Two Early Galvanizing American Songs of WWII

Almost immediately after Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States joined the Allies, American songwriters began their attempt to produce the song that would be the rallying cry, the “Over There,” for the current world war.  Although no single song achieved this, there were many martial songs that did become intensely popular during this time.  One was “We Did It Before and We Will Do It Again,” written by Charles Tobias and Cliff Friend and ostensibly performed by Eddy Cantor (Tobias’s brother-in-law) on December 10, three days after Pearl Harbor. That’s some quick performing and even quicker composing.  Dinah Shore sang it on her show exactly one week after Pearl Harbor and Cantor interpolated it into his musical – “Banjo Eyes” – that opened on December 25^th.

Enormous amounts of radio airplay and sheet music sales followed but record sales didn’t.  In his book, The Songs That Fought the War, John Bush Jones explains this by saying “We Did It Before” was the type of song people wanted to sing, not listen to.  And although it was most likely the song’s length that kept it from becoming the “Over There” of WWII, it was certainly one of the big ones and Bush Jones explains why:

What makes “We Did It Before” stand out among over one hundred professionally written militant war songs is its direct yet clear lyric set to a catchy, singable tune in march tempo; it avoids the usual clichés of expression in such songs while retaining the message that with the United States in the war, the Allies will quickly defeat the Axis.

Another militant song that achieved immense popularity was based – loosely, as it turns out -- on an event which occurred on December 7^th, 1941.  Pearl Harbor Fleet Navy Chaplain, William Maguire, was helping transport ammunition during the Japanese attack when he was reported to have made the comment, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”  Apparently, Maguire wasn’t so sure he’d said it.  He explained later, “If I said it, nobody could have heard me in the din of battle.”  But he admitted the phrase accurately expressed what he was feeling at the moment.

Lyricist Frank Loesser saw Maguire’s supposed statement in a newspaper clipping and wrote some lyrics in which "the sky pilot" -- the chaplain -- lays aside his Bible to man the anti-aircraft gun of a dead gunner.  He set his fictitious lyrics to a dummy melody, fully intending to hand over the job of tunesmithing to a professional.  But his friends urged him to retain his own melody and the song went on to sell millions via sheet music and recordings (and Loesser went on to great success as a composer).

As the song’s popularity soared, so did its controversy.  While some clergymen incorporated the song into their services, others balked at its linking of a man of the cloth with ammunition (and Maguire was apparently not pleased either). This controversy only increased the song’s popularity which caused it to hit the radio like a tidal wave which in turn caused the song’s publisher, Famous Music (and to a slightly lesser extent, the civilian branch of the Office of War Information), to request the stations to play it only once every four hours.  Both of these institutions had a personal stake in keeping the song popular for as long as possible and wanted to insure against listener burnout.

Why was the song so popular?  Time and place obviously had everything to do with it but for the specifics, I’ll let Bush Jones have the final word:

The tune is robust, muscular, and just repetitive enough that it’s easy to remember and hard to forget, and the lyrics are just as touch and energetic, yet filled with a playfulness that keeps the song entertaining, not just belligerent.

Sources:

All the Years of American Popular Music, by David Ewen, 1977.

The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939-1945, by John Bush Jones, 2006.

Quotes taken from The Songs That Fought the War, pages 125, 155, and 157.

"Getting Better" (fourth in a series)

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Concept Album that Never Was -- or Was It?

The fourth in a series by John Atwood, a thinker and guitarist who was inspired as an 11 year-old to learn the instrument after seeing the Beatles perform in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show and who followed their career assiduously through his high school years when he formed a garage band just so he could play their songs within a group. He's had a few decades to ponder the import of the Fab Four's music.

This to me was always the high point of the album. I loved the driving guitar part coupled with Paul’s octave jumps on the bass. I could never get enough of it, and frankly still cannot. Every time this comes on, I stop what I am doing just to listen. But, I am a guitar player; and this is a great example of how the Beatles were not only good songwriters, but a great guitar band.

