This song is a reminder that throughout his career, even when Ives was creating the previously unheard-of combinations of notes and rhythms, he could write a good, tonal, accessible piece. When he did, he showed that he had not lost the great skill he had a crafting an attractive, sincere melody, even when one might wrongly expect from the words that there was an intent to parody. Ives must have written this song when he was at work compiling the vocal output of nearly three decades into his self-financed volume of 114 Songs. (The volume does not represent his entire song output, for several songs were omitted because Ives could not get copyright clearance for their texts.)

This song is to a poem by Anne Collins that was printed in the New York Evening Sun in 1921. Although the chord formations are sometimes strange, the song is essentially tonal. It is sung in the voice of a schoolboy, mostly expressed in breathless dotted rhythms. He begins by explaining that "My teacher said us boys should write about some great man." It turns out that after thinking about the assignment, the boy decides to write about his "pa."

He lists various actions of his Pa, such as taking him hunting and teaching him to stand up to pain. Then Pa took over raising the children when Ma died—the only time the boy ever saw Pa cry. Using a text others might treat sentimentally or as a parody, Ives manages to present it as sincerely as the fictional boy it depicts would desire. Ives carefully indicates that the voice part should be sung "In a half boasting and half wistful way," and adds "Not too fast or too evenly." There is a singsong effect to the almost incessant dotted-note rhythm that somehow suggests the boy standing before a class or assembly, nervously reading his theme, then warming to the subject.

Ives himself clearly shared similar sentiments towards his own father. George Ives was the bandmaster in Danbury, CT, and was a great companion for his children, particularly Charlie, the musical one. George was unbounded by theories or bar lines. He knew there were notes between the lines and spaces and sharps and flats that you couldn't play on the piano. He knew there was no inherent reason music had to be in one key only, and reveled in effects created when sections of his band played different pieces at the same time or played from widely separated locations.

In short, George Ives shaped his son's experimental nature, giving him ears open by the turn of the last century to trends that wouldn't be fully developed until the end of it.

So the song is sincere; Ives wants us to picture a genuine elementary schoolboy in the vocal part, and probably hear his own father in the strong, strange chord progressions of the piano part. In the end it is one of the composer's most engaging songs.

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