"The Bus Stop Song" (also known as "A Paper of Pins") is a popular song. The title references the movie, Bus Stop, in which it was introduced.
A traditional song, it was orchestrated by Ken Darby in 1956 but a version (called The Keys of Canterbury) was known in the 19th century and Alan Lomax collected it as "A Paper of Pins" in the 1930s.
It is best known in a recording, made on July 17, 1956, by The Four Lads and dubbed over the opening credits of the movie, with some of its lyrics also included in early dialogue. This recording was released by Columbia Records as catalog number 40736. It first reached the Billboard charts on September 15, 1956. On the Disk Jockey chart, it peaked at #17; on the Best Seller chart, at #22; on the composite chart of the top 100 songs, it reached #23. The flip side was "A House with Love in It."
Famous quotes containing the words bus, stop and/or song:
“Nora was always free with it and threw her heart away as if it was a used bus ticket.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing ... then it will be done, but not until then.”
—Spike Lee (b. 1956)
“Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky—
So this winged hour is dropped to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.”
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)