Browse in the Library:

Those were the Days Дорогой длинною, a piano solo Jazzy version, with sheet music download.

Дорогой длинною (The Long Road) is a Russian romance written by Boris Fomin (music) and Konstantin Podrevsky (lyrics). There is also a version of the text by Pavel Herman. The earliest recordings of this song were made by Alexander Vertinsky (1926) and Tamara Tsereteli (1929).

Story

The romance was written in 1924 and very soon received extraordinary love and became very popular among Russian emigrants. The reasons for this were the sincerity of the poems and melody, and also, as it seemed to the emigrants, the obvious anti-Soviet subtext of the words of the romance. From the second half of the 1920s in Paris, among Russian exiles, the romance was constantly performed in the restaurant of Nastya Polyakova. Probably, Vertinsky heard it there and included it in his repertoire.

In Russian, the romance was performed by famous singers among the Russian emigration: Pyotr Leshchenko, Yuri Morfessi, Stefan Danilevsky, Lyudmila Lopato. In 1952, Lyudmila Ilyinichna Lopato performed the romance ‘Dear long’ in the film ‘Innocents in Paris’.

“Dear Long” was later performed by Serbian George Marjanovic, Pole Mieczysław Sventicki[pl], Lovar Janos Sharkozy. In the late 1960s – early 1970s, the romance experienced a second peak in popularity, it was performed by many domestic and foreign singers:

Nani Bregvadze, Klavdia Shulzhenko, Lyudmila Zykina, Rashid Beibutov, Eduard Khil, Edita Pieha, Halina Kunitskaya, Wieslawa Droetska (Poland ), Margarita Dimitrova (Bulgaria), as well as pop orchestras. In addition, the melody of the song ‘Dear long’ was used as background music in the fifth issue of the animated series ‘Well, you wait!’ in the scene when the hare leaves in a trolleybus, and the wolf, whose head is squeezed by the door, runs after this trolleybus.

Alexander Vertinsky version Russian singer Alexander Vertinsky recorded the song several times in the 1920s and 1930s. There is a version accompanied by the orchestra of Ionel Bageac, released on Columbia Records[4]. There is also a version recorded with the orchestra of the Warsaw recording company Syrena-Electro in 1932.

‘Those Were the Days’

American architect, writer and musician Eugene (Gene) Raskin, whose parents were immigrants from Russia, wrote new English words to a slightly modified melody of the song ‘Dear Long’ and recorded it in 1962 under the title ‘Those Were the Days’. The same year, the song was released by the American folk trio The Limeliters on the album Folk Matinee.

In 1964, Ruskin’s performance at London’s Blue Angel was heard by Paul McCartney, who four years later chose ‘Those Were the Days’ as the debut single for 18-year-old Welsh singer Mary Hopkin. The single with the song was released by The Beatles’ Apple Records on August 30, 1968 and reached #1 in the UK charts, staying at the top for 6 weeks. In the US, the song peaked at #2.

Hopkin has also recorded versions of this song in Spanish, Italian, German and French. The song has been sung by Sandy Shaw, Engelbert Humperdinck, Dalida (under the title ‘Le temps des fleurs’) and others. Despite the fact that Ruskin only wrote the lyrics and not the melody, he is credited as the sole author on all LP versions of ‘Those Were the Days’. Under the name ‘Llanrumney Chorus’ in an a cappella version, the song was also released on the album We Can Do Anything by the English Oi! band The Oppressed.

The popularity of the English version led to the song being translated into various European and Asian languages. Currently there are versions in Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, Dutch, Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish, Swedish, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Belarusian, Croatian, Romanian, Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese, German, Hebrew and Vietnamese.

Browse in the Library: