This review is about how music helped people get through a very difficult time in human history.
The sixty-four-song collection pictured above contains most of the iconic songs of the 1930s. Big Bands and popular singers take up most of the space, but there are few country-folk-blues tunes, songs from hit movies and a novelty piece or two. I do have a few quibbles with some of their choices, however. While I fully understand that Bing Crosby was the most popular crooner of the era, allotting eight tracks to Der Bingle while restricting Louis Armstrong to one qualifies as criminal neglect. The track listing is USA-centric with only a couple of tunes from the Brits (but none of Noël Coward’s hits) and they completely ignored Django Reinhardt. Benny Goodman certainly earned his four slots but for some reason “Moonglow” failed to make the cut.
Here’s the super-duper good news for my readers: I have no intention of covering all sixty-four tracks. I chose twenty-five songs I felt were most representative of the era, most of which confirm the importance of music in sustaining the souls of those who lived through the Great Depression (I would have included the songs by Robert Johnson, Billie Holiday and the Andrews Sisters but I’ve already covered the songs by those artists). The compilers missed a golden opportunity to establish an aural history of the decade by failing to present the songs in chronological order, so I have compensated for that misstep and organized the songs by year of release; I’ve also added a bit of historical commentary covering key developments at each point in the timeline. Knowing that I do tend to get a bit wordy and figuring that a playlist of twenty-five songs is the equivalent of a double album, I decided to split the review into two parts: 1930-1934 and 1935-1939.
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, I need to clarify terms and point out some of the oddities of the era regarding the pop charts.
In describing this phase in popular music history, people use the terms “Big Band,” “Swing” and “Jazz” interchangeably, leading to understandable confusion. Allow me to sort things out for you:
- Big Bands made their appearance right after WWI, achieving prominence in the early 1920s. Not all Big Bands played “swing” and not all Big Bands played “jazz.” The most popular Big Band of the 20s was led by Paul Whiteman, who was crowned “The King of Jazz” at the time. Some questioned the Whiteman band’s status as a jazz band due to the use of fixed arrangements and the absence of improvisation, but Duke Ellington came to Whiteman’s defense in his memoirs: “Paul Whiteman was known as the King of Jazz, and no one as yet has come near carrying that title with more certainty and dignity.” Nearly all the Big Bands of the 20s and 30s filled their repertoires with plenty of dance music for fox trotters and jitterbugs—hence the phrase “dance bands.”
- Depending on the source, “Swing” became a thing in the late ’20s . . . or after Ellington released “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing)” in 1932 . . . or when Benny Goodman’s band threw the crowd into a frenzy during their gig at L.A.’s Palomar Ballroom in 1935. Quite simply, “Swing” is a form of jazz that emphasizes the offbeat.
- Paul Whiteman wasn’t the only bandleader accused of not being a true jazz musician due to his rejection of improvisation. Glenn Miller was dissed by critics for spending too much time on rehearsals and “letter-perfect playing.” Duke Ellington thought all the hoo-hah was ridiculous: “It’s all music.” Since many “Swing,” “Jazz” and “Big Band” numbers dominated Your Hit Parade in the period from 1935-1940, one could borrow a phrase from Andy Partridge and argue, “This Is Pop!”
Speaking of Your Hit Parade . . .
Magazines featuring weekly pop charts (Billboard, Cashbox, Record World) did not appear on the scene until the 1940s. The most trusted source of information concerning song popularity during the latter half of the 1930s was the radio program Your Hit Parade, sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes. In the book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio,John Dunning explained how the show became a huge hit by appealing to the American passion for competition and the questionable methods employed in determining song popularity:
Your Hit Parade was a key influence in the popular culture of its day, a Saturday night institution for most of its run. “It’s not unusual to see devotees of certain songs become joyous, vindictive, or disappointed,” noted Radio Life in 1943. Bets were often placed on the weekly survey of America’s most popular music, and the dramatic countdown to the Number One Song was climaxed by a trumpet fanfare and a drum-roll. “It’s the one burning question that every American who can carry a tune wants answered—What’s Number One on the Hit Parade?” In those days before disc jockeys, Your Hit Parade was the final word in popular music.
