RoadToMandalaySinatra Song of the Century 2. Steyn. Online. Seventy years ago British troops were on the road to Mandalay or, actually, coming to the end of it. On March 2. 1st, the 1. Army under the command of General Bill Slim finally liberated the city and returned it to British rule. There wasnt that much left In taking the city three years earlier, the Japanese had destroyed 6. Given the popularity of this song among British military concert parties of the time, more than a few of Slims men must have found themselves singing Come you back to Mandalay. Where the old flotilla lay. Cant you ear their paddles chunkin from Rangoon to MandalayAustralian bassbaritone singing one of those songs recalling a time that we English are not allowed to mention these days, unless we condemn it of course. On The Road To Mandalay. Where the flyin fishes play. An the dawn comes up like thunder outer ChinaCrost the Bay The words are by Rudyard Kipling, but, had British troops attempted to use his geography by the old Moulmein Pagoda lookin eastward at the sea to reach Mandalay, the Japanese would still be holding it. My childhood image of this was of a seaside road leading to a place called Mandalay, with a pagoda on the landward side of it and flying fishes playing an important word for a child close inshore in the bay, wrote Sir George Engle, whose analysis can stand for a gazillion others But the city of Mandalay is 4. Moulmein and Rangoon, and a good 2. There is a subsidiary puzzle, about dawn coming up outer China crost the Bay, since the Bay of Bengal and China lie respectively to the west and north of Moulmein. I take it that comes up like thunder likens the sunrise to a sky full of thunder clouds but to an observer in Moulmein dawn would surely have come up overland from the east, out of Siam. That Kipling was disorientated is confirmed by the fact that, in the original version of the poem, the first line read By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin eastward to the sea, on which the passage in Murrays Handbook page 7. Moulmein comments drily in parenthesis, not looking eastward to the sea. Kipling had been hearing critiques such as the above, ever since he published Mandalay as one of his Barrack Room Ballads in The Scots Observer in 1. In Something Of Myself, he concedes that Moulmein is not on the road to anywhere nor does it command any view of any sun rising across the Bay of Bengal. Rather, the songs refrain about the road to Mandalay should be understood in a more general or metaphorical sense as the golden path to romance. And, if theres any chap who understands the golden path to romance, its Frank Sinatra. Gc.jpg' alt='Road To Mandalay' title='Road To Mandalay' />Which is why, 6. Kiplings words found themselves in the mouth of a Hoboken boy whod never been anywhere near the old Moulmein Pagoda By the old Moulmein Pagoda. Lookin eastward to the sea. Theres a Burma broad a settinAnd I know she thinks of me. Wait a minute. BroadThat doesnt sound like Kipling. Well, no. And Franks improvisations did not sit well with the keepers of Kiplings flame, as well discover. Nevertheless, he was something of an old Burma hand musically speaking. In fact, On The Road To Mandalay was Sinatras second Mandalay song. The first hed sung four and a half years earlier, on May 2nd 1. Capitol era. It was Franks second recording session with Nelson Riddle, and after the ghosting for Billy May two days earlier the very first session of Riddle as Riddle, so to speak. Download Etap Electrical Power System Software. The songs included a rather bland ballad, Anytime, Anywhere You could leave tomorrow, fly to Mandalay. Darling, I would love you anyway. I just couldnt help but care. Anytime, Anywhere. That makes two more mentions than most South East Asian cities get in the Sinatra oeuvre, and one more than Singapore as in On A Little Street In., recorded by Frank with the Harry James band in 1. The only reason Lenny Adelson and Imogene Carpenter were namechecking Mandalay in American pop songs in 1. Kipling had put it on the map. It was one of those select group of places Timbuktu, for example that in America had become, somewhat oxymoronically, a familiar, household name for somewhere unfamiliar and remote. In Britain and the Commonwealth, Mandalay had a more specific identity. The old flotilla was a reference to the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, whose chunkin paddles had been ferrying thousands of British Indian troops the over 4. Rangoon to Mandalay since the third Anglo Burmese war of 1. Kiplings poem was written from the point of view of an English Tommy smitten by the native girls as, indeed, the 2. When I die I will be a Burman, with twenty yards of real Kings silk that has been made in Mandalay, about my body, and a succession of cigarettes between my lips and I will always walk about with a pretty almond coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship, and I will teach her not to defile her pretty mouth with chopped tobacco in a cabbage leaf, but to inhale good cigarettes of Egypts best brand. Young Rudyard wasnt the only one with an eye for those pretty almond coloured girls. Until well into the Seventies, framed prints of the Burmese girl were as ubiquitous in English suburban cul de sacs as posters of the tennis player scratching her bum were on the walls of bachelor bedsits. Certainly Kiplings British soldier knows the difference between the girlie by the old Moulmein Pagoda and the lasses back home Tho I walks with fifty ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,An they talks a lot o lovin, but what do they understand Beefy face an grubby and Law Wot do they understandRoad To Mandalay makes you experience the enchanting sights, scents and sounds of the Ayeyarwady River with 3 to 11night cruises aboard the Road To Mandalay. Ive a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land Kipling wrote it to be sung to an old waltz tune he knew, but the journeyman songwriters of the late 1. There are apparently just shy of two dozen musical settings of the poem, but it was a composer called Oley Speaks who made his tune stick and turned Mandalay from a poem into a hit song. Speaks was not a son of Empire but an all American boy, born in Canal Winchester, Ohio in 1. Road-to.jpg' alt='Road To Mandalay' title='Road To Mandalay' />EternityThe Road to Mandalay is the fifth single from Robbie Williams 2000 Sing When Youre Winning album, released in July 2001. Eternity does not appear in. When he turned to composition, he favored religious themes The Lord Is My Light, Gently, Lord, Oh, Gently Lead Us, If You Became A Nun, Dear. But in 1. 90. 7 he swapped the Lord for Kiplings Law and set those Moulmein musings to music For the wind is in the palm trees. And the temple bells they say. Come you back, you British soldier. Come you back to Mandalay. It sold a million copies of sheet music, and for the rest of Oley Speaks life never stopped selling. He would write a couple of other, semi popular tunes, such as Morning, with words by Frank L Stanton whose Mighty Lak A Rose is another turn of the century song recorded by Sinatra, but nothing like Mandalay. In America it was a popular song about an exotic love. Image?disableStub=true&type=VIDEO_S_720&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvdp.mycdn.me%2FgetImage%3Fid%3D10548807124%26idx%3D30%26thumbType%3D47%26f%3D1%26i%3D1&signatureToken=Jje_54LxRHXj5syMA8agOw' alt='Road To Mandalay' title='Road To Mandalay' />In Britain and His Majestys Dominions beyond the seas, it was something more, testifying to the hold Burma had on the imperial imagination, and summed up in Kiplings great line If youve eard the East a callin, you wont never eed naught else. Very true. Speaks setting was taken up by singers throughout the Empire, but none was more associated with the song than the great Aussie bass baritone Peter Dawson, who sang On The Road To Mandalay for some four decades.