If a member of the fraternity was dating someone for a substantial length, he might let her (or him, I suppose, but it never came up for any of our gay brothers while I was an active), he might let her wear fraternity letters. This was intended to be for a serious relationship. After all, even pledges weren't allowed to wear letters, so you'd hope other people wouldn't be unless it was a serious relationship.
- Going further, if a fraternity brother was going to propose, he could use his fraternity pin in lieu of an engagement ring. None of the brothers who got engaged while I was an active took this route, but it was an option. After an engagement, it was customary for the actives to join the brother in singing The Sweetheart Song to the girl in question. Although I believe it was originally described to me as being sung to mark an engagement, the singing usually happened at the wedding. On many occasions, particularly in my 20s, I was one of a large group of mildly intoxicated fraternity brothers singing The Sweetheart Song to the bride at the wedding reception. At least once it was before an engagement - several of us dressed in formal wear to meet a brother's girlfriend at the airport when her flight landed after she'd been out of town for an extended period of time, and we sang The Sweetheart Song at the airport.
Courtesy of my brother Rowan, who had a PDF of the songbook someone assembled when we were actives, here are both verses:
The Sweetheart Song
Author Unknown
In my garden of dreams,
There's a sweetheart I've seen;
Oh how faintly and fleeting she came.
Though she's gone with the dawn,
Still her face lingers on.
Is there one who could tell me her name?
In her eyes there's a light
Of goodness so bright,
And her smile is a treasure of charms.
Oh how happy I'd be,
If she just came to me.
She's the Phi Kappa Theta Sweetheart.
My dreams did some true
The day I met you;
Lovely you with your treasure of charms.
Love grew strong within,
And now you wear my pin,
Since the day that you said you'd be mine.
I want only you,
And will be always true;
True to you sweetest girl of my dreams.
We'll be happy today,
And the rest of life's way.
You're my Phi Kappa Theta Sweetheart.
Perfectly fine, right? While I admit that it's hardly a great piece of songwriting, it is perfectly appropriate for mixed company, wedding ceremonies or airport concourses. And if serenading had just been singing that song to fiances and new brides, it would have been a pleasant old fashioned tradition carried on from the presumably the earliest days of the fraternity.
Serenading was not that. For reasons I don't pretend to know or understand, about once a semester we would go sing to one of the sororities. This meant putting on formal wear and going over to the sorority house and we'd sing to their membership. Typically this was whatever sorority was hanging out at our house that semester. At least 4 of the 5 did at some point when I was an active, usually because some of their members were dating some of our brothers. As you'd expect from all those music education majors and performers, we had some pretty good voices. Gabe in particular had a ridiculous voice, although I suppose pride of place must go to Dashon given that's he's a professional singer who has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra and won a Grammy. Anyway, there was more than enough people with talent to drown me out.
Perhaps its a little quaint, like Christmas caroling, but what's the harm in singing The Sweetheart Song to a group of sorority sisters? None, if we'd stopped there. The problem was that we'd go ahead and sing some or all of the other 7 songs in that songbook. Those songs get increasingly filthy as you flip from the start to the end. That long ago editor who compiled the book divided them into four sections:
Part 1 - Pretty Nice
- One of the Yippy Yappas - The only other song specific to Phi Kappa Theta. Does glorify alcohol consumption, but you can hear worse stuff on the radio all the time.
- The Sweetheart Song - As discussed.
Part 2 - Getting a Little Busy
- Engineers' Song - CWRU specific, although I never heard anyone but us sing it and it's certainly possible that it was some other old drinking song with the last line switched to reference CWRU. It has some mild sexual content and plenty of alcohol.
- The Scotsman Song - Mild sexual content, actually pretty funny if you like extended stories with twists.
- My God How the Money Rolls In - A bit more risque, but still mostly innuendo.
Part 3 - Only When Your Mom is Over For Dinner
- Roll Your Leg Over - Heavy innuendo.
- Ball of Kerrymuir - Sounds like a bad telling of The Aristocrats.
The section heading referenced our long tradition of telling Mom jokes. Which depending on your point of view is better than all the dead baby jokes that we told, but I digress.
