fbpx
Wikipedia

The Whiffenpoofs

The Yale Whiffenpoofs is a collegiate a cappella singing group at Yale University. Established in 1909, it is the oldest such group in the United States. Best known for "The Whiffenpoof Song",[1] the group is composed of 14 senior students who compete for admission in the spring of their junior year.[2] Former members include Cole Porter and Jonathan Coulton.

The Yale Whiffenpoofs
Background information
GenresA cappella
Years active1909–present
Websitewhiffenpoofs.com

Name edit

According to Whiffenpoof historian James M. Howard:

It was Goat Fowler who suggested we call ourselves The Whiffenpoofs. He had been tickled by the patter of one of the characters in a Victor Herbert musical comedy called "Little Nemo" which recently been running on Broadway. In a scene in which there was great boasting of terrific exploits in big game hunting and fishing, comedian Joseph Cawthorne told a fantastic tale of how he had caught a Whiffenpoof fish. It seems that Cawthorn had coined the word some years before when he and a fellow actor were amusing themselves by making up nonsense verses. One they particularly liked began: "A drivaling grilyal yandled its flail, One day by a Whiffenpoof's grave." Cawthorn recalled the verse in making up his patter for "Little Nemo" and put it into his act. Whether the word meant fish, flesh or fowl was irrelevant to our purpose when we chose it as our name. "Whiffenpoof" fitted in with our mood of free and exuberant fancy and it was adopted with enthusiasm.

History and activities edit

The Whiffenpoofs' best-known alumnus may be Cole Porter, who sang in the 1913 line-up; the group often performs Porter songs in tribute.

The Whiffenpoofs have performed for generations at a number of venues, including Lincoln Center, the White House, the Salt Lake Tabernacle, Oakland Coliseum, Carnegie Hall and the Rose Bowl. The group has appeared on such television shows as Jeopardy!, The Today Show, Saturday Night Live, 60 Minutes, Gilmore Girls, The West Wing, and Glee. In December 2010, the group appeared on NBC's a cappella competition The Sing-Off; they were eliminated fourth, on the second show.

During the school year, the Whiffenpoofs perform on Monday nights at Mory's, known more formally as Mory's Temple Bar, circulating from room to room.[3]

The Whiffenpoofs travel extensively during the school year and take a three-month world tour during the summer. The group's business manager and musical director, known in Whiffenpoof tradition respectively as the "Popocatepetl" and "Pitchpipe,"[2] are chosen by members of the previous year's group. An alumni organization maintains close ties with the group.

Female membership edit

Women matriculated at Yale beginning in 1969, and votes on the subject of admitting women to the Whiffenpoofs took place starting in the 1970s.[4] Each vote denied female singers the opportunity to join the group. Women were allowed "show" auditions but were never "tapped" (chosen) for the group. As recently as November 20, 2016, the group voted against admitting women.[5] A record number of women turned out for the 2017 auditions.[6]

In early February 2018, the Whiffenpoofs announced (in a joint statement with their sister group Whim 'n Rhythm) that students of all genders would be eligible to audition.[7] Later that month, the group accepted its first female member, Sofía Campoamor.[8] The following year, the group accepted its second female member and first woman of color, Neha Bhatt.[9] In February 2021, the Whiffenpoofs selected their first non-male leader, Syd Bakal, as business manager for the '22 Whiffenpoofs.[10]

"The Whiffenpoof Song" edit

 
Whiffenpoofs of 1912 (dressed in tutus) posing with Louie Linder (in tophat), 1912

"The Whiffenpoof Song", the group's traditional closing number, is a four part male-voice choral song (TTBar.B) and was published in sheet music form in 1909. For the lyrics, Yale students Meade Minnigerode and George S. Pomeroy[1][11] adapted Rudyard Kipling's poem "Gentlemen-Rankers". The poem had already been set to music by Tod B. Galloway (Amherst, 1885) and the sheet music copyrighted in 1909 and 1918 and again in 1936.[12]

In the lyrics, "Mory's" refers to Mory's Temple Bar, a restaurant next to the campus and especially hospitable to Yale undergraduates (it allowed them credit), and "Louie" to its owner (1898–1912), Louis Linder.[13] "Shall I Wasting" is shorthand for "Shall I Wasting in Despair", and "Mavourneen" stands for "Kathleen Mavourneen", both popular part-songs in the Victorian era.

