Philosophy of Modern Song: Old and Only in the Way. And McKinley.

Posted on June 10, 2026 by Tony Attwood

 

By Tony Attwood

This series looks at Bob’s selections of tracks for his post-doctoral book “The Philosophy of Modern Song”.  A list of the tracks we have covered so far appears at the end of the article.

Today’s focus is on “Old and Only in the Way” which was recorded by Charlie Poole, who also recorded “White House Blues”.  And what makes “White House Blues” significant is that the opening line is

“McKinley hollered, McKinley squalled”

which of course you will recall as the opening line of Key West.

But to return to “Old and Only in the Way,” this composition uses all the traditional approaches of popular music that emerged in the 20th century – except for one.   For at the end of each verse, the final line has an extra bar added.  Thus, listening to the music, we might expect the line, “He is poor, he’s old, he’s only in the way” to be covered in one bar of four beats, with the final word “way” being the first beat of the next bar.  But it is not; the lyrics are spread out to make an extra line.

This surprises the listener, even if the listener doesn’t actually know how it is achieved, but it is there, and it is deliberate – as we can hear because it happens in each verse.

The situation is made stranger by the change in the way the verses rhyme

When you walk along the street
How often times you'll meet
Some poor old man who's getting old and grey 

His age is feeble spent 
In his pockets not a cent 
And for shelter he has nowhere to go

His relations by the score
They'll turn him from the door
They'll meet him on a street, they'll pass him by

If you ask them why they do
They'll answer you and say,
"He is poor, he's old, he's only in the way"

The rhyme scheme starts off in a way that is quite regular, but then starts to lose itself, while you may well have felt that something strange happens in the final line (“He is poor” etc):  in fact, what happens is that an extra bar is inserted.

This really was quite unusual – but it was introduced by composers as a way of revealing when their composition had been copied by others.  For the most common defence in the early days of copyright legislation was the argument that particular approaches were used in hundreds of songs and so could not be copyrighted.

In fact, although I am sure other songs have used this approach, I am struggling to think of an example from this era at the moment which added the extra bar in exactly this way.   Both the rhymes and the extra bar we can get used to – they only sound odd the first time through because we expect something else.

Although the version Dylan played came from 1935, the song itself is found as early as 1880, when it was first copyrighted by P. J. Downey and L. T. Billings.  Obviously, there is no recording from that date, but I rather suspect that Charlie Poole added the extra bar himself, perhaps just for fun, perhaps to trip up those in the audience who wanted to sing along with him, or when recorded, as a way to copyright his own version and stop others copying that.  An expert in songs of that era might well be able to solve that issue – but sadly, I don’t have one to hand.  You’ll have to do your own research – and let me know what you find.

But there is a broader issue here, because I suspect by the time the Charlie Poole version came out, it was becoming quite a regular thing for those re-using old songs to add the occasional variation of their own to the music and to the lyrics.

Now, of course, once Dylan went over to playing with a band, he was more restricted in terms of what variations he could put into the songs – as indeed I’ve pointed out before with “Visions of Johanna” the final verse has an extra line – which on the original LP recording, the bass guitarist forgets about and so makes a mistake.

But this desire to make variations in other people’s arrangements of traditional songs, in order to claim one’s own copyright, was prevalent in earlier times, and I think that is what we have here with the rhythmic variations.

The thoughts within the lyrics are pretty horrible (at least to me, since I am now in the advanced age group), and I would be dismayed beyond belief if I thought any of my daughters felt that I was only in the way.  But this song does.

Charlie Poole himself died aged just 39, and so the song for him was utterly ironic.   There is an album of his music here.

Previously in this series

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