“A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”

“A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” links Phil Burbank’s practiced musicianship to a private, increasingly solitary nostalgia. First heard among the tunes he plays on his banjo, it returns in a crowded saloon as a song whose words Phil remembers even when the young men around him know only the melody.

A Tune in Phil’s Private Repertoire

Phil is a skilled whistler, with a tone compared to a flute. After whistling a merry tune, he goes to the bedroom for his banjo and picks out “Red Wing” or “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” He taught himself to play, and the narrative lingers on his fingers moving across the strings, presenting music as a practiced ability as well as a source of pleasure.

For a time, George Burbank would quietly enter while Phil played and lie on the other brass bed to listen. That shared, wordless attention has stopped lately. Phil now puts the banjo away after a tune or two, rises from the bed, and walks through the rustling ryegrass to the bunkhouse. The song belongs to a musical routine that once drew George close, but the routine no longer holds the brothers together in the same way.

The Saloon Chorus and the Past

The tune returns when the young men in the saloon begin to sing. Most do not know its words and supply only a la-la-la chorus; Phil, looking into his empty glass, silently moves his lips with the words he remembers. The distinction is quiet but sharp: the younger singers share the sound, while Phil carries its language and associations alone.

Their noisy celebration makes Phil feel remote and lonely. As the song continues, he recalls being a boy during the Spanish War, when brass bands played in parks across the cities and fireworks marked every Fourth. He thinks of those days as gone, proud, and dead, and wonders whether it was on such a day that he first saw Bronco Henry. The remembered refrain thus opens onto an earlier time and a formative encounter, without resolving the uncertainty of exactly when that first sight occurred.

Recurrence and Meaning

The song’s two appearances set private performance against public singing. In the bedroom, Phil plays it among a small repertoire that George once listened to; in the saloon, the group can reproduce its tune but not its words. Phil’s silent participation lets the melody accompany a memory the surrounding revelry does not share.

The scene does not turn the song into a simple expression of cheer. Its lively refrain sounds amid a celebration from which Phil feels estranged, then carries him toward recollections of vanished brass bands, fireworks, and Bronco Henry. The song’s return makes music a hinge between present isolation and an idealized past that Phil can remember but cannot recover.