In popular culture edit

The song has been covered many times. It became a hit for Rudy Vallée in 1937 and in 1947 for Bing Crosby, credited to Bing Crosby with Fred Waring and The Glee Club (Decca 73940). It has also been recorded by Elvis Presley, Count Basie, Perry Como, Ray Conniff, Mitch Miller, the Ames Brothers, the Statler Brothers, the Sons of the Pioneers, Louis Armstrong, and countless others.

The chorus, as sung by flyers and crews of the U.S. Army Air Forces' daylight bombing effort during World War II, played a key role in the 1949 movie 12 O'Clock High. It is heard first in the background when Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger) surveys the abandoned Archbury airfield in 1949, just before his flashback to 1942 begins. The men sing it quietly in the Officer's Club after the unit receives its first commendation, baffling Stovall and General Savage (Gregory Peck) with their subdued reaction: “They aren't celebrating the way kids ought to…” At the end of the film, when Stovall returns to the present, the refrain of “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree” shifts with a flourish of trumpets to the remembered voices singing “We're poor kittle lambs.. “ which becomes a triumphant instrumental phrase and fanfare over “The End.”

In the 1952 comedy film Monkey Business, the tune comes on the radio and Cary Grant starts singing it to Marilyn Monroe, who declares it "a silly song". Later, Ginger Rogers sings it to Grant and describes it as "our song". And later still, Grant sings it to Rogers when he is locked out of the hotel room.

In the 1952 film Road to Bali from Paramount Pictures, starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour, Hope and Crosby find themselves in front of a herd of sheep. They sing the first part of the song's chorus with the special effect sheep "choir" adding the ending "Baa!, Baa!, Baa!" Crosby remarks, "That was helpful, wasn't it?" and Hope retorts, "Fred Waring must have played through here", referring to Bing's hit single of the tune, which was backed by Waring and his Glee Club.[14]

The melody is the opening theme of the 1975 television series Baa Baa Black Sheep, a fictionalization of the World War II wartime exploits of the United States Marine Corps Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-214, ancestor of the Corps's present-day VMA-214 "Black Sheep" Squadron. "The Whiffenpoof Song" has long been associated with the VMA-214. One of the squadron's members, Paul "Moon" Mullen, adapted "The Whiffenpoof Song" for the squadron's use.[15] The squadron's badge features a gamboling black lamb that refers back to the song.

The Whiffenpoofs can be heard singing it in the 2006 movie The Good Shepherd, in the scene where Matt Damon's son tells him he wants to join the CIA.

In the play Serenading Louie by Lanford Wilson, performed at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2010, the song is sung by the cast and by Bing Crosby.

During the song "Together Again" in the musical version of Young Frankenstein, Frederick Frankenstein confesses to Igor that he "was in fact the Whiffenpoof at Yale", which impresses Igor.

In The Simpsons episode "The Caper Chase", the Whiffenpoofs perform the song to Montgomery Burns, who offers the college a new library if he will have them killed.

Variations edit

Musical satirist Tom Lehrer spoofed "The Whiffenpoof Song" as part of his song "Bright College Days." Lehrer, an instructor at Yale's traditional rival Harvard University, sings of "glasses raised on high" (at which point he removes his eyeglasses and holds them up) and of drinking a toast "to those we love the best", to rhyme with "we'll pass [which may mean 'pass the final exams' or 'die'] and be forgotten with the rest." He also sings "to the tables down at Mory's, wherever that may be...", evoking a laugh from the Harvard auditorium crowd at the live recording.[16]

In 1973, the Harvard Krokodiloes debuted a spoof, "The Krokenpoof Song", with Harvard-specific lyrics, tongue-in-cheek references, bawdy variations involving references to Whiffenpoofs and sheep, rhymes such as "We'll drink lemonade Drambuie" in place of "We will serenade our Louis", and ending with "Baa, baa, humbug!"

