MULTILINGUAL COFFEE LOVE.

December 20, 2009 by 54 Comments

I love coffee, I’m not ashamed to admit it, and as a result I love good music featuring the love of coffee. I often sing Bach’s Coffee Cantata around the house: “Ei! Wie schmeckt der Coffee süße!” Now I’ve discovered a Korean song that is just as catchy: “Love Is Coffee.” Enjoy either or both, depending on your musical tastes.

Comments

  1. Ransom says
    December 20, 2009 at 10:20 pm

    As nice as Bach is, I’d say “catchy” applies more to the Korean song. I don’t drink coffee myself, but can point you to a Ukrainian coffee tribute: “Гаряча і гірка”

  2. HP says
    December 20, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    Sugar blues,
    Everybody’s saying
    They got the sugar blues.
    The whole town’s praying:
    I like my coffee, I like my tea,
    But the sugar blues is gonna get the best of me.
    =======
    I like coffee, I like tea,
    I got the java jive and it’s got me.
    Coffee and tea, and the java and me,
    A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup.
    =======
    There’s also Texas Tea Party by Jack Teagarden, but that’s a whole ‘nother class of stimulant.

  3. MMcM says
    December 20, 2009 at 11:14 pm

    Lyrics, which seem to mostly be a list of (phonetically borrowed) flavors for various days of the week.
    (I don’t take caffeine myself, either.)

  4. Ø says
    December 20, 2009 at 11:48 pm

    A cup of coffee, a sandwich, and you
    (This tune appears in the soundtrack of a Loony Tune cartoon pretty much whenever food or drink is served.)

  5. rootlesscosmo says
    December 21, 2009 at 12:47 am

    So pour me another cup of coffee
    For it is the best in the land
    I’ll put a nickel in the jukebox
    And play that Truck-Drivin’ Man

  6. Nijma says
    December 21, 2009 at 2:25 am

    Leonard Cohen’s new blues song:

    Well it feels so good
    not to love you like I did.
    Feels so good
    not to love you like I did.
    It’s like they tore away the blindfold and they said we’re gonna let this prisoner live.
    It’s like they tore away the blindfold and they said we’re gonna let this prisoner live.

    Feels so good
    to wake up in the morning by myself.
    Cup of coffee in the kitchen,
    fire up a little danger to my health.
    I got the same old broken heart but now it feels like it belongs to someone else.
    I got the same old broken heart but now it feels like it belongs to someone else.

  7. Nijma says
    December 21, 2009 at 2:32 am

    Almost forgot, Leonard Cohen singing the “new blues song”, Feels So Good, for the first time at the Chicago concert Oct. 29, 2009.

  8. bruessel says
    December 21, 2009 at 4:34 am

    I don’t drink coffee either, but I love the Java Jive already mentioned by HP, especially when it’s sung by the Ink Spots.

  9. A.J.P. Megkoronáz says
    December 21, 2009 at 5:34 am

    I like a nice cup of tea in the morning
    For to start the day you see
    And at half-past eleven
    Well my idea of Heaven
    Is a nice cup of tea
    I like a nice cup of tea with my dinner
    And a nice cup of tea with my tea
    And when it’s time for bed
    There’s a lot to be said
    For a nice cup of tea

  10. Paul says
    December 21, 2009 at 6:10 am

    I’m surprised how many people say they don’t drink coffee. We keep supplies of coffee, de-caf, No-Caf (what it says on the jar, a chicory-based substitute) RooiBos, and a range of tisanes (herbal teas), mainly for our French-based friends.

  11. mollymooly says
    December 21, 2009 at 7:35 am

    She just had to go to work, and he just had to go,
    And she knew where and he knew how to blow it off and so
    They shot the breeze quite cavalier to the boilin’ of the pot,
    And sang the Instant Coffee Blues and never fired a shot.

  12. Kai von Fintel says
    December 21, 2009 at 7:53 am

    And then there’s the “Coffee Song” (aka “There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil”) sung by Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, among others.

  13. John Emerson says
    December 21, 2009 at 8:45 am

    I got the same old broken heart but now it feels like it belongs to someone else.
    Sneaking that Buddhist message in.
    Cohen got swindled out of his life savings by a business agent and occasional lover but has no real hard feelings. Of course, at 70 he was able to go out and whip up a couple more million in a few months. He’s the rare singer who doesn’t need to worry about losing his voice with age.

