Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless.*
Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless.
Little white flowers will never awaken you,
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you.
Angels have no thought of ever returning you.
Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?
Gloomy Sunday.
Written by Hungarian Composer Reszo Seress three years ago, Gloomy Sunday droned along in comparative obscurity until last month. Then it began to make news aplenty. Budapest police, investigating the suicide of a shoemaker named Joseph Keller, found that Keller had left a note in which he quoted lyrics from Composer Seress' poignant Szomorú Vasárnap. Further inquiry revealed that the lugubrious ballad had persuaded 17 other impressionable Magyars to take their lives. Two shot their brains out while hearing a gypsy band play the piece, others killed themselves listening to recorded versions, several leaped into the Danube clutching the sheet music. The Budapest police banned Gloomy Sunday.
Less excitable, the police of New York City took no action last week when Brunswick Record Corp. narrowly won a hard race to be the first on the streets with a recorded U.S. version of THE FAMOUS HUNGARIAN SUICIDE SONG. The Victor and Decca companies were not long putting competing disks on sale.
As played by Hal Kemp and his usually lively band, Brunswick's Gloomy Sunday wallows dismally along in E flat minor, the dirge effect enhanced by a pair of French horns, and ends with a coda apparently suggested by Chopin's Funeral March. Vocalist Bob Allen and other members of the Kemp band were notice ably affected while making the record, played 21 "masters" before turning out one good enough to record. Few who listened to the Kemp recording for Brunswick or Paul Whiteman's for Victor or Henry King's for Decca failed to confess that the melody and lyrics had a profoundly depressing effect.
* Reproduced by permission of the copyright owner, Chappell & Co., Inc.