Lyrics:Will The Angels Guard My Daddy Over There? [Version (a)]:
Will the angels guard my daddy?
Over there, over there
Will they keep and protect him?
Will they shield him from despair?
Over there, over there
The Song:Beck filled out his
Song Reader sheet music book with fragments of songs and melodies, as well as fictional album collections and song titles. The back of "America, Here's My Boy" refers toa collection of patriotic songs about wars and soldiers and the like, and this song is part of that. Beck actually wrote a short verse for it.
Beck's piece is credited to "N. Barley," which I reckon is some sort of pseudonym or reference, but I haven't placed it.
And like many of the song titles on
Song Reader, "Will The Angels Guard My Daddy Over There?" refers to an older piece of sheet music. In 1918, there was a song by this name written by Paul B. Armstrong and F. Henri Klickmann. You can see it
here.
The chorus to the 1918 song goes:
Will the angels guard my daddy over there?
Will they watch him and protect him everywhere?
Then she nestles down to rest on her loving mother's breast
And murmurs soft and low her evening prayer
"How I love you, dear old daddy, how I miss you!
I pray to Heaven each night that God will bless you
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord your soul to keep
Angels, guard my daddy over there"
Which starts out similarly to Beck's short piece. And I can't read music, but it appears Beck's melody is his own.
Also to note: the back of the 1918 sheet music has a page called "Late Patriotic Song Successes" which has some similar names to Beck's similar page.