  14. A. J. P. Crown says
    December 21, 2009 at 9:08 am

    One more cup of coffee for the road,
    One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go
    To the valley below.
    This is why I don’t drink coffee very often anymore. It became just a habit.

  15. A. J. P. Crown says
    December 21, 2009 at 9:08 am

    One more cup of coffee for the road,
    One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go
    To the valley below.
    This is why I don’t drink coffee very often anymore. It became just a habit.

  16. John Emerson says
    December 21, 2009 at 9:42 am

    Oddly, that’s the same reason that I do drink coffee every morning.

  17. A. J. P. Crown says
    December 21, 2009 at 10:53 am

    I didn’t really renounce the habit, I just switched back to tea which was where I was before I went to America.

  18. A. J. P. Crown says
    December 21, 2009 at 10:53 am

    I didn’t really renounce the habit, I just switched back to tea which was where I was before I went to America.

  19. vanya says
    December 21, 2009 at 11:41 am

    Черный кофе
    Напиток знойный, сказочный
    Чернее ночи цвет
    И запах так знаком его,
    И сладостный букет
    Украла полночь блики дня
    И твой покой храня
    Усталость сбрасывает с плеч
    Для наших новых встреч
    Черный кофе
    На гуще погадать его
    В глаза судьбе взглянуть
    Узнаешь все и ничего
    Про свой нелегкий путь
    Старайся выдержать удар
    Удар судьбы любой
    Ты сердцем молод или стар
    Давай попей со мной
    Черный кофе

  20. Laura Brown says
    December 21, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    For those after more coffee-related tunes, Bob Dylan did a Theme Time Radio Hour devoted to the subject.

  21. Ted says
    December 21, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    Ralph’s World (a kid’s music CD) has a catchy tune for the parents:
    M-O-M-M-Y needs C-O-F-F-E-E
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_BG_8Wjo88

  22. Ray Girvan says
    December 21, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    I’m ashamed to say that at school they taught us Karl Gottlieb Hering’s racist coffee song:
    K-a-f-f-e-e, trink nicht so viel Kaffee!
    Nichts für Kinder ist der Türkentrank,
    schwächt die Nerven, macht dich blass und krank.
    Sei doch kein Muselman, der ihn nicht lassen kann!
    The tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PN23MIqoLY

  23. sisuile says
    December 21, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    All I want is a proper cup of coffee:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSUQgfyplIY
    I love this genre.

  24. Sashura says
    December 22, 2009 at 3:40 am

    Recipe for Happiness (Anon)
    One grand boulevard with trees
    with one grand cafe in the sun
    with strong black coffee
    in very small cups.
    One not necessarily very beautiful
    man or woman who loves you.
    One fine day.

  25. Sashura says
    December 22, 2009 at 5:27 am

    Chaikovsky’s Nutcracker has all three drinks: Chocolate (Spanish), Coffee (Arabian) and Tea (Chinese).
    I have always thought that coffee is for work and tea is for comfort.
    Here is my musical contribution – foxtrot “У самовара” (by the samovar) in Polish
    and in Russian. The song title has become an idiom meaning home comfort. It was hugely popular all over Europe in late 1920-30s. But I could only find recordings in Polish and Russian. Does anyone know others?

  26. John Emerson says
    December 22, 2009 at 9:53 am

    There’s a Polish Nutcracker too? I did not know that. Was Sadik Pasha a composer?

  27. Terry Collmann says
    December 22, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    Surely someone called CHAIkovsky could only be a tea lover … unlike ProCOFFEEev …

  28. John Emerson says
    December 22, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    My joke was stupid and I apologize Polish would be Czajkowski). Wiki did give me a more complete list of spellings / ntransliterations:
    Czajkowski Tchaikovsky Tschaikowski Čajkovskij Ciajkovskij Chaikovski Tsjaikovski Tjajkovskij Tchaikovski Chaikovsky Chaykovsky Chaikovskiy Chaykovskiy Chaikovskii Čajkovskij Čajkovski

  29. A.J.P. Crown says
    December 23, 2009 at 2:26 am

    I’d never thought of Pro-coffee F. Shostakovitch did a version of Tea For Two.

