Boys In The Choir

Boys In The Choir
by Si Kahn & Tom Chapin
© 2009 Joe Hill Music & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

Greenwich House Music School
I was seven years of age
Fighting with the little notes
All swimming on the page.
Squeaking, squawking clarinet
I hated, truth to tell,
I still can't play,
Five years of music lessons shot to hell.
But I learned to read a melody,
Which fit my mother's plans for me:
Put the boy in the choir.
Take him off the street.
If he's singing in church,
Then he's off the concrete.
Put the boys in the choir, make a joyful noise.
Turn these happy hoodlums into choirboys.

Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights,
My mother dragged me in to see
Anne McKittrick, Choir Director,
Waiting there for me.
Auditioning at eight years old
And scared as I could be,
But I could sing the notes she played
And read a melody.
I must have done all right,
'Cause that Friday night…
She put the boy in the choir,
Took him off the street,
If he's singing in church,
Then he's off the concrete.
Put the boys in the choir, make a joyful noise.
Turn these happy hoodlums into choirboys.

Miss McKittrick took these tough young boys
From the neighborhood.
Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, Jew,
If you could sing then you were good.
Four days a week she'd hold our heathen feet
To the fire.
She made the crime rate lower
And our voices higher.

Tonight I'm standing on a stage,
I'm lining out a song,
Let the music lift our spirits,
Singing right from wrong.
Miss McKittrick's smiling
As I dance up on the wire.
All these long years later
I'm still singing in the choir.
And if you can hold a melody,
Then you can sing with me…
Put the boys in the choir.
Take 'em off the street.
If they're singing in church,
Then they're off the concrete.
Put the boys in the choir, make a joyful noise.
Turn these happy hoodlums into choirboys.
Turn these happy hoodlums into choirboys.

This song appears on Tom Chapin's Let The Bad Times Roll CD.

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