Best of 2015: Sunday Favorites: The Lost Lullaby

During my childhood, my mother rocked me to sleep every night in an old wooden rocking chair. As I began to doze off she would sing me a lullaby, something about a kitty cart and somebody stealing my marbles. All my life I’d never heard the song anywhere but that rocking chair.

Like lots of childhood memories, the song was buried somewhere in the back of my mind and I never paid it much attention until about a month ago when I had my son. Of course being new parents, we went out and bought every gizmo and gadget available that promised to put the baby to sleep, each with its own battery-operated playlist of standard baby lullabies.

After the one hundredth repetition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Rock-A-Bye Baby and Hush Little Baby, set to the backdrop of a screaming newborn, I decided I needed some new material.

Of all the modern do-dads and gadget’s I bought, the best $30 I spent was at the Habitat for Humanity Restore where I purchased an old rocking chair, much like the one my mother put me to sleep in all those years ago. It seems that no plastic apparatus with a generic playlist can replace a mother’s warm embrace and familiar voice, even if it’s not the most musically inclined.

I tried to remember the song my mom sang to me, but I had no idea of the name or artist. In fact the only evidence I had of the song was a few fragmented verses I could barely remember. I asked my mother if she knew, and she had no idea.

The song, I discovered, was one her mother sang to her as a child while rocking her to sleep. That bit of information made my mission even more necessary. If I could sing the song to my son, it would have put three generations of babies to sleep.

Thank goodness for Google. All it took was a few more verses from my mother and I discovered the song ”Little Man You Had a Busy Day.“ (You can see why I couldn’t find it before, as the words ”Little Man“ had appropriately been changed by my mother). ”Little Man“ was written by American songwriter and banjoist Maurice Sigler (1901-1961). Originally from New York City, Sigler moved to Birmingham, Alabama at a young age and formed a band called Jack Linx. They recorded for Okeh Records in the 1920s. He owned a nightclub and wrote and produced radio shows and Birmingham revues, including Uncle Remus.

Sigler move to England in 1934 and wrote scores to the London stage production This’ll Make You Whistle and the British films "Come Out of the Pantry", "First a Girl", "When Knights Were Bold" and "She Shall Have Music". He also had great success collaborating with Tin Pan Alley songwriters like Al Hoffman, Al Goodhart and Mabel Wayne. He died on February 6, 1961 in Flushing, NY.

Sigler was working as a solo song lyricist with Al Hoffman during the 1930s when he wrote ”Little Man.“

The song was popular when my grandmother was a girl in the 1930s. She most likely remembered it from her childhood, or might have learned to play it as she was a pianist at an early age.

Whatever the case, I'm happy I get to sing it to my son when he goes to bed at night.