“Once again the voice of the people has spoken,” the announcer said, introducing an early show. “You’ve told us by your purchases of sheet music and records, by your requests to orchestra leaders in the places you’ve danced, by the tunes you listen to on your favorite radio programs.” People who gathered at radios and cheered on the winner winced a week later when their favorite fell from grace. Hardly anyone disputed the tabulation, except, at one point, some disgruntled tunesmiths of Tin Pan Alley. The tabulations were compiled in the offices of the agency representing American Tobacco (originally Lord and Thomas; later, Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne). The agency tried to keep its ways and means secret, releasing only the general statement that a “large staff” checked the statistics, that the system was “infallible,” and that it was based mainly on readings of radio requests, sheet music sales, dance-hall favorites, and jukebox tabulations.
Dunning, John (1998), On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
Huh? Did Lucky Strike employees plant listening devices on bandleaders so they could tabulate your requests? Could they have worked something out with the radio manufacturers to place a bug in your radio to monitor your listening habits? And how did they come up with jukebox tabulations without an internet connection—did they bribe soda jerks to serve as virtual spies?
I am so disappointed in Lucky Strike. I’d always admired their decades-long sponsorships of music programs on radio and TV and applauded their efforts to improve the health and appearance of American women by urging them to “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.” It’s hard to imagine a respected tobacco company engaged in such nefarious behavior.
Oh well, f*ck ’em. I never smoked Luckies anyway.
One final note: While it is true that music fans of the twenties and thirties prioritized danceability, they were also seriously locked into melody. Those who lived during those times truly whistled while they worked or hummed their favorite tunes as they went about their business. While today’s vocal numbers tend to keep the introduction short and not always sweet, many big vocal hits in the 20s and 30s featured extended introductions lasting a minute or longer to showcase the melody. Dancers of the era could recognize a cherished melody in two or three bars and decide whether or not to trip the light fantastic in seconds. Bandleaders of the era recognized the importance of melody to listeners and frequently developed instrumental arrangements of popular songs. Those bandleaders had a plethora of options to explore, as these were the years when songsmiths created a large part of the Great American Songbook. Over half the tunes in Greatest Songs of the 1930s can be found in that canon, a virtual compilation jam-packed with memorable melodies that are still performed to this day.
Okay! Are you ready to rock . . . er . . . swing?
*****
1930
Backstory: The USA enters a recession with an 8.7% unemployment rate and a 6.4% drop in GDP. Evil genius Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising import duties by 50% and effectively exporting the recession to all of Europe. Americans who are not condemned to living in Hoovervilles pass the time by murdering Filipino immigrants in the Watsonville riots, celebrating the births of frozen food and Twinkies, and giving the Democrats control of Congress. The male half of the population flocks to movie houses to get their rocks off to Jean Harlow while women gain a new female role model in the form of Betty Boop. Both sexes flock to speakeasies. Mood: anxious.
Songs:
“Puttin’ on the Ritz,” Harry Richman: Hardly anyone remembers Harry Richman, and most people associate this classic Irving Berlin number with either Fred Astaire, Young Frankenstein or (unfortunately) Taco’s synth-pop disaster that topped the charts in the muck-filled 80s.You might be surprised to learn that Richman and Astaire both released versions of the song at about the same time and Harry’s take was the one that topped the charts.
Once you learn that Harry Richman was also the star of the film Puttin’ on the Ritz, you may leap to the conclusion that Harry won the competition due to the influential power of cinema. Think again. Film critic Leonard Maltin opined, “Famed nightclub entertainer Richman made his film debut in this primitive early talkie about a vaudevillian who can’t handle success and turns to drink. You may do the same after watching Richman’s performance . . . ” I forced myself to watch the film and I can assure you that Mr. Maltin was being quite generous in his commentary.
