Your buddy misses you

Okay, Vleeptron admits in advance that this is in somewhat questionable taste. (Regular Vleeptron readers will be shocked. Well, I've been on some pretty weird drugs the last two days, so that's where the lapse in Good Taste comes from.)

Although these lyrics speak for themselves, there's a traditional American context -- maybe UK, too -- to this song which make it one of the saddest songs ever written. (Tony Bennett's version particularly reduces me to blubbering. But even when a jazz combo plays it without the words, it makes me weep.)

It was written four years after World War One ended. People from that era quickly came to associate it with their lost soldier pals.

And then there was another Great War, The Big Two, and a new generation of veterans would think of their lost pals whenever they heard this song. It's played a lot around Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Those poppies that old vets sell on Veterans Day/Remembrance Day are called "Buddy Poppies." (Please buy one; the money goes to help vets.)

But just today I'm singing it -- sadly -- for another lost buddy. He had a long run and he died of old age (possibly with atherosclerotic complications), but I'll remember the wonderful gifts he gave me forever.

Goodbye, buddy.

~ ~ ~

My Buddy

Words by Gus Kahn
Music by Walter Donaldson
composed 1922

Nights are long since you went away
I think about you all through the day
My Buddy, my Buddy
No Buddy quite so true

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand
Just long to know that you understand
My Buddy, my Buddy
Your Buddy misses you

Buddies thru all of the gay days
Buddies when something went wrong
I wait alone through the gray days
Missing your smile and your song

Nights are long since you went away
I think about you all through the day
My Buddy, my Buddy
No Buddy quite so true

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand
Just long to know that you understand
My Buddy, my Buddy
Your Buddy misses you