Preparon-nous son père pour feter le jour de l’an (MS2011-3223-021)

Preparon-nous son père pour feter le jour de l’an (MS2011-3223-021)

Le Jour de l’An

French language song text from VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3223-021 Alice Lacourse Danis Songbook. Pp. 19.

[“Préparons nous son père, pour fêter le Jour de l’An” (“Let’s Get Ready, My Old Man, to Celebrate New Year’s Day”) is a partial transcription of the 1930 original song, “Le Jour de l’An” (“New Year’s Day”) by Québécois singer-songwriter, fiddler, and harmonica player Madame Édouard Bolduc (1894-1941, née Mary Rose Anne Travers). “La Bolduc,” as she was affectionately known by her audiences, learned to play fiddle, jaw harp, and to sing traditional songs from her family before leaving her small village in the Gaspé region in her teens to work as a domestic in Montreal. She married factory worker Édouard Bolduc when she was barely twenty. By the second half of the 1920s, a poor housewife and mother struggling to help her invalid husband make ends meet, Bolduc joined a Conrad Gauthier’s popular theatrical company, Les veillées du bon vieux temps, which presented “old-fashioned country-style” stage shows in Montreal to the delight of large, working class audiences.

Bolduc’s popularity with audiences led to her being signed on as a Compo studio artist in 1929 by songwriter, composer, pianist, and recording studio owner/producer Roméo Beaudry (1882-1932). Beaudry was, along with his friend Herbert Berliner, the most important producer of Canadian artists in the first half of the 20th century. Bolduc’s songs, often set to fiddle tunes she had learned back home or on the Montreal stage, humorously related current events and the tribulations of the working poor of French-speaking Montreal. Her recordings sold by the thousands in Quebec and she also had a dedicated following among Franco-Americans in the mill towns of New England, where her records were distributed by Columbia.

You can hear Madame Bolduc’s 1930 recording of “Le Jour de l’An” on the Compo/Starr label (issue # 15771; matrix # 4649) on the Library and Archives Canada website, The Virtual Gramophone:
http://amicus.collectionscanada.gc.ca/gramophone-bin/Main/ItemDisplay?l=0&l_ef_l=-1&id=109656.166940&v=1&lvl=1&coll=24&rt=1&itm=31394108&rsn=S_WWWpfaEiWPPs&all=1&dt=AW+|le|+AND+|jour|+AND+|de|+AND+|l%27an|&spi=-&rp=1&v=1

Refrain: It’s once again the New Year’s season, we shake hands and embrace, it’s the good time to do this, it only comes once a year; Let’s get ready, my old man, to celebrate New Year’s Day, let’s make pies and tourtières and good old-fashioned stew; Ti-Jean and his uncle Nazaire are coming for New Year’s day, show off your skills like you did in your youth; there are those who smell of pipe tobacco and others of onions, I might as well tell you up front that most smell of alcohol; buy yourself a wig and get some dentures.

VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3223 Alice Lacourse Danis Songbook. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.

Preparon-nous son père pour feter le jour de l’an

Préparons nous son père, pour fêter le Jour de l’An

Let’s Get Ready, My Old Man, to Celebrate New Year’s Day

Preparon-nous son père pour feter le jour de l’an

Madame Édouard Bolduc

Madame Édouard Bolduc

1
Preparon-nous son pere pour feter le jour de l’an
Faisons des tartes des tourtieres du bon ragout de l’ancien temps
Refrain

2
Ti Jean a ton oncle Nazaire vient pour le jour de l’an
Montre lui son savoir faire comme tu faisait
Dans ton jeune temps
Refrain

4
Il y en a qui sente la pipe d’antier qui sentient
Les onions j’aime autant vous l’dire tout de suite
La plupart sente la boisson

Achete toi une perruque fait toi poser des dents