The movie may be a dud, but Harry’s version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” is a keeper. In contrast to Fred Astaire’s typically elegant rendition, Richman’s take is bold and brassy—not a bad fit for a song set in New York City. He handles Berlin’s syncopated vocal passages with aplomb, a challenging bit of compositional genius described by Alec Wilder as “the most complex and provocative [rhythm] I have ever come upon” in his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators.The Wikipedia article on Harry mentions his “overpowering personality,” and though that feature (and his lack of acting chops) played poorly on celluloid, it serves him well in this brass-dominated version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
The song is not without controversy, however. The original lyrics are set in Harlem; Berlin agreed to change the locale to Park Avenue for the 1946 Astaire film Blue Skies. The revised lyrics celebrate the moneyed crowd (“Come let’s mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or um-ber-ellas/In their mitts/Puttin’ on the Ritz”) while the Harlem version . . . well . . .
Have you seen the well to do
Up on Lenox Avenue
On that famous thoroughfare
With their noses in the air?High hats and Arrow collars
White spats and fifteen dollars
Spending every dime
For a wonderful timeIf you’re blue, and you don’t know where to go to
Why don’t you go where Harlem flits?
Puttin’ on the RitzSpangled gowns upon the bevy of high browns
From down the levee, all misfits
Putting’ on the RitzThat’s where each and every lulu-belle goes
Every Thursday evening with her swell beaus
Rubbin’ elbowsSee AlsoThe Tampa Tribune from Tampa, FloridaJennifer Strachan on LinkedIn: KUOW-President-GM-Position-Guide-2024.pdfTable of contents for May 2024 in MOJODavid A. Ross, MBA on LinkedIn: #hiringCome with me and we’ll attend their jubilee
And see them spend their last two bits
Puttin’ on the Ritz
It’s hard to tell from the lyrics whether Irving Berlin was celebrating people who insisted on having a good time despite the collapsing economy or engaging in ridicule. In his defense, he was quite proud of the fact that the movie version was the first song to be performed by an interracial ensemble in film history. In his later years, he was a staunch supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, a stance that earned him disfavor with J. Edgar Hoover, who investigated his activities for several years. While I think the lyrical content may land poorly with some (and rightly so), I think Berlin was attempting to express a certain admiration for people who refused to let tough times get in the way of enjoying life.
“Ten Cents a Dance,” Ruth Etting: They called them “taxi dancers” because the pay scheme mirrored taxi fares—the longer the ride (the time spent with the customer), the more money you made. A ten-cent dance ticket would have earned a girl a nickel; the rest helped pay for the orchestra and operating expenses. Taxi dancing began way back in the days of the California Gold Rush in the Barbary Coast district in San Francisco, where the girls were paid a commission on the amount of booze they encouraged the miners and sailors to guzzle. Taxi dancing hit the big time in large U.S. cities during the 20s and 30s, mixing high-class joints with seedier establishments where sometimes girls would snatch a partner’s bulging boner and grind away until the guy shot his wad.
This Rodgers & Hart number first appeared in the Broadway musical Simple Simon,produced by Ziegfield himself. When the woman who was supposed to sing “Ten Cents a Dance” showed up at the theatre reeking of bootleg liquor, Ziegfield had to scramble for a replacement. Ruth Etting had made her Broadway debut in the Ziegfield Follies of 1927 on the recommendation of Irving Berlin, and though she wasn’t much of a dancer, she “knew how to sell a song.” Ruth stepped into the role and though the musical only ran for four months, she recorded a song that would live forever.
Though Ruth was not particularly skilled in the footwork department and never spent a day working as a taxi dancer, her unusual life experience (as this mini-bio demonstrates) made her uniquely qualified to capture the combination of grit and forlornness in the song’s lyrics. Born in a town in Nebraska, her mother died when Ruth was only five; her father pawned her off to his parents and moved elsewhere. She developed a talent for clothing design and left Nebraska to attend the Chicago Academy for Fine Arts, landing a job as a chorus girl in a swanky nightclub to help with expenses. Looking back at those years, she said “I was just a farm girl. So green the cows could eat me.” Through her nightclub work she met a gangster named Martin Snyder (aka “Moe the Gimp” because of a damaged left leg), whose resume included a stint as Al Capone’s bodyguard. Moe used his connections (and muscle) to advance Ruth’s career, and she eventually married him, “nine-tenths out of fear and one-tenth out of pity.” Moe never went to bed without his gun and Ruth had plenty of reason to believe that if she tried to leave him, he would kill her. After she divorced him in late 1937, he came close to confirming her belief when he held Ruth, his daughter from a previous marriage and Ruth’s new beau at gunpoint (he shot the beau instead).