The words, however, are something else entirely. Originally, I took this to be a guy in the process of improving himself, or begin improved. He admits from the get go that in the past he was something of a malcontent, and angry, etc. But he claims he sees that now and is moving on, and that is due to his relationship with the person to whom the song is addressed. And if that was all there was to be said, this would still fit in with the theme I am proposing.

But there is another element that creeps in on the last verse. I occasionally like to sing along with records, and as I truly enjoyed the music on this, I would often find myself joining in. But even when I saw this as an upbeat, positive song, I would kind of drop off when it came to “I used to be cruel to my woman I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved.” It felt weird on the tongue, if you know what I mean. And the music at that point is different—it is set off from the rest of the song in a way.

Later in life I went through the experience of helping a female acquaintance get free of an abusive relationship, and I learned some things that shed more light on this—and changed my thinking. One key idea is that abusers go through a cycle of violence, then regret, then apology and reconciliation. It happens almost like clockwork, and those who work in the field have learned to treat such protestations of repentance with a great degree of caution.

In this song, who is the speaker talking to? He is taking to another woman. As the chorus repeats “I have to admit it’s getting better, It’s getting better, since you’ve been mine.” (And to the American ear it sounds like “since you’ll be mine”—I had to double check it with the word sheet.) While this could be just a statement of turning over a new leaf, the odds are in favor of the idea that it is a guy who has destroyed one relationship and is attempting to woo (or keep?) a different woman into a serious commitment. In hearing this again, something inside of me wanted to pull this new woman aside and say, “Run, don’t walk, away from this relationship as fast as you can. Don’t wait for him to change, nor believe you will be his salvation. For him to have any hope of getting better, he has to do it on his own first. His improvement cannot be tied to his relationship with you.”

The singer is clueless as to the nature of his true condition, as is often the case with men of this type. And they often find excuses for their problems in others and in their circumstances:
“I used to get mad at my school, the teachers who taught me weren’t cool.
You’re holding me down, turning me round, Filling me up with your rules.”

No argument that teachers and schools sometimes do more damage than good, but does anyone else think it might be a good idea to at least let the teachers tell their side of the story in this case? And who is the ‘you’ referring to? Are these quotes from prior conversations with teachers, or is this evidence that this tendency is already bleeding over into this new relationship? Has she maybe questioned his drinking habits, or the way he handles certain matters, etc.?

Again, it seems a chilling scenario. And the singer’s positive take on things has the power to convince many people. But that would fit the scenario to a tee. Most men are in a blind about the factors involved in abuse. Many are too easily persuaded that the guy must have his reasons, nor do they conceive what a hellish situation the woman finds herself in, so would not find such expressions a sign of danger. But as an example of the delusional, almost psychopathic, outlook of the abuser, it is a brilliant bit of writing and performance.


Next: "Fixing a Hole"

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (third in a series)

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Concept Album that Never Was -- or Was It?

The third in a series by John Atwood, a thinker and guitarist who was inspired as an 11 year-old to learn the instrument after seeing the Beatles perform in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show and who followed their career assiduously through his high school years when he formed a garage band just so he could play their songs within a group.  He's had a few decades to ponder the import of the Fab Four's music.

The record really switches gears in the next track.  Beginning with the opening organ-sounding-like-a-harpsichord line, and the strange way that John’s voice is mixed, you feel like you have been ushered into something completely different, as Monty Python would say.  Now you are making your way through a fantasy land, or in George Martin’s words, “a weird world of strange people”. 

And at the time, it was entrancing.  I recall that all the interest in poetry I ever developed stemmed from hearing this song.  The music augments the effect, but John essentially with words alone paints a world that is fascinating, shimmering, colorful and hypnotic. 

