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Hell's bells: Jingle Bells not written in Medford, researcher concludes

BU Today reports a BU researcher has ripped the covers off Medford's claim to be home to "Jingle Bells," discovering that the guy who wrote the song couldn't have done so in a local tavern in 1850 since he was in California that year looking for gold. She couldn't say for certain where he did write it, but says some evidence points to a boarding house across the river in Boston, near the Old State House, where he'd moved after failing in the California gold rush and from which he would eventually flee - after orchestrating the song for blackface performers in a minstrel show in a Washington Street theater - abandoning his children and taking up arms for the Confederacy, for which he wrote fight songs.

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Comments

Sometimes the myth is best kept that way.

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BU researcher might want to find a more worthy research pursuit... what a waste of a 6-figure education.

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This is a hobby project she did as a volunteer at the Medford historical society, where this song is a big deal. The article makes that clear...

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2016: The End of All Good Things.

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Well, aint that a kick in the bells.

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Harvard man Leroy Anderson thought up the tune for Sleigh Ride while digging a new septic line trench in his CT backyard during a heat wave.

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Gershwin came up with much of Rhapsody in Blue while listening to the rhythm of the wheels while riding a train to Boston

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I thought that the point about Medford was that the song was inspired by the sleighing drag races that took place along what is now Route 60, from Malden to Medford.

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