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Back in the early 70's, a song that turned into a massive hit and launched a career was called trash by Ringo's people.
''It was a story, passed down through the ages, about a man in the Civil War, a soldier coming back from Andersonville Prison. He had told his girlfriend (that if she still loved him) to tie a yellow handkerchief around a big oak tree outside of town. As the stagecoach drew near to his hometown, he could not bear to look, so he asked the people on the stagecoach to look for him. They did, and they told him the whole tree was covered with yellow
In 1972, a similar tale in Reader's Digest jogged his memory of the story. After reading it, Brown rushed over to his songwriting partner's house and told him the story twice.
Levine knew it had potential but didn't like the part about handkerchiefs.
''He said, 'I love that story, but handkerchiefs you blow your nose in. That's disgusting, so let's call it Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree.'
''I picked up the guitar and wrote the first verse and chorus myself off the top of my head,'' continued Brown. ''When we got to the second verse, my partner said, 'We can't use stagecoach,' so he turned it to bus driver, and when we got to the end, he instantly had the ending: 'I can't believe I see a hundred ribbons round the old oak tree.' I nearly fainted and gave him a big hug.''
The song proved to be a multi-million-selling hit for Tony Orlando & Dawn after it hit the radio in the spring of 1973.
The late Gerald E. Parsons, a folklorist and librarian in the Folklife Reading Room of the Library of Congress, researched the origins of the yellow-ribbon question in the 1970s.
Parsons' study led him to deduce that the custom probably was not linked to the Civil War. Instead, Parsons believed it sprang from a folk legend about a convict riding a train back to his hometown, where he was looking for a big white ribbon around an apple tree near the track. His pal on the train looked out the window as the train neared the convict's hometown and reported a whole tree white with ribbons.
This folk story, published in a 1959 book, Star Wormwood, came from an oral tradition and bore similarities to the New Testament's parable of the prodigal son, Parsons wrote in one of two articles he wrote following his research.
In the fall of 1971, Pete Hammill wrote an article for the New York Post about an ex-con looking for a yellow handkerchief on an oak tree. Hammill said he, too, heard the story via oral tradition. It was this article, ''Going Home,'' reprinted in the June 1972 Reader's Digest, that revived Brown's memory of the Civil War story he had heard years before.
The current yellow ribbon practice started in 1975. Inspired by the hit song, Gail Magruder, wife of Jeb Magruder of Watergate fame, decorated her front porch with yellow ribbons to welcome him home from jail. His homecoming, in January 1975, was televised, and one of the viewers was Penelope Laingen.
On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Laingen's husband, Ambassador Bruce Laingen, was one of the hostages. Penelope tied a yellow ribbon to a tree in their yard and told The Washington Post: ''One of these days Bruce is going to untie that yellow ribbon. It's going to be out there until he does.''
Other families of hostages followed suit.
While the story Brown first heard contradicts Parsons' research, they agree the Iranian hostage situation brought the current yellow ribbon tradition to full bloom in the United States.
''My family and I are so astounded that this yellow ribbon thing has gotten to the point where it will be here longer than me and my grandchildren will
about being loved, being wanted . . .''
''The song was never meant to educate anybody. We wrote it to entertain. It made us feel good,'' said Brown, who also wrote such pop hits as Knock Three Times, Sweet Gypsy Rose, I Woke Up in Love This Morning and Sock It to Me Baby.
He recalled how the tune was first pitched to Ringo Starr in New York. ''I played it for them on my guitar, and he said, 'This could ruin you. How dare you come up here and play a song about a ribbon in a tree. Do you have anything good to play today?'
''We walked out and said some unkind words about the man and finally played it for Tony Orlando's producer, who loved it,'' Brown said of one of the most-recorded songs of all time.
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