But that is just it, it isn’t any kind of real world that a person can inhabit.  And the protagonist of this world walks through it without connecting to a soul.  There is no interaction with Lucy; she just appears, doing nothing but manifesting her “kaleidoscope eyes”.  And the plasticene porters, the rocking horse people and everyone who is smiling have no more humanity than the boat, the river, the newspaper taxies, the bridge, the fountain or the turnstiles. 

Much has been written about whether or not this song is about drugs.  On the one hand, everyone admits the idea came from a childhood drawing by Julian Lennon, and the fact that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds spells out LSD is nothing but a coincidence.  Yet Paul did state in one interview that the drug connection was obvious, and anyone who ever inhaled or swallowed will tell you that the song has a tremendous empathy for the druggy state of mind.  But whether it is or isn’t is not really the point here.

Whatever may be its inspiration, what is being put forward here is a dreamscape, a world devised out of our own imagination.  But as to that, I am reminded of what CS Lewis pointed out in the third installment of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Voyage of the Dawntreader, that we don’t think of our dreams properly. 

In his story, the ship begins approaching a menacing island hidden in a fog of darkness, and as they do, each member of the expedition begins to find that their imaginations are running wild.  They rescue a sailor who has been marooned there for years, and though they are bent on exploring the island, he begs them to leave, telling them it is “the island where dreams come true.”  The crew is at first exited about the prospects of this until the man wakes them up with:

            Do you hear what I say?  This is where dreams—dreams, do you understand—come to life, come real.  Not daydreams: dreams.

 

It takes about half a minute for the import of this to sink in, and then the entire crew rushes to the oars to get out of there as fast as they can.

Ever thought about the content of your dreams?  I don’t mean the nightmares, that is obvious, but how about your more normal ones?  Is it a place you would want to inhabit? 

It was one thing as a teenager or even 20-something college student to listen to this and think it was charming.  As my Dad always reminded me, “nice for you to say, you don’t have to pay any bills or answer to any responsibilities.”  As an older person, upon more serious thought, what is being described here, though beauteous, is empty.  The protagonist in the story is very alone—almost stranded—in what amounts to nothing more than a beautiful, sterile painting.  The world we conjure from our own fancy may have bad guys but it seldom allows for equals with independent thought.

Next: "Getting Better"

"With a Little Help From My Friends" (second in a series)

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Concept Album that Never Was -- or Was It?

The second in a series by John Atwood, a thinker and guitarist who was inspired as an 11 year-old to learn the instrument after seeing the Beatles perform in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show and who followed their career assiduously through his high school years when he formed a garage band just so he could play their songs within a group.  He's had a few decades to ponder the import of the Fab Four's music.

This song, along with Title and Reprise of the Title, is the only song the Beatles admit that was part of the original concept.  So we don’t have to look too far to find the connection, and indeed it is not great stretch to see from my friends relating to lonely hearts. 

This song with its positive energy, unbelievably cool bass guitar lines and interesting, crisp guitar fills was what grabbed many people and drew them to the album.  The sincere and plaintive voice of Ringo expresses the “what should be” of human existence.  Beginning with a notion of uncomfortable insecurity (“what would you think if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me?”), and admitting life as a challenge through which one must obtain help, Ringo asserts a confidence in his friends.  It is through them that he will prevail, it is through their help that challenge and uncertainly will be turned into pleasure. 

We all know there is a kind of dependence on other people that is not healthy, a sense where a person needs others because they have no identity of their own.  But the singer here is not that.  He answers questions—tricky ones, in fact—with certitude.  Some have tried to suggest some kind of weird or lewd sense to his answer “I can’t tell you, but I know its mine” (to the question, “what do you see when you turn out the light?”, I think it is just a rephrasing of Descartes “I think, therefore, I am.”  In the dark, one sees nothing, but one does have a sense that it is me that is not seeing anything.  So though there is no sight, there is at least something happening, and it involves me, of that I am sure.  “I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine” is thus a statement of personhood, sensory confusion notwithstanding.

