In the prison cell I sit, thinking, Mother dear of you, and our bright and happy home so far away. And the tears, they fill my eyes, spite of all that I can do, so I try to cheer my comrades and be gay. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching.
Cheer up comrades, they will come. And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again of the free land in our own beloved home. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching.
Cheer up comrades, they will come. And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again of the free land in our own beloved home. In the battlefront we stood when their business cards they made, and they swept us off a hundred men or more.
But before we reached their lines they were beaten back dismayed, and we heard the cry of victory o'er and o'er. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching. Cheer up comrades, they will come.
And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again of the free land in our own beloved home. So within the prison cells we are waiting for the day that shall come to open wide the iron door. And the hollow eye goes into full heart all okay as we think of being home and friends once more.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching. Cheer up comrades, they will come. And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again of the free land in our own beloved home.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching. Cheer up comrades, they will come. And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again of the free land in our own beloved home.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching. Cheer up comrades, they will come. And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again of the free land in our own beloved home.
Transcribed by AI from the recording above. These are noisy hundred-year-old cylinders, so expect misheard words and the occasional invented line — trust your ears over the text.
Audio public domain, courtesy of the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. Transcript CC BY 4.0. Free to reuse, including commercially, with credit.
Knickerbocker Quartet
A studio ensemble rather than a touring band. Record companies kept groups of session players on call and issued them under a rotating set of house names — the personnel overlapped heavily from one to the next, and the name on the label indicated the kind of music inside more than who was performing it. Individual players were rarely credited, and for most of these ensembles the membership is now unrecoverable.
Written from UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. Corrections welcome.