The Yanks Shift Into High Gear

The story of how the United States built the Arsenal of Democracy is . . . quite riveting.

The stunning achievements, endless challenges and coincident disruption of American life during the war years are well documented in C.D. Peterson’s The American Homefront During WWII: Blackouts, Ration-books and Rosie the Riveter. Peterson combines statistical analyses, recollections of those who lived during the period and stories passed down to future generations to paint a picture of a citizenry willing to make sacrifice after sacrifice in support of the war effort. People living in the homeland had to deal with housing shortages, food rationing, gas rationing, travel restrictions and the disruption of family life as the men headed off to the battlefields. Over 15 million people migrated to faraway places to work on the assembly lines, a process “fraught with emotion and risk. Most had never traveled beyond their hometowns.” Women and African-Americans found work in the factories where they worked 9-hour shifts six days a week.

What these people accomplished borders on the unbelievable. In 1940, aircraft factories were lucky to produce three hundred planes a month; FDR set a seemingly impossible target of 4167 a month (50,000 planes a year). The workforce crushed expectations by producing 5700 planes a month. Similar victories were achieved in the production of ships, firearms, tanks, ammunition and Jeeps.

The fighting men certainly appreciated this remarkable show of support . . . and the 15 million cans of Spam produced for the military every week. Yum!

Americans also planted 20 million victory gardens to extend the food supply and participated in regular scrap drives, collecting tons of metal, rubber, paper and whatnot needed by the military. “Housewives donated pots and pans, farmers turned in farm equipment, and children even sacrificed their toys. Many people removed bumpers and fenders from their cars for the war effort.”

The people took exceptional pride in their efforts and sheer delight in working with others to “Just get it done!” Here’s one example:

George A. (b. 1932): I grew up between Charlton and Huntington, WVA, and my home front changed in a big way because of rubber, which was needed for the war. All of us in West Virginia, like everywhere I guess, were getting used to the news about all the new programs and plans to mobilize for the war effort. Rubber was one of the things the government really needed. In our town we could turn in old tires for a penny a pound at the gas station. My cousin William and his friends used to go up and down alongside the roads looking for old tires. When the government said they were going to build a rubber plant near us we couldn’t imagine why. It turned out it was for synthetic rubber and I figured the coal was important. All our local boys and men who weren’t in the service got hired in lots of different jobs to help build the factory. Women, too, got hired on, and not just for secretary jobs. Some people worried that it would take too long to build the factory and we needed rubber right away. But what happened is what I like most to remember – and that is that everybody pulled together to get it built. “Just get it done!” everybody said. The United States Rubber Company opened the factory less than a year after construction started. I was about 10 years old. We were proud to make such a big contribution to the war effort. It was a good feeling. I still feel pride when I think back on it.

Peterson, C D. The American Homefront During WWII: Blackouts, Ration-books and Rosie the Riveter (pp. 115-116). (Function). Kindle Edition.

The women who worked in the factories also came up with creative ways to sustain troop morale . . . under some rather unusual working conditions:

A Story from another Arsenal from Julia W: My grandmother worked in the Kingsbury munitions plant in LaPorte, Indiana, during WWII. Her job was making bombs. Born a true Victorian lady, she never wore trousers, not even to make bombs. She told me they sometimes wrote notes on the bombs to support the soldiers who would use them. Often, they would put on bright lipstick and give the bombs a big red kiss. Somebody else put ink on an old pair of high-heeled shoes and stamped footprints across the casing of a bomb. A note to the enemy (“we stomp on you with our pretty little shoe”) or a note to the soldiers (“we’ll be here when you get home, Hon, and we will be lookin’ good.”)

Grandma O said the money at the Kingsbury plant was great, plus they also got free housing and food. She told me they were required to smoke Kool menthol cigarettes during breaks and lunchtime to “clear the lungs.” So, what if her hair turned green and her complexion yellow? She was a single mother of a very large family and desperately needed the work. Plus, she was serving her country. In spite of all the toxins, the birth of 12 children, and the stress of widowhood and loss, Grandma O lived past her hundredth birthday.

Peterson, C D. The American Homefront During WWII: Blackouts, Ration-books and Rosie the Riveter (pp. 64-65). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen “Smoking Required” in a job posting.

Peterson also reminds us that it wasn’t all roses and sunshine. Japanese-Americans were sentenced to live out the war in internment camps. Women working on the assembly lines had to deal with frequent incidents of sexual harassment, resulting in a 50% turnover rate. There were race riots ignited by white workers who resented the presence of blacks on the assembly line and the “obvious irony of a Jim Crow Army fighting against racism but enduring it at home.” Despite those black marks on the record of the American experience in the homeland, the book leaves you with a lasting impression of a country where people worked in unison to defeat totalitarianism and help each other through the crisis.

There is no better evidence to demonstrate how far America has fallen than the comparison between the American response to World War II and the American reaction to COVID-19. During the pandemic, half of the states chose freedom over responsibility, conveniently forgetting that freedom without responsibility destroys any possibility of unity. Trump wants to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America? Well, while the de facto dictator is at it, he might as well change the name of the country to the Disunited States of America and replace JFK’s stirring call to duty with “Ask not what you can do for your country, and don’t bother to ask what your country can do for you.” Try to imagine how Trump worshippers would react to these policies implemented during WWII:

• A million Mexicans are allowed to enter the United States to help bring in the crops.
• Consumers can only purchase 2 to 3 gallons of gas a week.
• The national speed limit is set at 35 mph.
• Meat purchases are limited and the meat will likely be filled with soybeans, potatoes and cracker meal.
• Purchasing new tires is verboten and consumers can no longer purchase new cars, televisions or appliances.

I think they’d dig up victory gardens to foil the liberal plot to turn them into vegetarians, siphon gas and steal the tires from cars displaying Harris-Walz or Save the Planet bumper stickers, shoot the cops who pull them over for speeding and send their militias to go after the Mexicans—all while waving the flag and shouting “FREEDOM” at the top of their lungs.