Thus, this song states what any person desiring social maturity would want: a defined sense of self, the ability to form one’s own opinions, but at the same time, a necessary dependence upon and interaction with others.  He even has a healthy distinction between loves and friendship; he has both, and the two can coexist comfortably.  

But this song doesn’t get away with just being a simple statement of a truth.  It is interesting that Ringo sings this, not John or Paul, or even George.  And he does it in the guise of Billy Shears, the singer of the lonely hearts club band.  So is this a voice to take at face value, or is there something else going on?

I think the reason why the theme of the album has been so confusing over the years is because we were all expecting, in the vein of 60’s protest songs, that the values would be stated in direct terms, kind of like a sermon, by a ‘narrator voice’.  But try flipping it around.  Instead, for the bulk of the album, the narrator voice is not advocating the theme, but various versions of the opposite.  Misunderstanding on this point, I think, is what made the theme hard to see, and gave rise to many complaints that the Beatles were promoting drug use, leaving home, or other counter-culture values expressed in some form of code.  So someone suggested a ‘meter maid’ might be a hooker and who knows what Mr. Kite is all about. 

That primary, converse narration is provided by John and Paul, whether alone or together.   And they actually do have a role in this song, in the questions that are asked, and as such, it seems to me that they maintain the narrator perspective, offsetting what Ringo is saying.   As a result, rather than being a statement, the sentiment of this song is being set up as something to be examined, a hypothesis to be tested.  I don't mean that they are mocking his statement, but rather that they are displaying it for observation and evaluation. It could just as well be in the voice of a museum display: “here is 20^th Century man expressing his belief in a healthy social environment..” 

At any rate, the song ends on a great high note with marvelous vocal backing, and neither Ringo or this point of view are heard from for the rest of the album.

Next: "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"

Mark Twain's Music Box

I suppose there are two kinds of music, -- one kind which one feels, just as an oyster might, and another sort which requires a higher faculty, a faculty which must be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet if base music gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? But we do. We want it because the higher and better like it. But we want it without giving it the necessary time and trouble; so we climb into that upper tier, that dress circle, by a lie: we pretend we like it. I know several of that sort of people, -- and I propose to be one of them myself when I get home with my fine European education.
--Mark Twain, from "A Tramp Abroad"

Mark Twain was an amateur musician who was extremely sensitive to music.  He once told his wife that "songs are good remembrancers.  Almost every one I hear instantly summons a face when I hear it." 

During their European travels in 1878, while Twain was gathering material for the book that would become "A Tramp Abroad," his wife Olivia presented him with an enormous and outrageously expensive music box.  The phonograph was still in its patent phase so this item represented modern technology (I like to think of it as a very expensive eight-track tape player, in this particular case, something no one could afford and that was soon replaced with something that worked much better).  But more importantly, the music box represented Old World sophistication, a vehicle whereby Twain might remedy his cultural insecurities.

For although he had by this time made a fortune writing of his backwoods upbringing, this background and its implicit lack of refinement occasionally caused him insecurity as he sought to live among Hartford's society people.  This music box played ten tunes to be chosen by the purchaser.  If he chose correctly, he could impress his society guests but only if the list did not represent his own musical tastes; he wanted to show Hartford that the author of Tom Sawyer was also a man knowledgeable in the realm of high (i.e., European) culture.

In her essay, "Mark Twain's Music Box: Livy, Cosmopolitanism, and the Commodity Aesthetic," Kerry Driscoll mentions the preliminary list of 16 tunes that cost Twain heavily in angst and time, so much time, in fact, that he was no longer in Europe when he finally whittled the list down to the necessary ten.

Only five of the music box's final ten are known but the entire preliminary list survived.

