Down By The Old Mill Stream

In 1908, a young man named Tell Taylor was sitting on the banks of the Blanchard River in northeast Ohio when he was inspired to write this song. His friends convinced him it wasn't worth publishing as it had no commercial value. A couple of years later though, it was published, and when a vaudeville quartet sang it at a Woolworth store in Kansas City, the composer sold out of the 1,000 copies of the sheet music he had brought to sell. (Selling the sheet music is how most composers made money on their music at the time.) The song went on to sell more than four million copies of the music, making it quite a hit.

Through the years, this fine old tune has taken on a few distinctive lives, and we try to do a nod to most of them in the arrangement for your classroom. The original version, as you hear in the introduction, is the schmaltzy ballad for crooners and older pop vocal groups... you know, barbershop quartets.

Side anecdote - When I (Paul) taught college and ran the department's recording department, my office was next door to the office for the department piano technician, a talented gentleman and friend who I am still in touch with. But he was heavily into barbershop quartets, competitions and all, and he mainly listened to them all day, every day. So today, I don't have them in my life much.

Anyway... There is also the newer use of the tune that is a cross between campfire singing, and Dixieland, and fun things for kids to sing. This setting is basically a 2-part arrangement, though we do give you a couple of places where an optional divisi seems logical and not too hard to perform. Both parts are isolated for your ease of teaching and accessible on our web site.

After an expressive, slow opening, the accompanying band sets up the half-time Dixieland swing that most people will recognize. At this point, the two parts turn into a comic question and answer. If you have heard or sung a similar treatment of the song, you know what's going on. If you haven't, you will quickly pick up on the fact that part 2 comments on every line of lyrics that part 1 sings. Be careful to cut off the ends of the melody notes consistently so that they sound cleaner and won't be in the way of the other part.

There are two last considerations. First, note that from bar 14 on, when you have dotted eighth/sixteenths, they should be performed as a relaxed swing. The recording is a good model. And in several places, you have the options of doing divisi on both parts 1 and 2. Generally, if you don't want to divisi, the top note is probably the best, but either part works and the orchestra will fill it out. At the end, part 1 divides, but you really should do it. A solo voice sings "stream" while the other singers do the rest of the line.