Ruth Etting had no problem filling the role of the narrator in “Ten Cents a Dance” because both Ruth and the taxi dancer were virtual captives—Ruth was captive to the whims of a gangster, the taxi dancer a captive to a sh*tty job. Ruth delivers the opening verses and chorus with a perfect tonal balance somewhere between weariness and complaint, expressing the imbalance between presentation (“A beautiful hostess, you know”) with what she knows is a degrading experience (“At only a dime a throw”) in a voice full of scarcely suppressed sarcasm and utter hopelessness.
I work at the Palace Ballroom
But, gee, that Palace is cheap
When I get back to my chilly hall room
I’m much too tired to sleepI’m one of those lady teachers
A beautiful hostess, you know
The kind the Palace features
At exactly a dime a throwTen cents a dance
That’s what they pay me
Gosh, how they weigh me down
Ten cents a dance
Pansies and rough guys
Tough guys who tear my gown
The slow dance tempo that dominates the song gives way to double time, where the dancer expresses a greater sense of disgust with it all. In the last two lines, the dancer seems to be on the edge of tears as she repeats her sales pitch while failing to muster up much enthusiasm.
Fighters and sailors and bowlegged tailors
Can pay for their ticket and rent me
Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors
Are sweethearts my good luck has sent me
Though I’ve a chorus of elderly beaux
Stockings are porous with holes at the toes
I’m here till closing time
Dance and be merry, it’s only a dime
Despite her virtual captivity, Ruth Etting produced a string of hit singles, was a frequent and welcome guest on many radio programs and made a few brief appearances in Hollywood films. Mr. Ziegfield paid her the highest compliment possible when he “rated her as ‘the greatest singer of songs’ that he had managed in a forty-year career.” (ibid) You have to have a serious lack of emotional intelligence if you can’t empathize with the dancer’s plight in “Ten Cents a Dance,” an exceptionally well-written song performed by a woman who comes across as authentic and so genuinely vulnerable. Sadly, the number of people who would find themselves in the same predicament as the dancer—or even worse circ*mstances—would balloon in the following years.
1931
Backstory: Hoover falls just short of doubling the unemployment rate, which rises to 15.9%. Congress approves the establishment of a new national anthem, much to the chagrin of vocalists everywhere. There is good news on the crime front, as citizens delight in the conviction of Al Capone and the advent of Dick Tracy. Jane Addams wins the Nobel Peace Prize, donating her share of the prize money to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Good luck with that, Jane. Bread lines and apple vendors become common sights in cities large and small. Notable births include Willie Mays, Ernie Banks and Sam Cooke. Meanwhile, in far-off Europe, Credit-Anstalt collapses, Germany defaults on reparations payments, the Europeans go off the gold standard and the global economy goes to hell and a handbasket. Mood: We are so f*cked.
Songs:
“Minnie the Moocher,” The Cab Calloway Orchestra: This slow minor blues swing number became the first single by an African-American to top the charts despite jive lyrics that were largely unintelligible to white audiences. From Songfacts:
The song tells the sad story of a “red hot hoochie coocher” girl called Minnie. The hoochie-coochie was a style of belly dancing with non-respectable gypsy origins, and was considered lecherous at the time. The licentious Minnie gets involved with a “kokie” conveniently called Smokey, a “kokie” being someone who takes cocaine. Smokey takes her down to Chinatown where he introduces her to opium, which is what Calloway meant when using the jive expression “to kick the gong around” in the lyrics. The rest of the song describes her opium-induced wish-fulfillment fantasy in which the king of Sweden gives her many gifts, including “a diamond car, with the puh-latinum wheels.” Calloway doesn’t tell us how this story ends, but he does wail “Poor Min! Poor Min” Poo-oor Min” at the end, which may be an indication that Minnie’s a goner.
I have no objections to the drug references, but the use of the word “frail” in the third line in the opening verse as a noun meaning “woman” makes me want to put up my dukes and give the bastard who came up with that offensive bit of 30s slang a sock in the jaw.
