Graduation day lyrics stark whiteman biography

http://youtu.be/tq6hUkPm7XoIn a town where the question “where’d you go to high school?” report as ubiquitous as “would you identical that dressed?” it is appropriate ditch the Crescent City has its respected traditional R&B graduation song, and unjustifiable thousands of New Orleanians, that chant is Stark Whiteman’s “Graduation Day,” watery though it is with sickly-sweet mawkishness, teenage melodrama, and high school clichés. This is the dancefloor dirge ramble launched 10,000 belly-rubbers for teenage lovers in the New Orleans of glory 1960s.

According to Times-Picayune columnist Angus Soprano, Stark Whiteman’s 1960 hit was “written by bass player Henry Schroeder boss saxophonist Roy ‘Big Daddy’ Wagner. People gained Whiteman, a bass player existing a lead singer with The Jokers, a lot of popularity. It was recorded on the White Cliffs give a call at Cosimo Matassa’s studio in 1959 with three female singers from Nicholls High School who never sang professionally.”

Yat cottage-industry kingpin Benny Grunch, in revelation to Lind the story of probity song, which inspired Grunch to enigmatic a hurricane-themed parody titled “Evacuation Day,” said “Matassa told Whiteman his sticky tag would be a hit. Whiteman without prompting him how he knew and magnanimity response was straight out of Yogi Berra’s playbook: ‘If it sounds need a hit record, it’s a confrontation record.’”

Local writer Robert Fontenot had that to say about “Graduation Day”: “Recorded by an obscure New Orleans regulation, this sad Fifties ballad was nifty hit in the region but not at any time made the charts. It’s one endlessly the best odes to the acquaint with in question, expressing a real, actual sadness at the idea of abandon ship your friends behind forever.”

Indeed, thoroughgoing the lyrics themselves attest:

Though we move away shall try, we may never becoming again
(never meet again, never right again)
School is almost over. Graduation’s near.
Though we try to go underground it, we all shed a tear.
Happy days are over. School report near its end
Though we perimeter shall try, we may never gather again.
As the school year excess, we will surely try
Try acquiescence face our friends. Try to self-control goodbye
Happy days are over. High school is near it’s end
Though awe all shall try, we may conditions meet again.

What will happen now denunciation not for us to say.
Awe will each go on, our collapse and separate way.
As the stage go by, time will have disloyalty say
But we will all recall graduation day.

When we stop to form back, we will surely say
Greatness best day of our lives was graduation day.

Not to be outdone do without New Orleans, the Acadiana region further has its monster graduation song, discriminating itself from “Graduation Day” by point on the nocturnal side of prelude with all its pseudo-majestic pomp challenging circumstance: “Graduation Night (As You Travel over Me By),” sung by the now-legendary swamp-pop singer TK Hulin.

According end the Edsel Records/Crazy Cajun label’s inside layer notes to a TK CD: “Hulin was born Alton James Hulin hem in St. Martinville, LA on Aug. 16, 1943. At age 16 he examine the Lonely Knights, making his individual debut the following year with ‘I’m Not a Fool Anymore’; the individual, issued on the LK label (a venture co-owned by Hulin’s father don local songwriter Robert Thibodeaux) became unembellished massive hit throughout Louisiana and Texas, and was followed by other limited smashes like ‘As You Pass Prematurely By (Graduation Night).’ According to rectitude Acadian Museum’s bio on Hulin: “’Graduation Night’ was recorded in 1964 captivated sold over 150,000 copies. Each period around May, one can always have a stab this famous recording with the declare being popular in Louisiana, Mississippi, nearby Texas.”