Things Weren’t Entirely Rosy for the Rosies or the Proto-June-Cleavers

Rosies weren’t the only women who made significant contributions to the war effort. Housewives with young children whose husbands were far away played an equally important role. In addition to cooking and cleaning, they raised their kids alone, participated in war bond drives and scrap collections, navigated their way through the highly complex rationing rules, salvaged food scraps and fats, served as volunteers in the local civilian defense groups and frequently donated blood. Housewiving by itself is a pretty tough job, but the extra duties occasioned by the war led to utter exhaustion:

Left Alone as Soon as the War Started by Claire Mc. (b. 1938): My dad volunteered for the Navy right away because he didn’t want to fight in the mud like his father had done in the Army. We didn’t live way out in the country, but we were up the coast, pretty far from town. You couldn’t call it a real farm, but my dad liked to raise our own chickens and tend a big vegetable garden. Taking care of our place pretty much by herself was a big job, and she was not a big woman. On top of that, I used to see how hard she had to work to figure out how much gasoline she had to get around and how many ration stickers she needed for this and that. With no end to the war in sight, she became weary, but not discouraged. “Lots of people have it worse than we do,” she would repeat. I had my chores and tried to help, but a five or six-year-old can only do so much. A memory I have is when I once found her sound asleep, with her head resting on her arms at the kitchen table. She tried to look perky when I woke her, but to me she looked so tired. That’s what I remember from the war. P.S. My dad came home safely.

Peterson, C D. The American Homefront During WWII: Blackouts, Ration-books and Rosie the Riveter (pp. 155-156). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Peterson nailed it when he identified the essence of the female experience on the homefront:

Nothing defines homefront women more than their loneliness. No matter how busy the day juggling work or dealing with rationing or single parenting, they were lonely.

Peterson, C D. The American Homefront During WWII: Blackouts, Ration-books and Rosie the Riveter (p. 155). (Function). Kindle Edition.

1943 is generally recognized as the turn of the tide. The Russians won the Battle of Stalingrad, capturing what was left of the German 6th Army. American and British troops would leapfrog from North Africa to Sicily and on to Italy, a strategy that led to Mussolini’s downfall. Wins were tougher to get on the Japanese front, but the island-hopping strategy seemed to be working. Unfortunately, every action involves a reaction: the Germans invaded Italy to plug the gap and proved that they still had their battle chops. The Americans would take one island; Japan would take another. As the victories mounted, so did the casualties. “Every service family feared the telegram that began ‘The Department of the (Navy, Army, Air Force) regrets . . .’ ” Gold stars hanging in the front windows of families who lost a son became a common sight in neighborhoods all across America.

Songwriters of the era perceived the loneliness and anxiety of women on the homefront and wrote songs that recognized their suffering and attempted to lift their spirits. Many of those songs were performed by some of the best female song interpreters in the field, adding a healthy dose of empathy to the subtext and making it easier for women to experience catharsis and relief.

I’m Lonely. When Is This Fucking War Going to End? (1943)

After listening to the first two songs in this segment, I began to question the common belief that there were no protest songs released in the United States in the period between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day. Desirous of a second opinion, I asked Google, “Were there any protest songs during World War 2?” The AI Assistant responded, “No, there were not protest songs during World War II, but there were patriotic songs and propaganda music.”

That response confirmed my belief that AI is as dumb as a doorknob. There were protest songs during World War II and the next two songs prove it. What were these two women protesting? Why, the cruelest form of oppression known to humankind! They couldn’t get laid!

Jimmy Dorsey Band Featuring Kitty Kallen, “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old”: Kitty wasn’t the only one bitching about situational celibacy. This song was covered by several other women during the war years, including Rosemary Clooney, Liz Tilton, Amy Arnell, Hildegarde and believe it or not, Bette Davis, in the film Thank Your Lucky Stars.

I love Bette Davis but Kitty Kallen was undoubtedly the more practiced vocalist. This is important because the Arthur Schwartz-Frank Loesser composition is full of curveballs—different tempos, truncated verses, mood shifts and a highly variable melody with a range spanning two octaves. Kitty navigates through the challenges with excellent tonal control, conveying a variety of emotions from sad to flabbergasted to sassy.

The song contains many of the stylistic choices one would expect from a Big Band during the war. After the band plays a brief statement of the opening melodic pattern, Kitty enters with the preamble—a lyrical introduction designed to set the scene and usually played in a slower tempo :

You marched away and left this town
As empty as can be
I can’t sit under the apple tree
With anyone else but me
For there is no secret lover
That the draft board didn’t discover

It wouldn’t be a war song without at least one repetition of the first segment of “Reveille,” the bugle blast that began a soldier’s day. After Jimmy and the boys complete that nod to tradition, they shift to hard swing to allow Kitty to get down with the lowdown:

They’re either too young or too old
They’re either too grey or too grassy green
The pickings are poor and the crop is lean

What’s good is in the army
What’s left will never harm me
I’m either their first breath of spring
Or else I’m their last little fling . . .

I’m finding it easy to stay good as gold
They’re either too young or too old

The subtext contains the real story. How would she know they’re too young or too old unless she was on the prowl? Naughty girl! It’s also implied that she is unmarried, for a married woman seeking a hard one in those times would have been the subject of gossip that would have eventually reached hubby’s ears.

A delightful feature of the era’s music involves what I call “contortionist rhyming,” and Frank Loesser was a top-tier contortionist (rhymes in italics):

I’ll never ever fail ya, when you are in Australia
Or out in the Aleutians or off among the Russians (pronounced “rooshians”)
And flying over Egypt, your heart will never be gypped
And when you get to India, I’ll still be what I’ve been to ya

It’s a far cry from Keats, but I laugh every time.

Kitty wraps up the song with a spirited crescendo mirrored by the band where she fully admits her wandering eyes:

I’ve looked the field over, and lo and behold!
They’re either too young or too old

We’ll hear more from Kitty when she joins forces with Harry James in 1945.

