"I'm Happy When I'm Hiking"
Lyrics and music by Ralph Butler and Raymond Wallace.
Arrangement by Patricio da Silva.
From the album "Now and Then": "Music from the Great Depression" (s) 2010/1929, the music video of one of the most famous hiking songs, marching songs, and songs for scouts to sing:"I'm Happy When I'm Hiking".
Ian Whitcomb, the crooner singing in "I'm Happy When I'm Hiking" music video arranged by Patricio da Silva, writes "(...) Fifteen years earlier, when America joined the war in Europe, the Alleymen had buckled down to patriotic duty providing go-get-’em marching songs like “We Don’t Want The Bacon — What We Want Is A Piece Of The Rhine”, treating a distant conflict like an out-of-town vaudeville show. But now, in the eerie quietness of these early hard times for urbanites, the message was milder. The suggestion was “Let’s Have Another Cup Of Coffee” or “Let’s Put Out The Lights and Go To Sleep,” rather than a goose-step to an apocalyptic rendezvous with destiny, as they would be doing in Germany.(...)
(...) Actually, in nearby England the native songwriters were recommending a brisk walk — “I’m Happy When I’m Hiking” — in long shorts (or short longs) as an antidote to an unfortunate turn of events in the stock market, not to be confused with the ongoing rotten state of things ever since the Great War had shaken the Empire and let upstart Americans strut about, flooding the isles with their jizzy-jazz and slang. In London’s own Tin Pan Alley my songwriting uncle and his colleagues were censuring the limited range of Yank song subjects as “indoor poodle-faking” involving the “lugubrious lamentations of a disappointed lover.(...)”
© Ian Whitcomb
Now & Then: Music from the Great Depression (s)
"I'm Happy When I'm Hiking"
Ralph Buttler & Raymond Wallace
Arrangement by Patricio da Silva.
"I'm Happy When I'm Hiking" - Lyrics
I'm happy when I'm hiking, pack upon my back.
I'm happy when I'm hiking, on(off) the beaten track.
Out in the open country, that's the place for me,
With a true Scout friend, to the journey's end,
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty miles a day.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp...
I'm happy when I'm hiking, pack upon my back.
I'm happy when I'm hiking, off the beaten track.
Out in the open country, that's the place for me
With a true Scouting friend to the journeys end,
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty miles a day.
Tramp, tramp, tramp ...
Lyrics and music by Ralph Butler and Raymond Wallace.
Arrangement by Patricio da Silva.
From the album "Now and Then": "Music from the Great Depression" (s) 2010/1929, the music video of one of the most famous hiking songs, marching songs, and songs for scouts to sing:"I'm Happy When I'm Hiking".
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| I'm Happy When I'm Hiking, from the album Now & Then: Music From the Great Depression(s) 2010 / 1929, featuring Ian Whitcomb in arrangements by Patricio da Silva |
(...) Actually, in nearby England the native songwriters were recommending a brisk walk — “I’m Happy When I’m Hiking” — in long shorts (or short longs) as an antidote to an unfortunate turn of events in the stock market, not to be confused with the ongoing rotten state of things ever since the Great War had shaken the Empire and let upstart Americans strut about, flooding the isles with their jizzy-jazz and slang. In London’s own Tin Pan Alley my songwriting uncle and his colleagues were censuring the limited range of Yank song subjects as “indoor poodle-faking” involving the “lugubrious lamentations of a disappointed lover.(...)”
© Ian Whitcomb
Now & Then: Music from the Great Depression (s)
"I'm Happy When I'm Hiking"
Ralph Buttler & Raymond Wallace
Arrangement by Patricio da Silva.
"I'm Happy When I'm Hiking" - Lyrics
I'm happy when I'm hiking, pack upon my back.
I'm happy when I'm hiking, on(off) the beaten track.
Out in the open country, that's the place for me,
With a true Scout friend, to the journey's end,
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty miles a day.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp...
I'm happy when I'm hiking, pack upon my back.
I'm happy when I'm hiking, off the beaten track.
Out in the open country, that's the place for me
With a true Scouting friend to the journeys end,
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty miles a day.
Tramp, tramp, tramp ...
