A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

1944

The Game's Afoot

By: Paul S Cilwa Posted: 10/6/2026 Page Views: 47
Hashtags: #Music #1940s #BigBand #SherlockHolmes
Four cases, one chorus, and a bass who could carry over a foghorn.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (700 words)

You could not get away from Sherlock Holmes in 1944. Rathbone and Bruce had a new picture out what felt like every few months, and the same two of them were on the radio besides, so between the theater and the parlor set a fellow could go a full week hearing that voice and never once open a book. The boys asked for a Holmes number the way they asked for anything—by humming something at me until I gave in—and this is what came of it.

The trouble with putting a detective in a song is that a song has no room for a deduction. So I gave up on explaining anything and just took four cases the whole camp already knew—the snake through the vent, the red-headed business with the tunnel, the photograph the King of Bohemia wanted back, and the hound out on the moor—and let each one have a verse to be frightening in. The chorus does the rest. Nobody needs the solution to a story they have already heard; they want the part where the fog comes down and somebody reaches for a violin.

Frank Bellamy sings it, which was not the plan and should have been. His biography is over on "Three Girls Back Home," where he is doing bass work behind two other men; here he is out front, and the joke among the band was that we had finally found a use for a voice that could carry over a foghorn, namely a song with a fog in it. He took the ribbing. He also refused, flatly and every night of the tour, to do the accent, on the grounds that Duluth had done nothing to deserve it.

The last verse is the only place the song stops being a joke. Holmes solves the case every time and goes home to nothing in particular, and there is one woman he never quite gets over—which, on a USO tour, in 1944, in a room full of men a very long way from somebody, needed no explaining at all.

The Game's Afoot

The Paul S Cilwa Project featuring Frank Bellamy

Arthur Conan Doyle; Paul S Cilwa

Lyrics

In a shuttered room where the shadows creep,
A woman wakes from a poisoned sleep.
A serpent's whisper through the vented grate,
A stepfather plotting a daughter's fate.
Holmes breaks the silence with a lantern's spark—
And the speckled killer strikes in the dark.

A shopman hired for a curious task,
Paid to copy books behind a gilded mask.
A phantom league with a crimson claim,
A tunnel dug beneath his name.
Holmes sees the trick in the sudden hush—
And catches thieves in a midnight rush.

[Chorus]
London fog and a violin's cry,
Clues like embers drifting by.
Where danger walks and shadows speak,
Holmes finds the truth the bold ones seek.
When fear runs wild and hope grows thin—
The game's afoot, and Holmes steps in.

A king in trouble for a love once sworn,
A woman clever as the day she was born.
A photograph hidden from royal eyes,
A master detective outplayed by surprise.
Holmes tips his hat with a rueful smile—
For Irene Adler wins with style.

A moor that moans under ghostly skies,
A spectral hound with burning eyes.
A family curse in the midnight rain,
A killer cloaked in a legend's stain.
Holmes lifts the fog from the ancient fear—
And the hound proves mortal when truth draws near.

[Chorus]
London fog and a violin's cry,
Clues like embers drifting by.
Where danger walks and shadows speak,
Holmes finds the truth the bold ones seek.
When fear runs wild and hope grows thin—
The game's afoot, and Holmes steps in.

[Final Verse]
A shadowed street where memories gleam,
A woman walking out of Holmes's dream.
A quiet smile he can't explain—
For even legends feel the strain.

[Final Chorus]
London fog and a violin's cry,
Clues like embers drifting by.
When hearts collide and fates begin,
Holmes stands steady through the din.
Where fear runs wild and hope grows thin—
The game's afoot, and Holmes steps in.