Part 4 - Yo Ho
- Yo Ho, The Foreplay
- Yo Ho, The Part that Embarrasses Us
Sung to the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home but really, really filthy. Absolutely not fit for network television, and would certainly get a movie a hard R rating. Actually, singing dead baby jokes might have been an improvement.
For whatever reason, we thought it was a good idea to sing 5-6 of these songs every time we went serenading, and we always always always ended with Yo Ho. Since, as a general rule, most of the women in these sororities didn't share quite the same crude sense of humor, you have to wonder what the hell we were thinking or where serenading even came from.
I will admit that song practice was a lot of fun though, and occasionally at parties some of the songs were brought out, usually after a lot of alcohol consumption. It's probably just as well that we've mostly forgotten the lyrics 25 years later. I haven't heard The Sweetheart Song at a PhiKap wedding in a while (of course, there haven't been many PhiKap weddings in a while), and I attribute that to us all forgetting the lyrics.
For extra fun, Jackal, one of our many music education majors, recorded a CD of him singing everything in the songbook. At a suggestion from me (blatantly stolen from Bloom County) he titled this CD "Jackal Sings the Phi Kap Love Songs of His Youth." I'm sure he sounds better than I would!
Serenading: totally fun at the time, with some questionable song choices looking back.
The Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta
The House Tour
Outside,
Main Floor Bedrooms,
Main Floor Public Rooms,
Basement Public Areas,
Basement Private Areas,
2nd Floor Big Bedrooms,
2nd Floor Small Bedrooms,
3rd Floor First Hallway,
3rd Floor Second Hallway,
Attic & Errata,
House Tour Commentary: Joe & Laura & Astrid,
House Tour Commentary: Jackal,
House Tour Commentary: Susan,
House Tour Commentary: Assorted
The Pledge Program
Bid Night, Schedule, Curriculum & Black Books, Big Brothers & Pledge Pins, Paddling, Initiation
Semesters
Fall 1996, Spring 1997
Events
Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings, Serenading
Other
Full Series, My Rush Experience, Chapter History, Family Trees, National, Greek Life at CWRU, Fraternity Offices, Part 1, Fraternity Offices, Part 2, Fraternity Offices, Part 3, Demographics
Additional Commentary
Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout
The most normal of those songs requires some context around dating at the fraternity.
- If a member of the fraternity was dating someone for a substantial length, he might let her (or him, I suppose, but it never came up for any of our gay brothers while I was an active), he might let her wear fraternity letters. This was intended to be for a serious relationship. After all, even pledges weren't allowed to wear letters, so you'd hope other people wouldn't be unless it was a serious relationship.
- Going further, if a fraternity brother was going to propose, he could use his fraternity pin in lieu of an engagement ring. None of the brothers who got engaged while I was an active took this route, but it was an option. After an engagement, it was customary for the actives to join the brother in singing The Sweetheart Song to the girl in question. Although I believe it was originally described to me as being sung to mark an engagement, the singing usually happened at the wedding. On many occasions, particularly in my 20s, I was one of a large group of mildly intoxicated fraternity brothers singing The Sweetheart Song to the bride at the wedding reception. At least once it was before an engagement - several of us dressed in formal wear to meet a brother's girlfriend at the airport when her flight landed after she'd been out of town for an extended period of time, and we sang The Sweetheart Song at the airport.
Courtesy of my brother Rowan, who had a PDF of the songbook someone assembled when we were actives, here are both verses:
The Sweetheart Song
Author Unknown
In my garden of dreams,
There's a sweetheart I've seen;
Oh how faintly and fleeting she came.
Though she's gone with the dawn,
Still her face lingers on.
Is there one who could tell me her name?
In her eyes there's a light
Of goodness so bright,
And her smile is a treasure of charms.
Oh how happy I'd be,
If she just came to me.
She's the Phi Kappa Theta Sweetheart.
My dreams did some true
The day I met you;
Lovely you with your treasure of charms.
Love grew strong within,
And now you wear my pin,
Since the day that you said you'd be mine.
I want only you,
And will be always true;
True to you sweetest girl of my dreams.
We'll be happy today,
And the rest of life's way.
You're my Phi Kappa Theta Sweetheart.
Perfectly fine, right? While I admit that it's hardly a great piece of songwriting, it is perfectly appropriate for mixed company, wedding ceremonies or airport concourses. And if serenading had just been singing that song to fiances and new brides, it would have been a pleasant old fashioned tradition carried on from the presumably the earliest days of the fraternity.
