Clubby

“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” – Groucho Marx

Seeing this prompt brought back a lot of memories. You see, I was attending a rather snobby Ivy League institution of wayward rich kids as a graduate student. Eventually, the inevitable happened, I fell for a young lady who was a leaf from a branch of a tree of a well-to-do family. To cut to the chase, ace, her male relatives rapidly informed me that I was “not clubable”, would not fit in with their coterie, wouldn’t pass muster, and should scram.

This was not something you say to a former, but not reformed, Coffeehouse singer and veteran of the lower reaches of New York City’s Greenwich Village and many other disepitomable bistros across broad swaths of the USA. I did what any folk singer would do; I immortalized it in song. Not only did I immortalize it in song, but I played it at any place where there was a well-attended party or an audience available. Pretty soon, it was notorious, as were the people I wrote it about.

Now I just happen to retain the original of this bit of potent doggerel. I promise I won’t inflict the entire thing on you, but if I may, here is the High Society Rag:

Well, I met myself the prettiest gal, lord I had ever seen, and she took me to meet her folks in the country club scene. Well, they liked me at the very first sight and they loved the way that I sang, but they took violent exception to the class from which I came.

Refrain I

I wasn’t White, Liberal and Middle Class sspelled W-A-S-P , White Liberal and Middle Class Spelled W-A-S-P. My club affiliations were not the best. I wasn’t in the Rittenhouse, but if that was not enough for the upper crust, I wasn’t even middle class.

Verse:

Well, I tried to join High Society, but every way that I turned, somebody had staked out an angle that guaranteed that I couldn’t join. Well, there ain’t any prejudice, it’s a free country, can’t you see. But if you’re not in the Social Register, buddy, don’t bother me!

Then back to the refrain and so on for several very explicit verses.

It was not long after this that I discovered the Groucho Marx quote about clubs, and adopted its take on things as my own.