Ella Mae Morse with Dick Walters and His Orchestra, “No Love, No Nothin'”: What? You’ve never heard of Ella Mae Morse? Shame on you! I’ll let Wikipedia fill you in:

As Morse’s musical style blended jazz, blues, and country, she has sometimes been called the first rock ‘n’ roll singer. A good example is her 1942 recording of the song “Get On Board, Little Chillun”, which, with strong gospel, blues, boogie, and jive sounds, was a genuine precursor to the later rockabilly/rock ‘n roll songs. Her records sold well to both Caucasian and African-American audiences. As she was not well known at the time of her first solo hits, many people assumed she was African-American because of her ‘hip’ vocal style and choice of material.

Ella Mae was a Texas girl whose vocal talents were first discovered by Jimmy Dorsey, who unwittingly brought her into his band when she was only fourteen (Ella Mae and her mother told Jimmy she was nineteen). After Dorsey received notice from the school board that he was responsible for her care, he promptly gave her the boot.

The precocious Ms. Morse recovered from that setback and recorded this song with Capitol in 1943 when she had reached the ripe old age of 18. Yes, the musicians’ strike was still on, but Capitol was not a big label at the time and had already agreed to the union’s demands. When you hear Ella Mae’s blues-drenched voice spiced with equal parts sexual desire and sexual frustration, you might think I was lying about her age. Hell, I was well past the confirmed-slut-stage when I was eighteen, and though I know nothing about Ella Mae’s sex life, teenagers have exceptionally active libidos and sexual frustration and loneliness are part of the teenage experience. Given that she insists on waiting for her baby to come, Ella Mae was no slut, but very particular when it came to her choice of a mate.

No love, no nothin’,
Until my baby comes home,
No sir! No nothin’,
As long as baby must roam,

I promised him I’d wait for him
Till even Hades froze,
I’m lonesome, Heaven knows
But what I said still goes,

No love, no nothin’,
And that’s a promise I’ll keep,
No fun with no one,
I’m getting plenty of sleep
My heart’s on strike
And tho’ it’s like an empty honeycomb,
No love, no sir! No nothin’,
Till my baby comes home

Though she never achieved the level of success she deserved, Ella Mae was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’d like to make a brief stop in Casablanca.

Rudy Vallée, “As Time Goes By”: Imagine my surprise when I strolled into Rick’s bar and heard Rudy Vallée singing this song through a megaphone and Dooley Wilson was nowhere to be found.

How utterly disappointing and inexcusable. Dooley Wilson’s version from Casablanca is the gold standard, the rendition everyone remembers and the take that earned the #2 spot on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years . . . 100 Songs” list, just behind Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” and one spot ahead of Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain.” I’m shocked! Shocked that the compilers chose Rudy’s rather stiff and formal performance instead of Dooley’s warm and tender approach. What gives?

Allow me to follow Captain Louis Renault’s lead and round up the usual suspects: James Caesar Petrillo, the stupid jerks who ran the record companies and the people responsible for this compilation. I’ll let The 78 Prof relate the sad tale:

With the great success of “Casablanca,” this old tune jumped to #1 on the weekly “Your Hit Parade” radio survey in the Spring of ’43, but due to the ongoing ‘Recording Ban’ (musicians union strike) the only commercial 78s available to consumers at the time were reissues of two old 1931 recordings by the orchestras of Rudy Vallée and Jacques Reynard. Though Dooley Wilson had performed it as ‘Sam’ in the film, he was unable to capitalize on the moment and had to wait until 10½ months after the movie opened to make this recording, shortly after Decca settled with the union.

Petrillo and the moguls are hereby found guilty of multiple counts of music deprivation, but the compilers deserve a stiffer sentence for the more serious crime of compilation negligence and false advertising. The subtitle says “World War II Songs.” Rudy Vallée’s version came out in 1931 during the Great Depression; ergo, it is not a World War II song. Let’s do the math . . . 10 1/2 months brings us to late 1943 or early 1944. By golly, World War II was still going on! Dooley’s version IS the true WWII song!

Okay, I’ll stop bitching because it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of one little music reviewer don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

I should point out that Dooley was a drummer and couldn’t play piano to save his life. Here’s the scoop from IMDb:

In Casablanca, the piano was empty and the music came from a pianist located behind the camera. Dooley’s piano playing in the film was actually performed by pianist/composer/songwriter Elliot Carpenter, who was placed where Wilson could see and imitate his hand movements.

“As Time Goes By” is not particularly difficult from a chording perspective, but the song is sensitive to dynamics. Mr. Carpenter did a marvelous job in the film version, spending most of his time on the soft pedal for the melody and counterpoint and using the sustain pedal at just the right moments. Equally important, he respected the tempo instructions of the original composition, playing the song in the middle of the andante range (76-108 bpm). I mention this because Jacques Reynard’s take is ridiculously uptempo, which destroys the tenderness at the heart of the song. I apologize to my readers for lapsing into musical technicalities, but I love this song and in my teens I worked very hard to reproduce the technique employed by Elliot Carpenter.

As for the lyrics, the song is obviously oriented towards heterosexuals, but hey, I’m a switch-hitter who has enjoyed passionate romances with several men, and I find the lyrics quite enchanting. My favorite lyrical segment appears at the end of the song:

It’s still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.
Oh yes, the world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.

Oh, how I wish that were true for all lovers, whatever their sexual orientation.

Now, if you will excuse me, I will correct the oversight and restore Dooley Wilson to his rightful place:

Dooley Wilson, “As Time Goes By”:

Bing Crosby, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”: We’ve heard from the ladies on the homefront, so it’s about time we consider the perspective of those on the battlefields.

A year after “White Christmas” found its way into American hearts and the Armed Forces Network received an avalanche of requests for the song from fighting men all over the world, Bing Crosby recorded this song for Decca on October 1, 1943 (Decca had also struck a deal with the union). It became the most requested song at Crosby’s USO shows in Europe. Credited to Walter Kent and James “Kim” Gannon and performed by Der Bingle with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, the song is sung from the perspective of a soldier stationed overseas.