Serenading was not that. For reasons I don't pretend to know or understand, about once a semester we would go sing to one of the sororities. This meant putting on formal wear and going over to the sorority house and we'd sing to their membership. Typically this was whatever sorority was hanging out at our house that semester. At least 4 of the 5 did at some point when I was an active, usually because some of their members were dating some of our brothers. As you'd expect from all those music education majors and performers, we had some pretty good voices. Gabe in particular had a ridiculous voice, although I suppose pride of place must go to Dashon given that's he's a professional singer who has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra and won a Grammy. Anyway, there was more than enough people with talent to drown me out.
Perhaps its a little quaint, like Christmas caroling, but what's the harm in singing The Sweetheart Song to a group of sorority sisters? None, if we'd stopped there. The problem was that we'd go ahead and sing some or all of the other 7 songs in that songbook. Those songs get increasingly filthy as you flip from the start to the end. That long ago editor who compiled the book divided them into four sections:
Part 1 - Pretty Nice
- One of the Yippy Yappas - The only other song specific to Phi Kappa Theta. Does glorify alcohol consumption, but you can hear worse stuff on the radio all the time.
- The Sweetheart Song - As discussed.
Part 2 - Getting a Little Busy
- Engineers' Song - CWRU specific, although I never heard anyone but us sing it and it's certainly possible that it was some other old drinking song with the last line switched to reference CWRU. It has some mild sexual content and plenty of alcohol.
- The Scotsman Song - Mild sexual content, actually pretty funny if you like extended stories with twists.
- My God How the Money Rolls In - A bit more risque, but still mostly innuendo.
Part 3 - Only When Your Mom is Over For Dinner
- Roll Your Leg Over - Heavy innuendo.
- Ball of Kerrymuir - Sounds like a bad telling of The Aristocrats.
The section heading referenced our long tradition of telling Mom jokes. Which depending on your point of view is better than all the dead baby jokes that we told, but I digress.
Part 4 - Yo Ho
- Yo Ho, The Foreplay
- Yo Ho, The Part that Embarrasses Us
Sung to the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home but really, really filthy. Absolutely not fit for network television, and would certainly get a movie a hard R rating. Actually, singing dead baby jokes might have been an improvement.
For whatever reason, we thought it was a good idea to sing 5-6 of these songs every time we went serenading, and we always always always ended with Yo Ho. Since, as a general rule, most of the women in these sororities didn't share quite the same crude sense of humor, you have to wonder what the hell we were thinking or where serenading even came from.
I will admit that song practice was a lot of fun though, and occasionally at parties some of the songs were brought out, usually after a lot of alcohol consumption. It's probably just as well that we've mostly forgotten the lyrics 25 years later. I haven't heard The Sweetheart Song at a PhiKap wedding in a while (of course, there haven't been many PhiKap weddings in a while), and I attribute that to us all forgetting the lyrics.
For extra fun, Jackal, one of our many music education majors, recorded a CD of him singing everything in the songbook. At a suggestion from me (blatantly stolen from Bloom County) he titled this CD "Jackal Sings the Phi Kap Love Songs of His Youth." I'm sure he sounds better than I would!
Serenading: totally fun at the time, with some questionable song choices looking back.
The Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta
The House Tour
Outside,
Main Floor Bedrooms,
Main Floor Public Rooms,
Basement Public Areas,
Basement Private Areas,
2nd Floor Big Bedrooms,
2nd Floor Small Bedrooms,
3rd Floor First Hallway,
3rd Floor Second Hallway,
Attic & Errata,
House Tour Commentary: Joe & Laura & Astrid,
House Tour Commentary: Jackal,
House Tour Commentary: Susan,
House Tour Commentary: Assorted
The Pledge Program
Bid Night, Schedule, Curriculum & Black Books, Big Brothers & Pledge Pins, Paddling, Initiation
Semesters
Fall 1996, Spring 1997
Events
Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings, Serenading
Other
Full Series, My Rush Experience, Chapter History, Family Trees, National, Greek Life at CWRU, Fraternity Offices, Part 1, Fraternity Offices, Part 2, Fraternity Offices, Part 3, Demographics
Additional Commentary
Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout