Origin and Influence
The tune was introduced as a Tin Pan Alley pop-song of the time. It contains a musical quotation from the already well known "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away", as well as repetition of some key words and phrases from the lyrics of the latter: moonlight, candlelight, fields, new-mown hay, sycamores, and of course the Wabash River.
In 1934, Joe Young, Jean Schwartz, and Joe Ager wrote "In a Little Red Barn (on a Farm down in Indiana)", which not only incorporated all the same key words and phrases above, but whose chorus had the same harmonic structure as "Indiana". In this respect it was a contrafact of the latter (see "A jazz standard" below).
Read more about this topic: Back Home Again In Indiana
Famous quotes containing the words origin and/or influence:
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has “never had a chance, poor devil,” you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)