Mad produced parody lyrics of it that were reprinted in the 1973 book The Mad Sampler. Titled "The Hundred-Proofs Song", it suggested that rich students forgot about their studies and resorted to getting drunk at the bar, "...earning the grades we deserve, we know; – F – F – F!"

Louis Armstrong recorded a satirical version of the song, subtitled (or maybe alternatively titled) "The Boppenpoof Song", poking fun at the bebop movement in jazz. His friend Rudy Vallée contributed lyrics to that version.

The introduction and a parody of the first verse are sung by Betty Grable during the graduation scene in How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955).

A parody of the chorus was included in the Two Ronnies' barbershop sketch in 1978.[17]

The song serves as the basis for the University of Montevallo's Purple Side song, which is part of the College Night homecoming tradition.

Emblem edit

The group adopted the Whiffenpoof emblem in 1912. Depicting a heraldic wyvern with mint leaves for wings, a horse's neck, and a swizzle stick for a perch,[citation needed] it was designed by a cartoonist from campus humor magazine The Yale Record.[18]

Notable members edit

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ a b The Rev. James M. Howard, Yale Class of 1909, .
  2. ^ a b Brozan, Nancy (Apr 20, 1987). "Whiffenpoofs: 'Gentlemen songsters' still". The New York Times (Late (East Coast) ed.). p. C.12. ISSN 0362-4331. ProQuest 956358391.
  3. ^ Watson, Ben. "Music made in England: Mondays at Mory's". Yankee. Vol. 65, no. 6 Jul/Aug 2001. Dublin. p. 65. ISSN 0044-0191. ProQuest 74227092.
  4. ^ Pannell, Courtney (21 September 2009). "Forty years of women at Yale". Yale Daily News.
  5. ^ Cui, Jingyi; O'Daly, Britton (30 November 2016). "Whiffenpoofs vote against admitting women". Yale Daily News.
  6. ^ Hamid, Zainab; Yaffe-Bellany, David (February 13, 2017). "Record nonmale turnout for Whiffs auditions". Yale Daily News. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  7. ^ Eaton-Robb, Pat (February 11, 2018). . The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 11, 2018. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
  8. ^ Shimer, David (20 February 2018). "Yale's Famed Whiffenpoofs Singing Group Admits First Woman". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 March 2018.
  9. ^ Daugherty, Lindsay (8 February 2019). "Whiffs accept first woman of color". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  10. ^ Carty, Marisol (19 February 2021). "Whiffenpoofs and Whim 'n Rhythm tap 2022 classes after virtual auditions". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 19 February 2021.
  11. ^ .
  12. ^ Boehm, Richard Theodore (Autumn 1974). "Tod B. Galloway: Buckeye Jongleur, Composer of 'The Whiffenpoof Song'". Ohio History Journal. 83 (4): 275.
  13. ^ George Washington Patterson IV, ed., The Class of Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen: Yale College (Yale Univ., 1914) pages 35, 400–403; Robert Kimball, ed., The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter (NY, Knopf, 1983) page 5.
  14. ^ Bing Crosby discography
  15. ^ . Who's Who in Marine Corps History. History Division, United States Marine Corps. Archived from the original on 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2007-10-21.
  16. ^ "Bright College Days". tomlehrersongs.com.
  17. ^ Episode #6.7, The Two Ronnies, 1978-01-02, retrieved 2022-12-18
  18. ^ "Reunion Program" (PDF). WhiffAlumni.com.
  19. ^ Doherty, Donna (25 January 2009). "Baa, baa, baa, at 100 Whiffenpoofs sound just as good as ever". New Haven Register. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
  20. ^ Rapkin, Mickey (23 March 2008). "Perfect Tone, in a Minor Key". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-23.

External links edit

whiffenpoofs, yale, whiffenpoofs, collegiate, cappella, singing, group, yale, university, established, 1909, oldest, such, group, united, states, best, known, whiffenpoof, song, group, composed, senior, students, compete, admission, spring, their, junior, year. The Yale Whiffenpoofs is a collegiate a cappella singing group at Yale University Established in 1909 it is the oldest such group in the United States Best known for The Whiffenpoof Song 1 the group is composed of 14 senior students who compete for admission in the spring of their junior year 2 Former members include Cole Porter and Jonathan Coulton The Yale WhiffenpoofsBackground informationGenresA cappellaYears active1909 presentWebsitewhiffenpoofs com Bright College Years source source track A recording of the 2006 Whiffenpoofs singing Yale s unofficial alma mater Problems playing this file See media help Contents 1 Name 2 History and activities 2 1 Female membership 3 The Whiffenpoof Song 3 1 In popular culture 3 2 Variations 4 Emblem 5 Notable members 6 See also 7 References 8 External linksName editThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed January 2020 template removal help According to Whiffenpoof historian James M Howard It was Goat Fowler who suggested we call ourselves The Whiffenpoofs He had been tickled by the patter of one of the characters in a Victor Herbert musical comedy called Little Nemo which recently been running on Broadway In a scene in which there was great boasting of terrific exploits in big game hunting and fishing comedian Joseph Cawthorne told a fantastic tale of how he had caught a Whiffenpoof fish It seems that Cawthorn had coined the word some years before when he and a fellow actor were amusing themselves by making up nonsense verses One they particularly liked began A drivaling grilyal yandled its flail One day by a Whiffenpoof s grave Cawthorn recalled the verse in making up his patter for Little Nemo and put it into his act Whether the word meant fish flesh or fowl was irrelevant to our purpose when we chose it as our name Whiffenpoof fitted in with our mood of free and exuberant fancy and it was adopted with enthusiasm History and activities editThe Whiffenpoofs best known alumnus may be Cole Porter who sang in the 1913 line up the group often performs Porter songs in tribute The Whiffenpoofs have performed for generations at a number of venues including Lincoln Center the White House the Salt Lake Tabernacle Oakland Coliseum Carnegie Hall and the Rose Bowl The group has appeared on such television shows as Jeopardy The Today Show Saturday Night Live 60 Minutes Gilmore Girls The West Wing and Glee In December 2010 the group appeared on NBC s a cappella competition The Sing Off they were eliminated fourth on the second show During the school year the Whiffenpoofs perform on Monday nights at Mory s known more formally as Mory s Temple Bar circulating from room to room 3 The Whiffenpoofs travel extensively during the school year and take a three month world tour during the summer The group s business manager and musical director known in Whiffenpoof tradition respectively as the Popocatepetl and Pitchpipe 2 are chosen by members of the previous year s group An alumni organization maintains close ties with the group Female membership edit Women matriculated at Yale beginning in 1969 and votes on the subject of admitting women to the Whiffenpoofs took place starting in the 1970s 4 Each vote denied female singers the opportunity to join the group Women were allowed show auditions but were never tapped chosen for the group As recently as November 20 2016 the group voted against admitting women 5 A record number of women turned out for the 2017 auditions 6 In early February 2018 the Whiffenpoofs announced in a joint statement with their sister group Whim n Rhythm that students of all genders would be eligible to audition 7 Later that month the group accepted its first female member Sofia Campoamor 8 The following year the group accepted its second female member and first woman of color Neha Bhatt 9 In February 2021 the Whiffenpoofs selected their first non male leader Syd Bakal as business manager for the 22 Whiffenpoofs 10 The Whiffenpoof Song edit nbsp Whiffenpoofs of 1912 dressed in tutus posing with Louie Linder in tophat 1912 The Whiffenpoof Song the group s traditional closing number is a four part male voice choral song TTBar B and was published in sheet music form in 1909 For the lyrics Yale students Meade Minnigerode and George S Pomeroy 1 11 adapted Rudyard Kipling s poem Gentlemen Rankers The poem had already been set to music by Tod B Galloway Amherst 1885 and the sheet music copyrighted in 1909 and 1918 and again in 1936 12 In the lyrics Mory s refers to Mory s Temple Bar a restaurant next to the campus and especially hospitable to Yale undergraduates it allowed them credit and Louie to its owner 1898 1912 Louis Linder 13 Shall I Wasting is shorthand for Shall I Wasting in Despair and Mavourneen stands for Kathleen Mavourneen both popular part songs in the Victorian era In popular culture edit The song has been covered many times It became a hit for Rudy Vallee in 1937 and in 1947 for Bing Crosby credited to Bing Crosby with Fred Waring and The Glee Club Decca 73940 It has also been recorded by Elvis Presley Count Basie Perry Como Ray Conniff Mitch Miller the Ames Brothers the Statler Brothers the Sons of the Pioneers Louis Armstrong and countless others The chorus as sung by flyers and crews of the U S Army Air Forces daylight bombing effort during World War II played a key role in the 1949 movie 12 O Clock High It is heard first in the background when Harvey Stovall Dean Jagger surveys the abandoned Archbury airfield in 1949 just before his flashback to 1942 begins The men sing it quietly in the Officer s Club after the unit receives its first commendation baffling Stovall and General Savage Gregory Peck with their subdued reaction They aren t celebrating the way kids ought to At the end of the film when Stovall returns to the present the refrain of Don t Sit Under the Apple Tree shifts with a flourish of trumpets to the remembered voices singing We re poor kittle lambs which becomes a triumphant instrumental phrase and fanfare over The End In the 1952 comedy film Monkey Business the tune comes on the radio and Cary Grant starts singing it to Marilyn Monroe who declares it a silly song Later Ginger Rogers sings it to Grant and describes it as our song And later still Grant sings it to Rogers when he is locked out of the hotel room In the 1952 film Road to Bali from Paramount Pictures starring Bob Hope Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour Hope and Crosby find themselves in front of a herd of sheep They sing the first part of the song s chorus with the special effect sheep choir adding the ending Baa Baa Baa Crosby remarks That was helpful wasn t it and Hope retorts Fred Waring must have played through here referring to Bing s hit single of the tune which was backed by Waring and his Glee Club 14 The melody is the opening theme of the 1975 television series Baa Baa Black Sheep a fictionalization of the World War II wartime exploits of the United States Marine Corps Marine Fighter Squadron VMF 214 ancestor of the Corps s present day VMA 214 Black Sheep Squadron The Whiffenpoof Song has long been associated with the VMA 214 One of the squadron s members Paul Moon Mullen adapted The Whiffenpoof Song for the squadron s use 15 The squadron s badge features a gamboling black lamb that refers back to the song The Whiffenpoofs can be heard singing it in the 2006 movie The Good Shepherd in the scene where Matt Damon s son tells him he wants to join the CIA In the play Serenading Louie by Lanford Wilson performed at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2010 the song is sung by the cast and by Bing Crosby During the song Together Again in the musical version of Young Frankenstein Frederick Frankenstein confesses to Igor that he was in fact the Whiffenpoof at Yale which impresses Igor In The Simpsons episode The Caper Chase the Whiffenpoofs perform the song to Montgomery Burns who offers the college a new library if he will have them killed Variations edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed January 2018 template removal help Musical satirist Tom Lehrer spoofed The Whiffenpoof Song as part of his song Bright College Days Lehrer an instructor at Yale s traditional rival Harvard University sings of glasses raised on high at which point he removes his eyeglasses and holds them up and of drinking a toast to those we love the best to rhyme with we ll pass which may mean pass the final exams or die and be forgotten with the rest He also sings to the tables down at Mory s wherever that may be evoking a laugh from the Harvard auditorium crowd at the live recording 16 In 1973 the Harvard Krokodiloes debuted a spoof The Krokenpoof Song with Harvard specific lyrics tongue in cheek references bawdy variations involving