I can only imagine how lonely the troops felt during the Christmas season, “slogging through hell” and deprived of hearth and family. Bing Crosby had previously demonstrated his empathy for fighting men in “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and his commitment to bring entertainment to the front lines confirmed his genuine concern for the boys in uniform. Though the song contains only two sets of verses repeated for emphasis, Bing’s heartfelt performance carries the day:

I’ll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Though the song was extraordinarily popular with American troops, the Brits caved into the protests from the virility crowd and banned the song from BBC Radio. Harrumph!

Vaughn Monroe, “When the Lights Go On Again”: From the Vaughn Monroe Appreciation Society: “For those of us too young to remember, Vaughn Monroe was one of the most popular male vocalists to come out of the big band phenomenon. He had a rich baritone voice that he used masterfully. He played trumpet and trombone with the same virtuosity. His 6-foot frame and likable personality put him out in front of the orchestra and behind the baton . . . Despite an early talent for the trumpet, Vaughn Monroe’s desire to become an opera singer eventually landed him almost ten number-one hits during the ’40s as well as a host of nicknames for his rich baritone, including ‘The Voice with Hairs on Its Chest’ and ‘Old Leather Tonsils’.”

I love the sound of an accomplished baritone and with his gorgeous tone and sensitivity to lyrics, Vaughn Monroe was one of the best. This song of hope written by Bennie Benjamin, Sol Marcus and Eddie Seiler came at a time when people were desperate to see the light at the end of the tunnel . . . and you couldn’t have found a better singer to convey the message of hope than the “sincere, steady, and down-to-earth” Vaughn Monroe.

The dark introduction is quite compelling, with the reeds playing a set of minor key figures with light support from the horn section. One might refer to this section as “Act 1:  Anxiety and Uncertainty.” The second act (“Hope”) begins with a piano completing the last figure from Act 1 with a single chord, followed immediately by the vocal. Vaughn manages to impart hope without crossing the line into over-confidence while the clarinet confirms the shift to positivity with a lovely supporting counterpoint. The lyrics consist of two verses and a reprise of the title line during the coda, and though it is unclear which of the three songwriters wrote those lyrics, whoever came up with them is to be commended for acknowledging the pain and horror of war through implication rather than description:

When the lights go on again all over the world
And the boys are home again all over the world
And rain or snow is all that may fall from the skies above
A kiss won’t mean “goodbye” but “Hello to love”

When the lights go on again all over the world
And the ships will sail again all over the world
Then we’ll have time for things like wedding rings and free hearts will sing
When the lights go on again all over the world

The fact that the song shot straight to number one in early 1943 was and a clear indication that the populace was yearning for a ray of sunshine.

I Still Miss You But I Think Ike’s Got This (1944)

The Andrews Sisters, “Shoo Shoo Baby”: This unusual take on the goodbye song opens with a preamble where Patty Andrews plays the role of narrator, describing the scene in her most sweet and sorrowful style:

You’ve seen him up and down the avenue
And now he’s wearin’ the navy blue
She had a tear in the corner of her eye
As he said his last goodbye

Given the flood of tear-drenching goodbye songs in the era, a listener would assume that another is about to follow, but the preamble turns out to be a ruse when all three Sisters enter the fray delivering blue note harmonies over a jazzy background, transforming the song from sweet into sexy.

Shoo, shoo, shoo baby
Shoo, shoo, shoo baby
Bye, bye, bye baby
Do dah do day
Your papa’s off to the seven seas

Yes, the Sisters have taken the male role, so it’s likely that the Trump administration will remove the song from the National Archives, accusing the Sisters of the crime of gender-bending.

Then again, it’s equally likely that the ban will face stiff opposition from one of the GOP’s key constituencies: insecure males who like to engage in displays of machismo. The man in the song is first-rate asshole with zero emotional intelligence who firmly adheres to the myth that boys don’t cry and expects the same from his squeeze.

Seems kinda tough now
To say goodbye this way
But papa’s gotta be rough now
So that he can be sweet to you another day

Bye, bye, bye baby
Don’t cry baby
Shoo, shoo, shoo baby
Do-dah do-day
Your papa’s off to the seven seas

It’s best to forget the lyrics normalizing female subservience and concentrate on the elaborate vocal arrangement cleverly mixing harmonies and vocalizations. The best part of the song arrives when the sisters use the shh sound to cue the band to lower the volume while simultaneously creating a syncopated high-hat effect to jazz up the rhythm. The quiet passage ends with Patty shifting to trumpet mode, blaring the word “QUIET!” before launching into a semi-scat vocal riff that dissolves into the chorus. “Shoo-Shoo Baby” shows The Andrews Sisters at their peak, playfully using vocals to enhance the rhythm while displaying complete command of the possibilities within the harmonic range.

Johnny Mercer and the Pied Pipers with the Paul Weston Orchestra, “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive”: Johnny Mercer’s contributions to music could fill an encyclopedia. Singer, songwriter, co-founder of Capitol Records and recipient of nineteen Oscar nominations and four victories, Johnny Mercer wrote over 1500 songs, collaborating with many top-tier composers. The Johnny Mercer Award is the highest honor bestowed by the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

And like Irving Berlin, he couldn’t read sheet music; like Joni Mitchell, he came up with a system that made sense to him.

In this song, he takes on the role of the preacher with more of a hint of the black church but before you accuse him of cultural cooptation, you may want to hear a bit more about his upbringing. Johnny Mercer was born in Savannah to parents with a more progressive orientation than some of their neighbors in the Deep South. They allowed him to play with African-American kids and his aunt took him to minstrel and vaudeville shows where ragtime music was all the rage. To complete the picture, I’ll turn things over to the New Georgia Encyclopedia:

As a choirboy at Christ Church and a student at Chatham Academy, he received the best education possible in Savannah. He attended concerts, minstrel shows, and lectures as well as the theater and cinema. He also received ample doses of folk culture; for example, he witnessed the black cult leader Bishop Daddy Grace return to his flock at the United House of Prayer for All People on the Ogeechee Road. He listened to his father sing turn-of-the-century standards like “In the Gloaming” but also bought the “race records” of Louis Armstrong and Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. Into this mixture of metropolitan and vernacular culture came the radio broadcasts that opened up a whole new world of popular music to Savannah. Mercer absorbed it all.