While the slow blues foundation likely reflected the downcast mood of the populace and the pairing of growling trumpets with the reference to hoochie-coochie may have tickled libidos, what really excited the listening public was the call-and-response scat singing that earned Cab Calloway the moniker “The Hi De Ho Man.” Though the band covered the response side on the recording, Cab encouraged the audience to take on the role during live performances—and he loved to throw them more than a few curveballs after they’d warmed up, like Skeedle-a-booka-diki biki skeedly beeka gookity woop!, “leaving most people far behind in fits of laughter.” (ibid) In essence, Cab’s scatting transformed the sad story into a black comedy.
It should be noted that the writing team of Calloway, Irving Mills and Clarence Gaskill borrowed many of the lyrics from an earlier song called “Willie the Weeper,” which borrowed lyrics from an old Vaudeville song of the early 1900s. The last verse is almost a word-for-word repetition of the same verse of “Willie the Weeper.” In this case, I think the thievery is justified because the verse deals with the part of Minnie’s dream that likely mirrored the dreams of people who were struggling to make a living:
Now he gave her his townhouse and his racing horses
Each meal she ate was a dozen courses
She had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes
And she sat around and counted them all a million times
The influence of Louis Armstrong on the music and arrangement is undeniable, with definite echoes of Satchmo’s version of “St. James Infirmary.” The influence doesn’t stop there, as Armstrong was the guy who taught a young Cab Calloway how to sing scat. Like his mentor, Cab would enjoy a long career in the limelight, returning to public consciousness in 1980 with his performance of “Minnie the Moocher” in the film Blues Brothers.
“Stardust,” Isham Jones and His Orchestra: Though most swing bands chose not to have a string section, Big Bands with strings remained popular throughout the decade and beyond. Bands led by Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Harry James had string sections and you can’t accuse those guys of not knowing how to swing.
Isham Jones (pronounced eye-sham) first came to fame with his composition “We’re In the Army Now” in 1917. In the 20s he led a band that produced eight top-charting hits, then took a break near the end of the decade to refresh and regroup. Shortly after returning to active duty, he came across Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” which had been making the rounds in the New York jazz scene but had yet to capture the attention of the listening public. Jones loved the unique melody and asked violinist Victor Young to come up with a ballad instrumental for the band. Victor came up with a beauty of an arrangement, the band recorded the song (with Young providing the violin solos) and “Stardust” became a huge hit, opening the floodgates to more than 1,500 renditions in the years to come (both instrumental and vocal).
Following a brief introduction where the violin hovers beautifully over the orchestra, a trumpet steps to the fore to establish the 32-bar melody over a light background of piano, reeds and string bass. The subsequent middle section defies expectations by lowering the volume and reducing the background support to string bass and piano, leaving plenty of room for Victor Young’s gorgeous interpretation of the melody, where he demonstrates his mastery of the violin while exploring the melodic lines in multiple octaves. The finale offers a bit of surprise in a switch to a more jazzy sound with the brass section in the dominant position; the song ends with the band and violin wrapping things up with a declining figure that reflects the essential melancholy of the song. While audiophiles might bemoan the use of primitive recording equipment, the sheer strength of the musicianship and that marvelous arrangement win the day.
Legend has it that the song came about when Hoagy Carmichael started whistling the melody while taking a walk on a college campus. I am on record as a staunch supporter of whistling, an art that has largely vanished in this anti-melodic era of ours. If whistling can produce a song as beautiful as “Stardust,” I would say it’s time for everyone to start whistling again.
1932
Backstory: Americans forget their troubles for a moment on New Year’s Day to celebrate the issue of twelve stamps commemorating George Washington’s 200th Birthday. Despite assurances from Herbert the Not-So-Great that the economy is fundamentally sound, the unemployment rate soars to 23.6%, the Dow hits an all-time low and the GDP drops another 12.9%. Nearly half the banks in the country are DOA. WWI Veterans form the Bonus Army and camp out on federal property in D.C. to demand immediate payment of their service bonuses; Hoover responds by ordering Douglas MacArthur to throw the bums out. News that a new opera house was opening in San Francisco and shoppers now had access to coffee that was good to the last drop fails to raise spirits. Babe Ruth calls his shot, assuring a happy future for the idiot who just paid $35M for a sweat-soaked jersey of questionable authenticity. Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected president in a landslide but the truth is the Democrats could have nominated the recently deceased John Philip Sousa for the job and Sousa would have put up comparable numbers. Mood: Desperate.