references to Whiffenpoofs and sheep rhymes such as We ll drink lemonade Drambuie in place of We will serenade our Louis and ending with Baa baa humbug Mad produced parody lyrics of it that were reprinted in the 1973 book The Mad Sampler Titled The Hundred Proofs Song it suggested that rich students forgot about their studies and resorted to getting drunk at the bar earning the grades we deserve we know F F F Louis Armstrong recorded a satirical version of the song subtitled or maybe alternatively titled The Boppenpoof Song poking fun at the bebop movement in jazz His friend Rudy Vallee contributed lyrics to that version The introduction and a parody of the first verse are sung by Betty Grable during the graduation scene in How to Be Very Very Popular 1955 A parody of the chorus was included in the Two Ronnies barbershop sketch in 1978 17 The song serves as the basis for the University of Montevallo s Purple Side song which is part of the College Night homecoming tradition Emblem editThe group adopted the Whiffenpoof emblem in 1912 Depicting a heraldic wyvern with mint leaves for wings a horse s neck and a swizzle stick for a perch citation needed it was designed by a cartoonist from campus humor magazine The Yale Record 18 Notable members editChristophe Beck television and film composer Prescott Bush U S Senator father of President George H W Bush and grandfather of President George W Bush 19 Jonathan Coulton singer songwriter 20 C William Harwood conductor Charles Kullman operatic tenor Emil Henry CEO Henry Tiger LLC U S Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Peter Peltz artist Cole Porter composer songwriter Charles Rivkin U S Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs John Stewart operatic tenor Josh Singer Oscar winning screenwriter Ron Livingston actorSee also editThe Whiffenpoof Song at WikisourceReferences edit a b The Rev James M Howard Yale Class of 1909 An Authentic Account of the Founding of the Whiffenpoofs a b Brozan Nancy Apr 20 1987 Whiffenpoofs Gentlemen songsters still The New York Times Late East Coast ed p C 12 ISSN 0362 4331 ProQuest 956358391 Watson Ben Music made in England Mondays at Mory s Yankee Vol 65 no 6 Jul Aug 2001 Dublin p 65 ISSN 0044 0191 ProQuest 74227092 Pannell Courtney 21 September 2009 Forty years of women at Yale Yale Daily News Cui Jingyi O Daly Britton 30 November 2016 Whiffenpoofs vote against admitting women Yale Daily News Hamid Zainab Yaffe Bellany David February 13 2017 Record nonmale turnout for Whiffs auditions Yale Daily News Retrieved March 3 2022 Eaton Robb Pat February 11 2018 Poof Ivy League glee club s gender restrictions disappear The Washington Post Archived from the original on February 11 2018 Retrieved 11 February 2018 Shimer David 20 February 2018 Yale s Famed Whiffenpoofs Singing Group Admits First Woman The New York Times Retrieved 6 March 2018 Daugherty Lindsay 8 February 2019 Whiffs accept first woman of color Yale Daily News Retrieved 3 February 2020 Carty Marisol 19 February 2021 Whiffenpoofs and Whim n Rhythm tap 2022 classes after virtual auditions Yale Daily News Retrieved 19 February 2021 Time August 2 1937 Whiffenpoof Contest Boehm Richard Theodore Autumn 1974 Tod B Galloway Buckeye Jongleur Composer of The Whiffenpoof Song Ohio History Journal 83 4 275 George Washington Patterson IV ed The Class of Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen Yale College Yale Univ 1914 pages 35 400 403 Robert Kimball ed The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter NY Knopf 1983 page 5 Bing Crosby discography Colonel Gregory Boyington USMCR Who s Who in Marine Corps History History Division United States Marine Corps Archived from the original on 2011 06 15 Retrieved 2007 10 21 Bright College Days tomlehrersongs com Episode 6 7 The Two Ronnies 1978 01 02 retrieved 2022 12 18 Reunion Program PDF WhiffAlumni com Doherty Donna 25 January 2009 Baa baa baa at 100 Whiffenpoofs sound just as good as ever New Haven Register Retrieved 2010 02 28 Rapkin Mickey 23 March 2008 Perfect Tone in a Minor Key The New York Times Retrieved 2008 03 23 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Whiffenpoofs Whiffenpoofs Official Site About The Whiffenpoof Song and Baa Baa Black Sheep at the Wayback Machine archived July 10 2008 Free scores by The Whiffenpoof Song in the Choral Public Domain Library ChoralWiki Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Whiffenpoofs amp oldid 1179972583, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.