Song of the Day 1/1: Uptown String Band, “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover”

The Mummers Parade is hanging in there, even if it’s much diminished. The march nowadays runs only from City Hall to Washington Street, in the wrong direction, and it doesn’t air on WPHL-17 anymore (you can livestream it, though).

As critics note in this Philadelphia Inquirer article, the parade has roots in minstrelsy, and a blackface incident in 2020 caused a still-ongoing backlash, to the point that the parade’s existence is in some doubt. Given all the comic division crossdressing, it would already be banned in several Southern states.

If it goes, the world’s largest showcase for string band music will go with it. The original 19th-century string bands had just a handful of players on banjo, fiddle and string bass, but by the early 20th century, when the Mummers went official, they had added woodwinds. Brass instruments weren’t and still aren’t allowed, and a string bass doesn’t project well in open air, so the Mummers Parade is one of the few places you’ll see people playing the bass saxophone.

The restrictions on instrumentation give string band music a characteristic sound, based on strummed banjos en masse. Most people find it an acquired taste – I once lived in a row house next door to a guy who played banjo in the Woodland String Band, so I got used to it. Though most bands’ routines feature music from every era, certain old-timey tunes are considered Mummers classics.

This is one of them, and unlike “Oh Dem Golden Slippers” it didn’t originate in a minstrel show. Originally published in 1927, it was quickly recorded by a dozen acts, most successfully by Nick Lucas, “The Crooning Troubador,” whose version reached No. 2. You’ll notice that it doesn’t sound much like what you hear from the Mummers, who only play the chorus. The song actually has two verses and different lyrics on the second chorus.

After that early burst of popularity, the song nearly faded away – it was recorded only twice in the next 20 years, until the Uptown String Band, which apparently had been playing it for some time, released it as a 78-rpm 10-inch shellac single on the small Krantz label.

The record generated enough interest to be picked up by Mercury Records, but by then other acts had glommed onto the tune. Art Mooney’s version topped the charts in early 1948, and before the year was out more than a dozen covers were released, including versions by both the Ferko and Hegeman string bands.

As you can hear, while Mooney’s version features his full orchestra, it’s clearly based on a string band arrangement. Superior distribution helped make it to No. 1, while Uptown’s single only reached No. 11.