His choice to write and perform the song from the preacher’s perspective was a show of respect for the vibrant musical culture of his youth.

For “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive,” Mercer collaborated with composer Harold Arlen, best known for “Over the Rainbow” and “That Old Black Magic,” and Arlen certainly lived up to his reputation in this composition. The preamble opens appropriately with a blues riff from the trumpet, perhaps a nod to either the archangel Gabriel or Joshua at the Battle of Jericho. The first four lines represent a call to the flock, with the trumpet responding to each line with a counterpoint riff; for the last four lines, the band settles into a slow blues where Johnny bends the blue notes with immense delight:

Gather ’round me, everybody
Gather ’round me while I’m preachin’
Feel a sermon comin’ on me
The topic will be sin and that’s what I’m ag’in’
If you want to hear my story
The settle back and just sit tight
While I start reviewin’
The attitude of doin’ right

Setting established, the band shifts to snappy, blues-tinged jazz where Johnny displays his marvelous skills as a lyricist as he joyfully shares his epiphany with his churchgoers:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between
You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium’s
Liable to walk upon the scene

Johnny wouldn’t be much of a preacher if he didn’t include a biblical reference or two, and he couldn’t have selected a better pair of bible stories in his quest to encourage the laity to adopt the most effective method for dealing with the challenges life sends our way:

To illustrate my last remark
Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark
What did they do just when everything looked so dark?
Man, they said “We’d better accentuate the positive” . . .

With its clever lyrics, catchy tune and jazzy rhythms, it should come as no surprise that the song was embraced in a country filled with people desperate to find ways to counteract the sense of doom and gloom. The song also capitalized on the increase in church attendance during the war, as summarized on the website Old Magazine Articles:

When this Click Magazine article appeared on the newsstands at the close of 1942, the American people were fully committed to a war on two fronts that quite often was not generating the kinds of headlines they would have preferred reading. As a result, Americans turned to the church for spiritual and emotional support: “Two years ago most churches were considered fortunate if forty-five people attended the morning service; today devout worshipers fill the pews morning and night.”

As John Lennon once said, “Whatever gets you through the night.”

And as I once said to Americans trying to survive Trump 2.0, “Y’all need to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive.” Given Trump’s cynical manipulation of Evangelical Christians who firmly believe that the Almighty sent him to save America, you may want to search for other sources to increase your positivity. Whether that involves the many uncorrupted places of worship in America or something more secular is up to you.

Dinah Shore, “I’ll Walk Alone”: The more positive news from the front lines failed to quench female loneliness. Dinah Shore’s version of “I’ll Walk Alone” was released on May 19, 1944, and made the charts a few days before D-Day (along with several other renditions). The various takes reached the Top Ten by August and remained there for twenty consecutive weeks, long after Patton had made his breakthrough. Though I’m sure that women were happy to hear of progress, they would never shake the blues until Johnny was safe in their arms.

Dinah Shore was uniquely qualified to empathize with the suffering, as she contracted polio at a very early age, which left her with a deformed foot and an obvious limp. She was also a strong woman who failed her auditions with Goodman and the Dorsey brothers and instead of giving up, she decided to go solo and became the first female vocal soloist to forge a successful career.

Dinah’s vocal probes the depths of loneliness, mirroring the feelings of incompleteness many women lived with on a daily basis. This is one of those songs that employed background singers in place of instrumentation, and though I find them rather intrusive and would have preferred a background of light piano, they do serve to intensify the pain of separation. Sammy Cahn’s lyrics largely reinforce the expectation that women remain faithful to their absent partner and Dinah rejects any and all offers that come her way:

They call, no date
I promised you I’d wait
I want them all to know
I’m strictly single, oh

I’ll walk alone
Because to tell you the truth
I’ll be lonely
I don’t mind being lonely
When my heart tells me you are lonely

The melody isn’t particularly memorable, but Dinah Shore’s sensitive vocal overcomes the song’s weaknesses.

Jo Stafford, “Long Ago and Far Away”: Jo Stafford is one of my all-time favorite singers, so the choice between her version and the Dick Haymes-Helen Forrest release was a slam dunk.

Jo Stafford’s professional career began when she joined her sisters in a vocal group as a replacement for a non-family member. As the sisters lived in Long Beach, it was only natural that they would take their chances in Los Angeles. After a few radio appearances, the Stafford Sisters found semi-regular work in the film industry, with Jo taking on the roles of singer, pianist and arranger. Eventually the Stafford Sisters merged with two other vocal groups to form the Pied Pipers (see the 1945 section). After a bumpy ride through the music business that forced four of the members to throw in the towel, the remaining Pipers (including Jo) hooked up with the Tommy Dorsey band in 1940, where Jo had the opportunity to sing a few solos and work with a young crooner named Frank Sinatra.

The Pipers had the good fortune to perform with the Dorsey band on Johnny Mercer’s radio program. According to Gene Lees’ Singers and the Song, Johnny approached Jo and told her, “Someday I’m going to have my own record company, and you’re going to record for me.” Mercer lived up to his promise, and Jo became the first solo artist to sign with Capitol Records in 1944. “Long Ago and Far Away” was one of her first recordings for Capitol, released a week after the Haymes-Forrest version (and followed with covers from Crosby and Perry Como).

This Jerome Kern/Ira Gershwin collaboration first appeared in the film Cover Girl, where Rita Hayworth lip-synced the vocal provided by Martha Mears, who built a career as a song dubber for several actresses with limited vocal abilities. Jo’s rendition adheres to the string-laden arrangement used in the film, but the similarities end there. Jo Stafford was blessed with a voice of stunning purity that set her apart from the crowd and a gift for phrasing that always reflects the intended mood and meaning of a given song. The mood of “Long Ago and Far Away” mingles hope with yearning as the lonely female narrator visualizes the longed-for reunion with her long-lost mate:

Long ago and far away, I dreamed a dream one day
And now that dream is here beside me
Long the skies were overcast but now the clouds have passed
You’re here at last

Chills run up and down my spine, Aladdin’s lamp is mine
The dream I dreamed was not denied me
Just one look and then I knew
That all I longed for long ago was you

Though the song is quite evocative, there isn’t a single hint of sap in Jo’s vocal (or in Gershwin’s lyrics). What we hear is genuine emotion grounded in the certainty that the homecoming is not long and far away.