The Final Playlist for Music Box: (five known out of 10)

Wedding March from Wagner’s Lohengrin

The Pilgrim’s Chorus from Wagner’s Tannhauser

The Lorelie from Das Rheingold

Miserere from Verdi’s Il Travatore

The Russian National Anthem

Preliminary List of Proposed Melodies: (16)

Miserere from Verdi’s Il Travatore

Overture from Rossini’s William Tell

Wedding March from Wagner’s Lohengrin

The Lorelei from Das Rheingold

“Tannhauser”

“Hymn” (Driscoll assumes this might be the theme from Mendelssohn’s Symphony #2 – Hymn of Praise)

Last Rose of Summer

Bonnie Doon

Auld Lang Syne

Lament of the Irish Immigrant

Way Down in Tennessee

Long, Long Ago

Day After Day (Drifting From Home)

Overture from Boieldieu’s The Caliph of Baghdad

Russian National Hymn

Der Fremersberg

A few decades later, Twain included the following in a sketch he called "The Villagers of 1840-3," which was a grouping of situations, characters, and items from Hannibal.  He titled the following list "Songs that tended to regrets for bygone days and vanished joys."

Oft in the Stilly Night

The Last Rose of Summer

The Last Link is Broken

Old Dog Tray (he mentions that this is "one of the d----dest, oldest, vilest songs")

For the Lady I Love Will Soon be a Bride

Gaily the Troubadour

Bright Alfarata

“Negro Melodies”

My Old Kentucky Home (in the “Villagers” sketch, he recites the line, “The day goes by like a shadow on the wall, with sorrow where all was delight”)

Swanee River, Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground  (all his "negro melodies" are actually Stephen Foster tunes).

Although the preliminary music box list is heavily laden with a nod to classical, European music, Twain did manage to sneak in a few tunes that he probably had known and loved as a boy.  And in his autobiography, he also mentions specific tunes -- Nelly Bly, Old Dan Tucker, Buffalo Gals, and Camptown Races -- that the minstrel show musicians played when they traveled through Hannibal, giving the future humorist his first encounter with professional humor and the life-long music lover some tunes he would never forget.

Here are some tunes that Mark Twain no doubt enjoyed, three from the music box list (Last Rose, Bonny Doon, Der Fremersberg -- the third an orchestral piece that he encountered in Baden-Baden and absolutely adored), two from the Villager's Sketch list (Last Rose, Bonny Doon) and one mentioned in the autobiography in conjuction with his boyhood recollection of minstrel shows (Old Dan Tucker).

Sources:

"Mark Twain's Music Box: Livy, Cosmopolitanism, and the Commodity Aesthetic," by Kerry Driscoll. From Cosmopolitan Twain: Mark Twain and His Circle, edited by Ryan and McCullough, University of Missouri Press, 2008.

"Villagers Sketch, 1840-3" from Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians and Other Unfinished Stories by Mark Twain, ed. by Walter Blair, University of California Press, 2011.

"Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band": The Concept Album that never was. Or was it?

The first in a series by guest blogger, John Atwood, a thinker and guitarist who was inspired as an 11 year-old to learn the instrument after seeing the Beatles perform in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show and who followed their career assiduously through his high school years when he formed a garage band just so he could play their songs within a group. He’s had a few decades to ponder the import of the Fab Four and the following post contains his initial musings on the Sgt. Pepper album.

Although Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band has long been considered the original concept album, the first vinyl song collection unified by a central theme, the Beatles asserted decades later that it was not such an item. If it began as one, the idea was allegedly discarded long before Sgt. Pepper hit the record bins. So the flamboyant packaging --  the neon military suits and the collage of famous faces -- plus the Salvation Army Band idea inherent in the album's title were apparently created more for a visual unity than anything else.  Otherwise, said John, Paul, George and Ringo, it was like any other album they'd done, just a miscellaneous collection of tracks.

However, the notion of the Concept lingers on for a couple of good reasons. As someone who was seriously listening to such music at the time, I can attest that it was generally assumed there was some central point to Sgt. Pepper though we seemed to all intuit the Beatles weren’t about to spill it. The belief at the time was that Music should speak without the assistance of footnotes, and it was incumbent upon the listener to derive such value as they could from it by honing their own listening skills.