  30. Sashura says
    December 23, 2009 at 3:22 am

    Tchaikovsky
    what a bundle of letters for one simple ‘Ч’.
    Shostakovitch
    lovely piece, but not surprising. Shostakovich, a child prodigy, worked in cinemas as a ‘tapper’ (is it the right word?) – improvising musical accompaniment to events on screen.

  31. John Emerson says
    December 23, 2009 at 8:15 am

    In the old days I boned up on Russian composers for Botticelli games. Tcherepnin was a favorite, both obscure and hard to spell. Dargomizhsky was another good one. I’m still trying to get a CD of his “Stone Ghost”, a version of Don Juan myth I think.

  32. Sashura says
    December 23, 2009 at 9:43 am

    trying to get a CD of his “Stone Ghost”
    now wonder you couldn’t – it’s ‘The Stone Guest’ based on one of Pushkin’s ‘Little Tragedies’.
    Spotify has all three Acts of the Opera and Laura’s songs and some other highlights are on YouTube. It is indeed a version of Don Juan, inspired by Byron.
    In Russian it’s Даргомыжский (English Wikipedia on him), “Каменный гость” (English Wiki). The composer is Russian so his name is more often spelled Dargomyzhsky.
    or try The Stoned Guest by PDQ Bach. Some say it’s as good as Mozart’s and Dargomyzhsky’s.
    But what are Botticelli games?

  33. MMcM says
    December 23, 2009 at 10:34 am

    ‘tapper’ (is it the right word?)
    I won’t claim that tapper isn’t English, because there are lots of specialized words I don’t know.
    But in ordinary conversation, тапер is just ‘pianist’. And what he did for silent film theaters like the Светлая лента would just be called that or “accompanist”. And that’s also the term apparently used by enthusiasts.

  34. Sashura says
    December 23, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    I see. I thought that the French tapeur had something to do with the тапёр?

  35. Per Jørgensen y Zarate says
    December 23, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    Livet er ikke det værste man har
    og om lidt er kaffen klar.

    — Poul Dissing

  36. John Emerson says
    December 23, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    Stone Guest, slip of the tongue. I’ve tracked it down but it’s out of print. Dargomyzhsky had an influence on Musorgsky, who in turn had an influence on Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, in the way he joined the words and the music.
    Botticelli is a word game where you think of a famous name and people have to try to guess it by asking questions. It’s sort of fiendish in that the way to win is by choosing less famous people, which sound like cheating except showing off how much you know (how many less-famous people are famous to you) is part of the game.

  37. MMcM says
    December 24, 2009 at 10:38 am

    I thought that the French tapeur had something to do with the тапёр?
    Someone else might know for sure, but that seems likely. Nevertheless, there is nothing corresponding in English that I know of.
    I think of tapeur as ‘moocher’, with the ‘piano player’ sense dated or literary, but perhaps that’s just my limited exposure. (Logically, it might mean ‘typist’, too, but does not as far as I know.) What do native French speakers think? Moreover, it seems to me that a tapeur implies a mediocre piano player. Does тапёр have that connotation, too? You can’t really accomplish that via direct translation into English. You’d rely on the rest of the sentence itself indicating that (“the ___ just wouldn’t stop …”) or else add something that did.

  38. A.J.P. Crown says
    December 24, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    I really doubt that Shostakovitch was a mediocre piano player. I’d always thought he wrote film music, I didn’t know he was just an accompanist at performances of silent films. Poor Shostakovitch.

  39. Sashura says
    December 24, 2009 at 1:56 pm

    Does тапёр have that connotation, too?
    it does – but Shostakovich’s example shows that where there is craft, talent will find its way.
    I thought ‘piano player’ was another name for mechanic piano as in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel of the same title?