The Merry Macs, “Mairzy Doats”: With the world on fire and homefront women stuck at home with a bad case of the blues, there emerged a small band of miscreants who rebelled against reality and marched to the slogan, “Let’s have some fun for a change!”

Their contributions will not be soon forgotten. “Mairzy Doats” is one of the most insidious songs ever written. You listen to it once and it sticks in your head for days, weeks or months like a non-stop migraine headache. That, my friends, is not simply my opinion, but one echoed in the lede of a 1944 Boston Globe article on the song:

“Nobody knows was the words mean,” is the key to this mystery. I am convinced that the song contained a secret code planted by the Nazis in an attempt to turn G.I. Joes into Silly Willies and weaken American morale..

According to Wikipedia, the song originated in the head of a four-year-old girl who was likely a German double pretending to be writer Milton Drake’s daughter. When quizzed by the FBI, he told them that his “daughter” came home one day singing the phrase, “Cowzy tweet and sowzy tweet and liddle sharksy doisters.” Drake then explained that he reached out to fellow songwriters Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston to help him come up with an equivalent phrase that was easier to sing and set the phrase to music. He failed to realize that the original phrase contained a virus created by German neuro-psychiatrists to replicate apparently silly but unquestionably malicious code designed to weaken the American fighting spirit.

The songwriting trio tried to pitch the song for a year, but none of the potential buyers were interested. Of course not! They were patriots who could smell a rat a mile away! They finally found a buyer in Al Trace, the bandleader for the Silly Symphonists. Hmm . . . Silly Symphonists . . . omigod! . . . Trace was working for the S.S.!

And in a matter of weeks, millions of Americans were infected by the virus, singing “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?” in munitions factories, while taking a stroll through the neighborhood and in diners all over the country. J. Edgar was deeply concerned and ordered an immediate investigation into the matter. The results of the investigation were classified as top-secret, but leakers eventually spilled the beans. The virus failed to wreak havoc on American morale because the universally strong commitment to the war effort triggered a previously undiscovered hormone that acted as an antidote. The antidote acted so quickly that the code never made its way overseas.

When it comes to conspiracy theories, MAGA’s got nothin’ on me.

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING SONG MAY TRIGGER EVERY SIDE EFFECT EVER IDENTIFIED IN A BIG PHARMA ADVERTISEMENT!

Louis Jordan, “G.I. Jive”: Johnny Mercer wanted to have some fun, too, but his mission was patriotic. He wanted to write a song especially for the troops to give them a laugh and lift their spirits. The result is pure G.I.bberish . . . in a good way.

As is true of all hierarchies, armies are organized in a chain of command. The top brass define the strategy, then the officers design and execute the mission, making sure all below them in rank understand both strategy and mission. The corporals and privates follow orders consistent with the mission. That’s how it works on paper, but there’s plenty of improvisation involved in battle due to iffy reconnaissance and unexpected twists and turns. When Jack Hawkins tells William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai, “I know how you feel, but there’s always the unexpected, isn’t there?” he is simply stating the truth: in war, you have to expect the unexpected.

Mercer accepts the need for a chain of command but pokes fun at the rituals and rules of the hierarchy, which sometimes border on the absurd . . . particularly for those at the bottom of the ladder:

The P-F-C, the C-P-L, the L-T
C-P, the O.D, the M.P makes you do K-P

This is the G. I. Jive
Man alive
It starts with the bugler blowin’ reveille over your bed when you arrive
Jack, that’s the G. I. Jive
Roodley-toot
Jump in your suit
Make a salute

After you wash and dress
More or less
You go get your breakfast in a beautiful little café they call “The Mess”
Jack, when you convalesce
Out of your sea
Into the street
Make with the feet
Reet

If you’re a P-V-T, your duty
Is to salute to L-I-E-U-T
But if you brush the L-I-E-U-T
The M-P makes you K-P on the Q-T

Got all that?

Mercer recorded the song first; Louis Jordan’s interpretation followed closely thereafter. Both versions topped the Harlem Hit Parade, but the more spunky Jordan version also topped the pop charts. It makes sense that the song landed well with African-American listeners, as most of the black men who fought for their country in a segregated military found themselves at the lowest levels of the hierarchy. The Navy was the only arm of the service to commission black officers, and that didn’t happen until 1944.

The Mills Brothers, “Till Then”: The Mills Brothers were one of the few big-name stars largely unaffected the strike and the restrictions on orchestras. Their label (Decca) signed off on the union demands early and as a top-tier vocal group, they didn’t need an orchestra anyway. The arrangement of “Till Then” consists of a lead singer (Donald Mills), an acoustic guitarist (Bernard Addison) and background vocals provided by the other Mills Brothers.

After all the big band stuff, it’s nice to hear a song with an arrangement stripped to the bones. The chord pattern involves some unusual moves but none of the chords are particularly difficult. Serendipitously, the arrangement is a perfect fit for the lyrical narrative: a simple, straightforward plea from a soldier to his homebound sweetheart to wait for his return:

Till then, my darling, please wait for me
Till then, no matter when it will be
Some day I know I’ll be back again
Please wait till then

Our dreams will live though we are apart
Our love I know we’ll keep in our hearts
Till then, when all the world will be free
Please wait for me

Although there are oceans we must cross
And mountains that we must climb
I know every gain must have a loss,
So pray that our loss is nothing but time

Till then, let’s dream of what there will be
Till then, we’ll call on each memory
Till then, when I will hold you again
Please wait till then

I love the line, “So pray that our loss is nothing but time,” particularly the way it is phrased. It admits the possibility of a greater loss but deflects the negativity by emphasizing the more hopeful outcome. Donald’s vocal conveys down-to-earth sincerity and the other Mills Brothers excel at both harmonies and counterpoints while doing a damned fine job mimicking a horn section. This song is one for the ages . . . as are the Mills Brothers, who continued performing for decades with new family members and other musicians filling the gap well into the 21st Century.

