I Want A Girl - Irving Kaufman (1940)

Irving Kaufman sings "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)"

Song by Will Dillon and Harry Von Tilzer

When I was a boy, my mother often said to me,
"Get married, boy, and see how happy you will be."

I have looked all over, but no girlie can I find who
seems to be just like the little girl I have in mind.

I will have to look around until the right one I have found.

I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad.
She was a pearl and the only girl that Daddy ever had.

A good old-fashioned girl with heart so true,
one who loves nobody else but you. I want a
girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad.

By the old mill stream there sit a couple old and gray.
Though years have rolled away, their hearts are young today.

Mother dear looks up at Dad with love light in her eye.
He steals a kiss, a fond embrace, while ev'ning breezes sigh.

They're as happy as can be, so that's the kind of love for me.

In 1946 and 1947, Irving Kaufman recorded numbers to be broadcast on the radio show Music Hall Varieties.

Two dozen songs were pressed for the NBC-produced Thesaurus Orthacoustic, a radio transcription label, and distributed to stations.

Identified as a baritone (after decades of being called a tenor), he is accompanied by the Music Hall Varieties Orchestra, which used original arrangements.

The songs were popular ones from 1900 to 1920. Few were actually recorded by the young Kaufman.

Titles include "For Me And My Gal," "By the Beautiful Sea," "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (recorded on July 3, 1946, and pressed on Record 1362), "Bedelia," "Under The Bamboo Tree," "My Wife's Gone To The Country," and "Oh You Beautiful Doll."

Because he was in top vocal form and the best available recording technology was used, Kaufman himself told Quentin Riggs that he would be happy if future generations judged him on these Thesaurus recordings.

Promotional literature for the radio show states, "Kaufman is well-remembered for a five year coast-to-coast network stint as 'Lazy Dan, The Minstrel Man' and his many characterizations on top network and local programs. He is a master dialectician specializing in Irish, Jewish, Scotch, Negro, Italian and Chinese."

He continued making the occasional 78 rpm recording until 1947, the last being "The Curse of an Aching Heart" coupled with "Think It Over Mary" (originally issued on the Sterling label, also issued on the Bennett label). Around this time he also recorded for Sterling some Yiddish comedy songs like "Moe the Schmo Makes Love" and "Moe the Schmo Takes a Rhumba Lesson."

As recording studios relied less on him, he worked more on radio, sometimes accompanied by his wife Belle Brooks on organ or piano.

He continued performing on radio, in Broadway stage productions (including Kurt Weill's Street Scene in 1947), and in nightclubs until a heart attack in 1949 put a stop to these professional activities.