Secondly, there was the fact that the Beatles followed Sgt. Pepper with an unequivocal, though essentially unsuccessful, concept album/TV film called Magical Mystery Tour. This, in conjunction with the fact that the press at the time was everywhere talking about the Beatles “growing up” suggested they were searching for new and more serious ways of taking Rock music to a new level.

Indeed, there was a distinct sense in the late 60’s that we were “rolling up” for the Mystery Tour, or the Magic Bus, or Jefferson’s Airplane (or numerous other modes of transportation), to discover where Music could go. And Rock music did go on to develop numerous ideas, some silly, some temporarily significant and others that had more lasting value.

Personally, all of this led me to explore other forms of music as well, such as classical music,  Works like Sgt. Pepper, Tommy, several Moody Blues albums and others helped me to see that composers wrote symphonies or concertos (not to mention operas) with a view to developing a musical idea far more substantial than just a simple tune.  And although I’d listened to Sgt. Pepper and pondered it literally hundreds of times, it eventually went by the wayside, as things often do in life. 

But a few years ago -- after the Beatles Anthology came out, and the special about the making of the album—something told me that it was time to give Sgt. Pepper another listen-to, so I went and bought the CD.  And as I came back to it afresh, the question about whether it had a theme wormed in and out of my consciousness.  Now a bit older, a bit more experienced, as I thought on it, it hit me that in fact there was a theme, hiding, as it were in plain sight. It was like one of those trick pictures where your initial stares will allow you to see one thing, but when your eyeballs -- or perspectives -- shift, a whole new picture emerges.

In saying this I’ve no interest in contradicting the Beatles own words.  In repeated interviews that I have seen with each of them, there is a ring of truth in their denials of any purposeful intent with the project. It is clear though that they enjoyed playing with words and with notions, whether or not they seriously felt these ideas or sought to promote them.  Perhaps the theme I see came out of a kind of collective subconscious at work, or maybe it is just pure accident, but I wish to show that it is there, that it is a profoundly moving idea, and that in conjunction with incredible songs and musicianship, it is a magnificent work of art. 

Of course, if there is a theme to the whole work, which none of them were aware of at the time, and which none of them ever perceived, I suppose there is a question of whether or not art can be considered great art if the point of it is not even understood by the artist at the time of creating it. That is a question for someone else to address.  Personally, I think the end result would have been very hard to have contrived, so the idea actually ‘works’ better being unperceived. 

And what is this theme? It is too simple: “Lonely Hearts”. Or maybe it is better phrased the way George put it: “the space between us all.” The entire record is a catalogue of people who fail to connect with the social world around them, or of people whose social world is either unhealthy, fractured or just plain non-existent.  Plus, they are in the main clueless about what they are doing: “they don’t know, they can’t see, are you one of them?”  Let’s go through the various tracks of the record and I will show you what I mean.

Next: "A Little Help From My Friends"

Wilifred Sheed on Irving Berlin

Scroll down, if you must, to the final two sentences--incredibly well-stated!

"By 1911, Irving earned his MBA in music by acquiring a publisher-cum-partner to facilitate the flow, and with that he exploded onto a new level. The triggering device was "Alexander's Ragtime Band," a song that he himself didn't appreciate immediately, but which caught on so thoroughly wherever it was played that it seemed like a standard before its time. It is called a rag because the title says it is, but it is in fact a hybrid with a syncopated verse and a marching chorus. With that in the bank, he then set out to write some regular rags. Suddenly, one hit seemed to run into another, just as they did on Henry Ford's assembly line. In his erudite book on Berlin's first songs, Charles Hamm shows how thoroughly the young man had absorbed all the pop formulas. It was like someone learning to dance with a booklet in his hand telling him where to put his feet. But this is where the miracle kicks in, for the novice suddenly begins to dance like Fred Astaire . . ."

From Wilifred Sheed's The House that George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty.