Silver Threads Among the Gold

"Silver Threads Among the Gold", first copyrighted in 1873, was a popular song in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today it is a standard of barbershop quartet singing. The lyrics are by Eben E. Rexford, and the music by Hart Pease Danks.

In 1930, an Associated Press story published in The New York Times gave some background on the writing of the lyrics of the song:

"Silver Threads Song Traced to Poet’s ‘Re-Hash’ on Order"

Shiocton, Wis. (AP).—The love ballad, “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” which has stirred the hearts of more than one generation, was not the inspiration of an aging poet but a “re-hash” produced on order.

The story developed after the unveiling of a monument here in honor of the author of the words, Eben E. Rexford, who died in 1916.

Rexford made a living by writing verse and flower and garden articles for magazines. When he was 18, he wrote and sold for $3 some verses entitled “Growing Old.”

Later, H. P. Danks, composer of the music for “Silver Threads,” wrote to him requesting words for a song. Rexford dug into his scrapbook and revised “Growing Old.”

When Rexford spoke about the song, he explained that he worked his way through college by writing, and it was when he was in college that Danks sent him a request for lyrics, offering to pay three dollars for each song. Rexford submitted nine songs and received $18.00, but no accounting of which six had been accepted or which three had been rejected. In telling the story of the song, Rexford said that he didn't know whether he had been paid $3.00 for it or nothing, since he didn't know if it had been among the six accepted or the three rejected. Rexford first heard the song when a company of Oneida Indians gave a concert in Shiocton, Wisconsin, and sang it there.

The sheer popularity of the song can be illustrated, among other ways, by news stories which continued to reference it for many years. For example, in 1932, it won a poll of WABC (AM) (New York) listeners asked to name their favorite songs, despite its being 60 years old.

The song was the most frequently recorded song of the acoustic recording era, starting with its first known recording by Richard Jose in 1903.

Later 20th-century recordings of the song include those of John McCormack, Bing Crosby (recorded November 8, 1947), Jerry Lee Lewis (1956 and 1973), Georg Ots (in Estonian and Finnish, 1958), Tapio Rautavaara (in Finnish, 1967) and Jo Stafford with Paul Weston's Orchestra and the Gaslight Singers (1969).

The lyrics are as follows: