If you went to public elementary school in the early 1980’s and had music class
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Anonymous
| You’re a Grand Old Flag |
Anonymous
| Went to school in MoCo and we sang a lot of slave songs but didn't say that: Jimmy crack corn, swing low sweet chariot, nobody knows the trouble I've seen, my old Kentucky home |
Anonymous
| Lean on me. |
Anonymous
| MoCo here. Starting elementary school in 1978. Lots of the songs already mentioned, but also We Shall Overcome, the Dreidel Song and Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah. DH is the same age and grew up in Prince William County VA and looked at me like I had three heads when I started singing these songs and said I learned them in elementary school. |
Anonymous
| Hot Cross Buns and Three Blind Mice on the recorder. |
Anonymous
| Hot Cross Buns, Don Gato the Cat and similar Americana that others have referred to |
Anonymous
| Okay I cannot remember the song but you put your elbow in your hand and make a movement with your hand that is standing upright (not holding the elbow). And then you switch hands. Maybe it has something to do with a bird?? |
Anonymous
| We sang the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” pretty regularly in early elementary school. |
Anonymous
|
Did anyone else sing Jimmy Crack Corn?
I can’t believe I typed that. |
Anonymous
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This is more circa 1978-80 for me, but I distinctly remember having to sing songs from The Music Man---76 Trombones and Well Fargo Wagon.
Also this song, which is about clamming in Puget Sound . . . I lived in Pennsylvania and remember wondering why we had to sing this dud every week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc_Tm_1vbuc There was some pioneer-folk-settler theme happening there, I guess. It felt dorky and dated. |
Anonymous
| There were only a handful of school song books marketed to the US market in those decades. Most of your generation will have been exposed to an identical elementary music program. |
Anonymous
My elementary music program was run by parent volunteers in elementary school, so we probably sang whatever music they liked  there was no curriculum, it was whatever the grade level mom could play on the piano.
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Anonymous
This thread sent me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what textbooks my school may have used. The Blue Tail Fly not appears on page 100, with somewhat sanitized lyrics. The descriptive paragraph claims that it was one of Abe Lincoln's favorite songs, but three is no mention whatsoever about the narrator being a slave. https://archive.org/details/makingmusicyouro03land/page/100/mode/2up |
Anonymous
Yes. In New Jersey. We also sang Dixieland ("I wish I was in the land of cotton." And a lot of the patriotic songs: It's a Grand Old Flag, My Country Tis of Thee. Pretty weird selection now that I think about it. |
Anonymous
| Waynewood Elementary, late 70s, early 80s, would be interesting to find out what song book we were using and see how many songs I remember. |