Song Lyric Sunday : 27th June

Jim is our host for the Song Lyric Sunday challenge.  Find out more and join in here

This week we have the theme of Breakfast, Brunch, Dinner, Lunch, Snack, Supper suggested by Paula Light of Light Motifs II.

Mealtimes in the UK can be confusing as like the US we have breakfast and supper, but dinner and lunch can be interchangeable, and somewhere in the mix there is ‘tea’, which is not necessarily a drink.
Growing up we had Sunday dinner around 1pm, but ‘tea’ would be sandwiches, jelly and cake around 6. During the week, we would all sit down to an evening meal or ‘dinner’, and lunch would be midday-ish, mostly packed lunches.

Today I’m going with Doris Day and Tea for Two. I always liked her ‘girl next door’ image and her voice never grated like some singers of today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0zc7x434Aw

Thank you WIKI for this info:

“Tea for Two” is a song composed by Vincent Youmans with lyrics by Irving Caesar and written in 1924. It was introduced by Louise Groody and John Barker in the Broadway musical No, No, Nanette. “Tea for Two” was Youmans’ biggest hit.

Youmans had written the basic melody idea of “Tea for Two” while he was in the navy during World War I, and he used it later on as an introductory passage for a song called “Who’s Who With You?” While in Chicago, Youmans developed the idea into “a song that the hero could sing to the heroine” for the musical No, No, Nanette. He soon after played his composition for Irving Caesar and insisted he write the lyrics then and there. Caesar quickly jotted down a mock-up lyric, fully intending to revise it later on. Youmans, though, loved the mock-up and convinced Caesar it was just right for the melody.

The phrase ‘Tea for Two’ was originally shouted by hawkers on the streets of 18th century England who wanted to attract business by lowering the price of a pot of tea from thruppence to tuppence^.

“Tea for Two” has an A1-A2-A3-B form, a range of just over an octave, and a major tonality throughout. The song’s original key was A♭ major with a false key change to C major during the second “A” section. It is melodically repetitive (as the entire song consists of eighth and quarter notes, except for a pattern of eighth, quarter, and eighth notes which briefly emerge in the second section) and has a relatively simple harmonic progression.

Even though I play the piano, the musical data above is beyond me but makes for interesting reading for those who understand it.

Lyrics courtesy songlyrics.com

Oh, honey
Picture me upon your knee
With tea for two and two for tea
Just me for you and you for me alone

Nobody near us to see us or hear us
No friends or relations on weekend vacations
We won’t have it known, dear
That we own a telephone, dear

Day will break and I’ll awake
And start to bake a sugar cake
For you to take, for all the boys to see
(Oh, darling)

We will raise a family
A boy for you and a girl for me
Can’t you see how happy we will be?

Picture you upon my knee
Tea for two and two for tea
Me for you and you for me alone

Nobody near us to see us or hear us
No friends or relations on weekend vacations
We won’t have it known, dear
That we own a telephone, dear

Day will break and I’m gonna wake
And start to bake a sugar cake
For you to take, for all the boys to see

We will raise a family
A boy for you and a girl for me
Oh, can’t you see how happy we will be?
(How happy we will be?)