Interlude IV

Summary

The fourth interlude, ‘Old Dog Tray’, discusses one of the ballad-singer’s last great mainstream hits, the sentimental American song ‘Old Dog Tray’. I regard this song as something of a paradox: both an ideal solo ballad, and an indication of the ballad-singer’s failings, considering the song’s harmonic possibilities as realised by performances on keyboard, barrel-organ, or by vocal ensembles – possibilities not available for songs written and sung in the early part of the century.