Tommy Dorsey Orchestra Featuring Frank Sinatra, “I’ll Be Seeing You”: I had to do a double take when I saw the label on the original 78 with TOMMY DORSEY and HIS ORCHESTRA in large type and Frank Sinatra down below in tiny print: (“Vocal refrain by Frank Sinatra”). Now you understand why Helen Forrest demanded that Harry James let her sing complete songs. In this one of many versions, Sinatra gets two verses surrounded by interminable and irrelevant Big Band indulgence.

Young Blue Eyes was a rising star but Tommy adhered to Big Band traditions relegating singers to bit parts. Jesus fuck, man, that’s Frank Sinatra! Instead of shoving him into the background you should have put the spotlight on him and muted the trumpets!

“I’ll Be Seeing You” isn’t really a WWII song, having been published in 1938 and inserted into a Broadway musical that flopped. Nonetheless, the song does deal with separation and eventual reunion . . . and it’s worth the price of admission to hear Sinatra in the early stages of his career.

I’ll be seeing you in all the old, familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces all day through
In that small cafe, the park across the way
The children’s carousel, the chestnut tree, the wishing well

I’ll be seeing you in ev’ry lovely summer’s day
In everything that’s light and gay
I’ll always think of you that way
I’ll find you in the morning sun and when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon but I’ll be seeing you

 

Dreaming of a Sentimental Journey Home (1945)

The year began with the Battle of the Bulge still raging in the snows of the Ardennes Forest, but the Allies plugged the gap in late January. They soon discovered that Hitler had put all his chips on the table and had nothing left in the pantry. With the Russians crawling up his ass, one of the most evil men to ever reside on this planet revealed his fundamental gutlessness by blowing his brains out.

The news from the Asian theatre was mixed. Americans raised the flag at Iwo Jima but the Japanese continued to fight until the last man. When the yanks invaded Okinawa, the casualties were even greater and along with the surge of kamikaze pilots, the top brass concluded that an invasion of the Japanese mainland would be equally difficult and the war could last another few years.

The first three songs in this segment hit the charts in early 1945; the last was released a couple of months after the Japanese surrender.

Harry James & His Orchestra Featuring Kitty Kallen, “I’m Beginning to See the Light”: Anyone familiar with the music of the era would have looked at the composer credits and concluded that the song was guaranteed to be a hit before hearing a single note. Duke Ellington. Johnny Hodges (of the Ellington band). Harry James. Can’t miss with that trio!

Anyone might also predict that the song would be as sexy as fuck and they’d be right on the money.

In truth, the only connection this song has to the war is the title. Americans were beginning to see that light at the end of the tunnel and could sense that their heroes would come home soon. As the optimism increased, its’s likely that dormant libidos would also begin to wake from their slumber, so it’s not unlikely that some horny types would have connected the song to the endless pleasure awaiting them when the war came to an end.

The extended introduction opens with a soft guitar playing a complementary chord pattern for a few seconds, followed immediately by the orchestra’s horn section. The horns establish the sassy syncopated rhythm in four segments of increasing intensity: two statements of the verse melody, one statement of the bridge and a reprise of the melody that ends with Harry James closing the intro with a flurry of notes on his trumpet. While the long intro from the Dorsey band in “I’ll Be Seeing You” is a superfluous cliché, this Duke Ellington at the helm and he always made pop songs more interesting than they seem at first glance:

As biographer James Lincoln Collier points out in his book Duke Ellington, “I’m Beginning to See the Light” is in the form of the classic American popular song. “But more than most composers of popular songs, [Ellington] tended to write more consecutive melodies, made up of quite different, even contrasting, phrases, producing more the effect of speech or dialogue. When well done, this system of writing inevitably produces a more interesting and melodically richer tune, although one perhaps correspondingly less acceptable to the ordinary ear.”

I find the tune exceptionally accessible and quite memorable. When I read through the sheet music while listening to the song, I was amazed to find that the melody floats easily over an surprisingly intricate chord pattern . . . but I’m always amazed by Ellington.

The light guitar reappears to cue the vocal section—a full section with three verses and a bridge. The lyrics are the work of Don George, who demonstrated the importance of syncing the lyrics to the mood and flow of the music while helping the singer navigate the rapids:

Don George’s lyric for “I’m Beginning to See the Light” deals with romantic images such as “lantern-shine” and “rainbows in my wine” to which the singer was impervious until falling in love. In The Poets of Tin Pan Alley Philip Furia praises George’s witty use of a list of “light” images and his ability to deal with a difficult song. “Ellington’s tune was particularly hard to set, since each A section consists of the same, driving vamp-like phrase repeated three times over before the melody finally changes. In one way, George heightened this musical insistence, using the same rhyme for the first three lines of each section

Kitty does a fabulous job clicking with the syncopation and striking the perfect vocal poses on every line. She’s not interested in classic romantic tropes; like Peggy Lee, she wants fever!

I never cared much for moonlit skies
I never wink back at fireflies
But now that the stars are in your eyes
I’m beginning to see the light

I never went in for afterglow
Or candlelight on the mistletoe
But now when you turn the lamp down low
I’m beginning to see the light

Used to ramble through the park
Shadowboxing in the dark
Then you came and caused a spark
That’s a four-alarm fire now

I never made love by lantern-shine
I never saw rainbows in my wine
But now that your lips are burning mine
I’m beginning to see the light

When she sails upward to sing the words “burning mine,” I’m almost certain she was having an orgasm.

The Pied Pipers with Paul Weston and His Orchestra “Dream”: Just to show that Johnny Mercer wasn’t all fun and games, I give you short and sweet.

The Pied Pipers were a popular vocal group during the period, and as hinted at in my brief background notes on Jo Stafford, they had an ever-changing lineup. I know that June Hutton was the lead singer on this song, but trying to determine the names of the other Pipers who performed on this song proved to be an unsurmountable challenge. One thing is for certain—they were a first-rate vocal group featuring perfectly lovely harmonies.