  40. MMcM says
    December 24, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    I really doubt that Shostakovitch was a mediocre piano player.
    Just as Sashura says, by all accounts his accompanist improvisations were far more complex than the norm for such things. This was as a teenager just after the Revolution, when times were tough.
    Not that anyone should trust my intuition outside English, though TLFi does seem to concur with “b) Personne qui joue mal du piano.” The Petits Larousse and Robert only have its sense a) “Personne qui tape, qui emprunte souvent de l’argent.” The library with the Grand brother is closed for the holiday.
    piano player … mechanic piano
    That’s a Player piano; a piano player is a person, as in the Elton John album (since we’re doing pop culture). We have to make do without inflections.

  41. Sashura says
    December 24, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Player piano
    oh, of course, gotta go and serve self some more punch then. Is Vonnegut counted as pop now?

  42. A. J. P. Crown says
    December 25, 2009 at 8:09 am

    This was as a teenager just after the Revolution, when times were tough.
    Thanks for that. As a teenager. If he’d been older, it would have been a depressing image.

  43. A. J. P. Crown says
    December 25, 2009 at 8:09 am

    This was as a teenager just after the Revolution, when times were tough.
    Thanks for that. As a teenager. If he’d been older, it would have been a depressing image.

  44. Bill Walderman says
    December 25, 2009 at 10:15 am

    Vanya, did you compose that lyric yourself? If not, could you divulge the source?

  45. A.J.P. Crown says
    December 27, 2009 at 7:10 am

    Vanya can’t divulge the sauce until after New Year’s Eve.

  46. marie-lucie says
    December 27, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    Being in France right now, I asked my sister about the word ‘tapeur’, which I was not sure of. She said it means someone who is always trying to borrow money. I then mentioned the meaning ‘bad pianist’, and she agreed that she had heard the word in that context. My sister plays viola, but the pianist meaning was not the one that came to her mind spontaneously. The verb ‘taper’ is compatible with both meanings.

  47. John Emerson says
    December 27, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    Erik Satie was a pop pianist, pop composer, and accompanist for a considerable period before he started composing more complex pieces. He had formal training in music, but at a rather low level. I’m not sure that the places he played at were louche or not, but I suspect that some of them were.

  48. David Marjanović says
    December 28, 2009 at 8:57 am

    K-a-f-f-e-e, trink nicht so viel Kaffee!

    Still with C in that century.

  49. David Marjanović says
    December 28, 2009 at 8:58 am

    That’s important because there is a tone called C, but none called K.

  50. Guy Eby says
    December 29, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    There’s a wonderful song by Chris Rea called “Espresso Logic” and I long for a cup of espresso whenever I hear this song.

  51. ML says
    December 30, 2009 at 12:40 am

    Surely someone called CHAIkovsky could only be a tea lover … unlike ProCOFFEEev …
    Actually, in Moscow there is both a “Чайковский” tea house and a “Прокофьев” cafe.
    This also brings to mind the joke that has been around at least since the sixties. Here’s just one version of many.
    Проснулся однажды римский композитор Корсаков от какого-то Шумана (как оказалось, Глюк), продрал Глазунова, почесал в Бородине. Потом выпил Чайковского с Бизе, съел Штрауса под Сметаной, закусил Хренниковым с Мясковским, и такое у него в животе Пуччини сделалось! Он понял, что Стравинский. Вскочил, накинул Шуберта и выбежал во Дворжака, чуть на Глинке не поскользнулся. Посереди Дворжака сел на на Могучую Кучку Мусоргского. Бах! Брамс! – навалил Гуно. Запахло Паганини. Римский композитор Корсаков взял Листа с капельками Россини – и Скрябиным по Шопену.

  52. Sashura says
    December 30, 2009 at 2:43 am

    the joke
    but how can it be translated without the footnotes being longer than the text?
    tapeur
    thanks, Marie-Lucie.
    I asked an English person about the ‘scrounger’ meaning and she immediately said: ‘Can I tap you for a fiver?’ I looked it up in my Robert’s. It gives ‘taper qn de 500€’ as an example. Is it me or are sums you can scrounge off people really that much different in different countries?

  53. A.J.P.Crown says
    December 31, 2009 at 11:43 am

    Sash: are sums you can scrounge off people really that much different in different countries?
    Using tap-, yes. It would be an extremely informal or possibly ironic way of asking to borrow €500 in English.

  54. Sashura says
    January 2, 2010 at 7:05 am

    I thought it might be.

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