Oscar Rasbach is a name I've hunted for quite some time, though I didn't know it.
How do you find a thing if you don't know its name?
Right, you describe it. That's hard to do for music on YouTube, and just as hard on eBay. I had this music box, you see. It had a strange rattle inside as though there was a bit of the mechanism that was loose or had broken off. But the tune was lovely, and I've never forgotten it. I can hear it in my head, complete with the tik-tik-tik noise that wasn't really part of the song.
It was a brown plastic box, a little smaller than a Brownie Box camera. It had a picture on it of a little girl holding perhaps a pussy willow branch. There was a gold-wrapped hanging cord at the top, and a round plastic ball attached to a pull-string at the bottom. On the back, at the bottom, was the word Japan in raised letters. My sister's music box was more or less identical to mine, but it played a different tune and had a different picture. The sticker on my sister's music box said Talk To The Animals. I recognized the tune my sister's music box played, but I liked my tune better. My sticker said Trees, but was a little bit torn, so the song could have been '_____ Trees'.
I remember all of these details, but can't recall if I took my pills or not. Memory is such a bastard.
A YouTube hunt of 'tune Trees' turned up Marty Casey & Lovehammers, 21 Pilots, a woman playing a Koto in what turns out to be a clip from a Netflix movie called Our Shining Days, Flatbush Zombies, Senbonzakura (One Thousand Cherry Trees) and Hatsune Miku, who seems to be a pop star and also a Vocaloid, and Rush. But not my music box. It also turned up videos demonstrating many music box songs which were promotional material for music box makers, and synthesized "music box" covers of 21 Pilots' Trees. But not my music box.
Off to eBay, then, entering 'music box trees.' That got me Christmas music boxes, musical stuffed Christmas trees, musical porcelain Christmas trees, musical china Christmas trees and music boxes playing 'O Christmas Tree.' I added 'Japan' and then, though I wasn't sure, I added 'Hummel'.
I was never really a fan of the Hummel figurines which were cloyingly ubiquitous in the late '70s, but also got them confused with the Love Is naked cartoon people and the W R Berries big eyed statuettes. Not to be confused with the Keane paintings of big eyed sad children, which is a Whole 'Nother Story But Hummel drawings are a different thing. I'm never going to be a collector of Hummel anything, okay? but Hummel drawings are quite nice, really. And that, along with "pull string," turned out to be the right keyword.
The things eBay showed me were either "i dont know what tune it play but its pritty" or Eidlewiese, Brahms' Lullaby, Hi Lily Hi Lo, Lara's Theme (also listed as Dr Zhivago), It's A Small World, Smile Make Someone Happy, and a whole bunch of listings where the tune wasn't specified. I used the Ask Seller A Question function and inquired of a few sellers. I took a chance buying one that the seller responded that they didn't recognize the tune. It turned out to be "It's A Small World."
Back to YouTube, searching for 'Song Trees' and this time, there were useful subtitles on some of the results. This result, featuring Patty Page, sounded ALMOST like what I was seeking, but so drawn out and kind of pompous. But okay, it was based on a 1913 Joyce Kilmer poem. Which I hunted awhile, discovering that Kilmer was killed 5 years later in WWII. It was THIS tune, featuring vocalist Bob McGrath, that provided the very important name of Oscar Rasbach, who set the poem to music in 1922.
After listening to several vocal renditions of the song, including this illustrated one, which probably inspired the tune's inclusion in the line of music boxes, I concluded that I didn't like the vocals. Searching 'Instrumental Trees' unveiled this pretty little song, and other weirder results, and it was only by adding the name Rasbach that I finally found Phillip Sear on piano and that was what I'd wanted all along.
Did this prevent me from continuing to hunt for my Hummel music box on eBay? One would think.
Alas, it did not.
Haven't found it yet.
(Trees, poem by Joyce Kilmer, 1913)
