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Clearly "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" owns this thread as the ballad of Katie Casey (who was baseball mad, she had the fever and she had it bad) is lost to history.
I'm talking songs known primarily for one piece of lyric, whether it is the chorus ala TMOTTBG, or "You Are My Sunshine" or a start or ending gets lopped off in various versions, such as the opening stanza of "Blue Skies";
I was blue, just as blue as I could be
Every day was a cloudy day for me
Then good luck came a-knocking at my door
Skies were gray but they're not gray anymore...
Most popular versions of the song start right here with the first appearance of...
Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see
And it's not just Ragtime Broadway era standards that get this treatment, consider these rarely used, if ever, stanzas in Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land"
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!
Chorus
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.
Heh, certainly not what anyone with a sense of patriotism with a tinge of conservationism would want to sing along with the first three stanzas.
Makes you wonder about how classics from the rock era that could get the same treatment. Will covers of "Hey Jude" just lop off the "NAH NAH NANANANA, NANANANA, Hey Jude" part?
I've heard a "radio edit" (I think) version of "American Pie" that cuts off after the verse that ends with the dirges in the dark. Though the entire song is too well known, I don't think the rest of it will be lost to history.
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