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WE ALWAYS MENTION AUNT CLARA
the true
history of this famous song
(The ASH version: allegro!)
She used to sing hymns in the old
village choir
She used to teach Sunday-school class,
At playing the organ she never would tire
Those dear days are over, alas.
In church on the organ she'd practice
and play;
The preacher would pump up and down.
His wife caught him pumping the organ one day
And that's why aunt Clara left town.
Chorus: We never mention Aunt
Clara;
Her picture is turned to the wall.
Though she lives on the French Riviera,
Mother says that she’s dead to us all.
With presents he tempted and lured
her to sin
Her innocent virtue to smirch,
But her honor was strong and she never gave in
Till he gave her the deed to the church.
They said no one cared if she'd ever
come back
When she left us her fortune to seek
But the boys in the firehouse painted it black
And the ball team wore mourning that week.
Chorus
They told her the wages of sinners
was death.
But she said, since she had to be dead,
She'd just as soon die with champagne on her breath,
And pink satin sheets on her bed.
The good things in life always go to
the pure
(The Sunday school lessons all teach)
But I wonder, when I see a rotogravure
Of her eighty-room shack at the beach.
Chorus
They say that hell-fires will punish
her sin,
She'll burn for her carryings-on,
But at least for the present she's toasting her skin
In the sunshine of Deauville and Cannes.
They said that to garments of
sackcloth she'll sink,
With ashes to cover her head,
But just at the moment it's ermine and mink,
And a diamond tiara, instead.
Chorus
They told her she’d live in the muck
and the mud,
Yet the papers just published a snap
Of Aunt Clara, at Nice, with a prince of the blood,
And a bishop asleep on her lap.
They say that she's sunken, they say
that she fell
From the narrow and virtuous path,
But her formal French gardens are sunken as well
And so is her pink marble bath.
Chorus
My poor mother's life has been pious
and meek:
She drives in a second-hand Ford.
Aunt Clara received for her birthday last week
A Rolls-Royce, a Stutz and a Cord.
My mother does all of her housework
alone
She washes and scrubs for her board.
I’ve reached the conclusion that virtue's its own,
And also its only reward.
We never mention Aunt Clara,
But when I grow up big and tall,
I shall go to the French Riviera
And let Mother turn ME to the wall.
Adventuresses, as you dine and you
drink,
Pray keep dear Aunt Clara in mind.
For unlike a violet, she never did shrink
From pleasures both crude and refined.
For many a year we’ve kept burning
her flame,
We’re proud of our riotous past!
The blush on our cheeks is from wine, not from shame –
Adventuresses to the last!
We ALWAYS mention Aunt Clara!
Her picture’s displayed on our wall.
Though she lives on the French Riviera,
She is here in the hearts of us all!
