Composed in 1920 to a poem by John Masefield, Captain Stratton's Fancy is the earliest of Warlock's drinking songs (e.g., Maltworms, Mr. Belloc's Fancy, Peter Warlock's Fancy, etc.) and the most popular. It was, in fact, the only one of Warlock's songs to be recorded during his lifetime, by bass Peter Dawson, with the young Gerald Moore accompanying on September 4, 1927, and issued the following February on an HMV 10" disc selling for 3 shillings. Dawson, by the way, takes the liberty of slowing the tempo to a hymnlike mockery in the final stanza for "Oh, some that's good and godly ones they hold that it's a sin To troll the jolly bowl around and let the dollars spin, But I'm for toleration and for drinking at an inn...." to great comic effect. Warlock envisioned it published together with Mr. Belloc's Fancy under the title "Two True Toper's Tunes to Troll with Trulls and Trollops in a Tavern," with Captain Stratton's Fancy to bear the subtitle "RUM"—for that's the beverage celebrated—and Mr. Belloc's Fancy to be subscribed "BEER." In Peter Warlock: The Composer (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), Brian Collins affords a glimpse of the prudery with which that composer has been—and is still in some quarters—regarded: "Warlock has been criticised to the point of ostracism for writing 'all those songs about beer' and Captain Stratton's fancy ... 'a bellicose bellowing if ever there was', is the obvious and most infamous example... It certainly appears incongruous when placed alongside The curlew or The full heart and even Play-acting but, once any aesthetic problem of approaching what is, unequivocally, a drinking song has been set aside, the piece can be seen to exhibit many aspects of Warlock's style that, in other circumstances, must be deemed perfectly respectable." Thus, musicology renders one of Warlock's most delightful effusions acceptable. But Collins also noted "that Warlock viewed the categorization of songs this way as snobbery; in his view, 'sociable' (lighter) and 'artistic' (more philosophical) songs were equally valid." Those not requiring validation for their listening pleasures will find Captain Stratton's Fancy great fun, prompting one to discover its bibulous fellows. But Warlock went provocatively far in writing to Colin Taylor about popular music on January 18, 1917, "...a great deal of it is really very good—far better, quite immeasurably above a great deal of the high-art stuff that is turned out. Stravinsky himself is not nearly as good as Irving Berlin...."

© Adrian Corleonis, Rovi