“Dream” is one of those not-really-a-war song pieces in the collection, but the lyrics and mood reflect the longing for better days. The Weston orchestra is well . . . okay . . . but the credit for the song’s success (it made it to #1) belongs to the Pipers and their lovely voices.

Dream
When you’re feelin’ blue
Dream
That’s the thing to do
Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air
You’ll find your share of memories there
So dream
When the day is through
Dream
And they might come true
Things never are as bad as they seem
So dream, dream, dream

I could never figure out how to blow smoke rings and never felt a burning need to do so. Maybe I would have felt differently if I had landed one of those jobs in a “Smoking Required” company.

Les Brown Orchestra Featuring Doris Day, “Sentimental Journey”: I first learned about Doris Day by watching the baseball movie The Winning Team starring Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander. Though the scriptwriters airbrushed the story somewhat, I liked the film and thought Reagan did a great job. As for Doris, I admired her character’s willingness to support Alex through his troubles, but I didn’t find her particularly sexy . . . kinda perky, really.

And then there was that “Que Será” thing . . .

When I learned that her “All-American Girl” pose was a P.R. ruse, I liked her much better. She went through some horrible experiences in her early days—a car crash in her teens that shattered one leg and put the kibosh on her plans to become a dancer; she heard her Catholic father humping his wife’s best friend in the room adjoining hers (a divorce soon followed); and her first husband beat the shit out of her and threatened her with a gun while she was pregnant. She was also one horny lady, having affairs with several movie stars (including Reagan) and black athletes like Elgin Baylor and Maury Wills. For a while she had a three-packs-a-day habit, but despite all her troubles and overindulgences, she lived until the age of 97.

In other words, Doris Day was a fighter . . . and when given a chance to record a decent song, one helluva singer.

Her performance on “Sentimental Journey” is subtle and compelling. The song opens with Les Brown and the Orchestra establishing the melody set to a languid tempo, repeating that pattern before the horn section rises to a peak. Doris mirrors that pattern in her laid-back approach, quietly savoring the chance to reconnect with old friends and early memories. She only reveals her genuine excitement in the melodic leap of the bridge, then makes a smooth transition back to languid as if she doesn’t want to get too excited and set herself up for disappointment.

Gonna take a sentimental journey
Gonna set my heart at ease
Gonna take a sentimental journey
To renew old memories

Got my bag, got my reservation
Spent each dime I could afford
Like a child in wild anticipation<
Long to hear that, “All aboard”<

Seven, that’s the time we leave, at seven
I’ll be waitin’ up for Heaven
Countin’ every mile of railroad track
That takes me back

Never thought my heart could be so yearny
Why did I decide to roam?
Gotta take that sentimental journey
Sentimental journey home

Though the song makes no references to the war, the troops loved this song because the possibility of a sentimental journey home seemed so close at hand.

Harry James & His Orchestra Featuring Kitty Kallen, “It’s Been a Long, Long Time”: The war is over! Now’s the time to snap all those iconic photographs of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen locking lips with their sweeties (or any woman within range):

The pair in the pic had never laid eyes on each other and, no, there was no such thing as sexual harassment in 1945. I dunno . . . given the circumstances, I might have offered the guy a blow job if he could prove he wasn’t carrying a venereal disease. I have empathy, people!

Though the narrative only references kissing, this is Harry James and Kitty Kallen, and there’s always a hint of eroticism when those two combine their talents. In this song, the libido comes through largely in the form of Harry’s searing trumpet solos while Kitty strikes a more demure pose as if she can’t believe the reunion isn’t a dream:

Never thought that you would be
Standing here so close to me
There’s so much I feel that I should say
But words can wait until some other day

Kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long, long time
Haven’t felt like this, my dear
Since I can’t remember when
It’s been a long, long time

You’ll never know how many dreams
I’ve dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you
So kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long, long time

It certainly was.

Epilogue

We know from watching The Best Years of Our Lives that not all homecomings were dreams come true. Hasty marriages frequently ended up in divorce. Military men suffering from PTSD seemed strange to people who remembered the pre-war person and many came home with disabilities that robbed them of their pre-war dreams and were uncertain about their future.

I found it very encouraging that Americans flocked to the movie houses to see The Best Years of Our Lives. The overwhelming response indicated that Americans truly wanted to understand how war can change people and desired to learn how to lend a helping hand. Americans of the Greatest Generation were far more compassionate than the Americans of today . . . though that compassion was rarely extended to returning black veterans, who were sometimes lynched for displaying “uppityness” by continuing to wear the uniform.

I began this review with commentary regarding the likelihood of World War III in the near future and the last two weeks have convinced me that the war is more likely than ever thanks to the aggressive posture adopted by the United States. Trump has already threatened Panama and Greenland (and by extension, the European Union), expressed a desire to make Canada the 51st state . . . and now he wants to turn Gaza into a Trump luxury resort. The Democrats are leaderless and rudderless—and anyone who believes that they can rein in Trump by filing lawsuits is an idiot—Trump is well-versed in all the delaying tactics of the American “justice” system and has a Supreme Court ready to do his bidding. His Secretary of Defense is a trigger-happy lunatic and many government agencies are falling part thanks to DOGE. Trump’s strategy to bully nations to give into his demands by raising tariffs and cutting foreign aid has already raised tensions across the globe and will only get worse.

There was once an America that launched the Marshall Plan, rescuing many Europeans from the scourges of hunger and poverty. There was once an America that built the Peace Corps to help emerging nations in their struggle for survival. And there was once an America where the people pulled together to save the world from evil.

I want that America back . . . but it’s unlikely to happen unless Americans abandon the we’re-right-you’re-wrong orientation and band together to create a positive, practical and inclusive alternative to self-destruction.

I don’t know how that can be achieved, but I do know we are running out of time.

******

It looks like I’ll be pretty busy during the coming weeks so it may be a while before I return, but I certainly hope that . . .

We’ll meet again
Don’t know where, don’t know when
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day