Pick the correct song lyrics:

1. ♪♫ Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end… ♪♫
2. ♪♫ Дорогой длинною и ночью лунною… ♪♫
3. ♪♫ Try our ge-fil-te fish, it’s such a ta-sty dish… ♪♫

In fact, all three lines — along with many other variants in dozens of languages — have been sung to the exact same melody. It turns out that although very few Russian tunes can be found on karaoke machines in the English-speaking world, you can “fake it,” because there are some classic Soviet pop-ditties whose Russian lyrics can be sung to the same melodies as English songs. You can even pair up with some friends who don’t know Russian, and take turns singing the verses in two different languages.

 

Your safest bet, of course, is “Those Were the Days,” aka “The Tavern,” which was a monster hit for Mary Hopkins in 1968 — I think you’d have trouble finding a karaoke machine anywhere in the world that doesn’t include this song.

And I’m sure most students of Russian are aware that the American composer (one Gene Raskin) actually ripped off borrowed the tune from an “anon. & trad. Russian melody” called «Дорогой длинною». But maybe you didn’t know that «Дорогой длинною» is NOT actually a traditional folk-song by “Ivan Anonymousovich” — mind you, it really does come from Russia, but it only goes back to the Jazz Age, having been written (and copyrighted) in the 1920s by the team of Борис Фомин and Константин Подревский.

Even so, in an ironic twist, Mr. Raskin was able to sue successfully for copyright infringement after an American kosher-food manufacturer used only the melody — which was, of course, the creation of Boris Fomin, not Gene Raskin — for the “gefilte fish” ad jingle mentioned above!

Over the years, «Дорогой длинною» has been covered by countless Russian vocalists, both male and female. (Some of whom, in another irony, sing Podrevsky’s original Russian lyrics to Raskin’s very-slightly-altered American version of Fomin’s melody, as made world-famous by Welsh singer Hopkins!) But after listening to various artists on YouTube, I’ll cast my vote for the high-energy “I’m too sexy for my шуба” performance by pop-star Сергей Лазарев:

And so that you can learn it for your next karaoke night, here’s the first строфа (“verse; stanza”) — the syllabic meter exactly fits that of “Once upon a time there was a tavern / Where we used to raise a glass or two…” I’ve put in some some pop-up hints for the words highlighted in yellow; if you get stuck, just highlight the pink lines to see an English translation.

♪♫ Ехали на тройке с бубенцами,
А вдали мелькали огоньки.
Мне б теперь, соколики, за вами,
Душу мне развеять от тоски. ♪♫

[We] were riding in a troika with sleigh bells,
And in the distance specks of light winked in and out of view.
Would that I were now behind you, buddies,
To rid my soul of gloomy nostalgia.

The припев (“refrain, chorus”) is quite lively and fun to sing, but potentially confusing to translate. As you can see below, it’s swarming with feminine nouns and pronouns in the instrumental singular (some of them using the “alternative poetic ending” -ою/-ею instead of the normal -ой/-ей). And there’s not a nominative noun in sight! But don’t worry, it really does make grammatical sense:

♪♫ Дорогой длинною и ночью лунною,
И с песней той, что вдаль летит звеня,
Да с той старинною, с той семиструнною,
Что по ночам так мучила меня! ♪♫

By the long road, on a moonlit night,
And with that song, that flies ringing into the distance,
And with that old familiar seven-stringed guitar,
That has so tormented me every night!

Little old ladies and drunken sailors?!

If you hang out in establishments that cater to somewhat older crowds, you might get lucky enough to find a karaoke machine with the classic Andrews Sisters “swing” version of “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” — originally a slow, heavy-on-the-schmaltz duet composed by a Jewish-American immigrant from Ukraine.

By the end of WWII, the bouncy jazz version was hugely popular in the USSR, but two completely different Russian texts had become attached to the tune — neither bearing the slightest resemblance to each other, nor to the English (or Yiddish) words. The more “serious” lyrics, «В кейптаунском поpту» (“In the Port of Capetown”), were penned by a precocious 9th-grade schoolboy [!] from Leningrad. It transforms the sentimental love-ditty into a melodramatic — and surprisingly risqué — ballad about a pub fight between drunk British sailors and drunk French sailors, ending in a bit of the ol’ ultra-violence. (You can almost hear Barry Manilow crooning There was blood in a single gunshot / But just Who? Shot? WHO?!)

♪♫ В кейптаунском поpту,
С пробоиной на боpту,
«Жанетта» попpавляла такелаж.
Но, пpежде чем уйти
В далёкие пути,
На беpег был отпущен экипаж. ♪♫

[Having briefly docked] in the port of Capetown
Because of a breach in the hull,
The “H.M.S. Jeanette” was adjusting her rigging.
But before departing
On distant journeys,
The crew was granted shore-leave.

And this next part is more or less the refrain:

♪♫ Идут, сутулятся,
По тёмным улицам
И клёши новые
Ласкает бриз!
Они пошли туда,
Где можно без труда
Найти себе и женщин и вина! ♪♫

They walk, keeping their heads low,
Along the dark streets.
And their new bell-bottoms
Are caressed by the sea-breeze.
They’ve set off for somewhere,
Where it’s no problem
To find yourself women and some wine!

First, check out this excellent folk-guitar version of «В кейптаунском поpту» by Андрей Макаревич — which features complete onscreen lyrics so you’ll know the story. All the better to appreciate the camp-tastic disco/jazz cover by Лариса Долина:

Although every time I watch this video, I have to remind myself that she’s singing «моряков» (“sailors,” gen./acc. pl.) and not the similar-sounding Spanish term that might be rudely applied to a sailor who only chases women with the intent of stealing their eyebrow-pencils. (Which would be a terribly offensive thing for Ms. Dolina to call her backup dancers!)

But as I said, these aren’t the only Russian lyrics associated with the “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” tune. There’s also a hugely popular “anonymous folk parody” known as «Старушка не спеша» (“The old woman wasn’t hurrying”). In fact, this is the incarnation of the song that some Russians (mistakenly) assume to be the original/oldest — and if you hum the tune, «Старушка не спеша» is the title they’ll give. The lyrics are simple and humorous:

♪♫ Старушка не спеша
Дорожку перешла,
Её остановил мелицанер. ♪♫

The little old lady was taking her own sweet time
[When] she crossed the road.
[So] a cop stopped her.

♪♫ «Свисток не слушали,
Закон нарушили,
Платите, бабушка,
Штраф в три рубля!». ♪♫

“You didn’t listen to my whistle,
You broke the law.
Pay, granny,
The three-ruble fine!”

In a subsequent verse, the old woman explains to the policeman that мой Абраш (“my Abe”) is waiting for her to get home with the groceries — a “stereotypically non-Gentile” name giving a little wink and nod to the tune’s Yiddish origins.

Even though all Russians know the «Старушка не спеша» song, it’s not so easy to find the recordings of the “folk parody” lyrics on YouTube.

So, big thanks to Yelena for directing me to this outstanding performance by a group called The Red Elvises, who brilliantly married Russian folk instruments with playing techniques from the American country-and-western genre — thus resulting in the “slide balalaika”:

On that note, here’s one last thought to chew on: Copyright issues aside, when exactly does a song go from “popular” to being part of “the folk tradition”?