Ohio History Journal

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RICHARD THEODORE BOEHM

RICHARD THEODORE BOEHM

 

 

Tod B. Galloway:

Buckeye Jongleur, Composer of

"The Whiffenpoof Song"

 

 

 

How did the music for Yale's famous "Whiffenpoof Song" come to be composed by

an Amherst College grad in Central Ohio? And how did the Columbus tune come

to be matched to a New Haven college verse, thence grow to become a part of the

common heritage of the world of American music?

The answers emerge from a varied skein, starting with homesick British soldiers

serving in Victoria's India, tracing to Central Ohio and the pastime talents of a col-

orful Columbus judge-musician-entertainer, thence on to Connecticut through the

musical lives of five Yale University students. Throughout the tangle, the mark of a

popular Buckeye musician is indelible. The threads all came together in Colum-

bus: the time was New Years Night, 1908; the place, the Columbus Club.

The concert that evening by the Yale Glee, Banjo and Mandolin Clubs was "the

best ever given here by a college club," reported the Ohio State Journal. The per-

formance at the Board of Trade auditorium was an enthusiastic success enjoyed by

a "large and fashionable audience. . ." which included "the social element in large

numbers." The Journal methodically set out a roster of thirty-seven "patronesses,"

alphabetically arranged; the list was studded with family names from the upper

strata of Columbus society, many of them with Yale connections.

The third number on the club program was Tod Galloway's popular "Gypsy

Trail," composed more than ten years earlier. It was sung by Yale's soloist, Phillip

Hamilton Collins, a senior from Cleveland, who, the critic adjudged, had a "smooth

baritone voice of splendid quality, and he was most successful with this song. It

was very well received, and Judge Galloway, who was in the audience, must have

been very happy over its reception." 1

After the concert, the glee clubbers moved a couple of blocks east on Broad Street

to the Columbus Club (still today a fashionable uppercrust club), where "a delight-

ful smoker" was sponsored by the Yale alumni for the twenty-three choristers. Gal-

 

 

1. Ohio State Journal (Columbus), January 2, 1908. See also Columbus Evening Dispatch, January 2,

1908; Yale Daily News, December 13, 1907. Galloway applied to himself the term "jongleur," which, he

said, was a medieval French word used in France and Norman England. A jongleur was a minstrel who

traveled 'from place to place, singing songs, often of his own composition and usually to his own accom-

paniment.' "The Trail of a Jongleur," The Etude (February 1929), 95.

 

Mr. Boehm, a Columbus lawyer, certified public accountant, and lecturer in law, has been a contrib-

utor to more than a dozen leading technical journals.