Songs:
“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), The Duke Ellington Band featuring Ivie Anderson: In his book The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz (a very thorough study but a bit challenging for non-music readers), Gunther Schuller weighed in on the importance of this song:
Things began auspiciously early in 1932 with a hit record: the now legendary “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” a prophetic piece and a prophetic title. The word “swing,” later to be associated in the minds of millions of people with Benny Goodman, had been used by jazz musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and Miley for many years to describe a particular rhythmic momentum and feeling. But apart from Morton’s Georgia Swing, Ellington was the first to use it in a song title, some years before swing became a household word and ultimately the designation for a whole era in American popular music.
Schuller, Gunther (1991). The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 (The History of Jazz Book 2). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
As usual, Ellington was ahead of his time.
Though technically the piece is “swing” only in name, it certainly captures the high heat of the best swing of the era. Stunningly, this was Ivie Anderson’s debut song, and baby, does she own this sucker or what? In full disagreement with Schuller, I love the intro where Ivie scats in a warm voice set to the lower part of her range accompanied by bassman Wellman Braud. The song proper heats up pretty quickly with Joe Nanton’s “talking plunger” trombone taking the lead and establishing the melody. Ivie re-enters the fray with her voice tuned an octave higher, radiating joy and more than a little sexuality. Schuller’s analysis of the song is typically precise and loaded with technical musical terms that seem out of sync with a song this hot. His most valuable contribution was his insistence that the brasses’ “response” to Ivie’s “call” in that first verse form part of the lyrical structure:
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing
Doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah
It don’t mean a thing, all you got to do is sing
Doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah
It makes no difference if it’s sweet or hot
Just keep that rhythm, give it everything you got
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing
Doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah, doo-wah doo-wah.
An extended instrumental passage follows with Johnny Hodges playing nimble and cool arpeggios with the brass responding with plenty of plunge and off-note humor. After a few bars of melody reinforcement, Ivie returns to deliver a searing scat encore that ends with a downward glide that halts the music for a split second. The band ends with a proper outro followed by a little tinkle from Ellington on the celeste. All I can say in conclusion is that Ivie is one sweet canary, the band is aces, and if this song doesn’t blow your lid you’re probably ready to settle in for a long nap in a Chicago overcoat.
I love 30s slang!
“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” Bing Crosby: With the country teetering on the edge of collapse, finally . . . FINALLY . . . two songwriters decided to write a song that reflected reality and a rising star had the guts to record it.
The song first appeared in the third revival of the musical Americana in the fall of 1932. Jay Gorney wrote the music, basing the composition on a Russian-Jewish lullaby he heard as a kid. Lyricist Yip Harburg was only getting started in the music business, having chosen that direction after losing his electric appliance business at the start of the Great Depression. Though Harburg would go on to write the lyrics to many popular songs in the years ahead (“Over the Rainbow,” “April in Paris” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” to name a few), he would never write another song that “expressed the spirit of these times with more heart-breaking anguish than any of the prose bards of the day,” according to critic Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times.
In the American History section of the Kennedy Center website, I found a succinct summary of how the song was completed and its impact on the populace:
In 1932, songwriters E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Jay Gorney were working together on a number for a Broadway show called New Americana. Popular songs of the day were urging Americans to remain cheerful through the hard times by walking “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” pretending “Life is a Bowl of Cherries,” and believing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Harburg and Gorney’s song was taking a different direction, though. Gorney was basing the music on a lullaby he remembered from his childhood in Russia. He set the tune mostly in a minor key, one that suggests a sense of sadness and loss.
Harburg had some lyrics in mind, but the team couldn’t think up a title. They decided to take a break and take a walk in New York’s Central Park. A young man approached Gorney, his collar turned up and his hat pulled low. “Buddy, can you spare a dime?” he asked. The two songwriters glanced at each other and knew they’d found the words they’d been searching for.
“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” immediately hit a nerve in Americans’ hearts and minds. Popular crooners Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee both recorded versions of it and the song blew the top off the music charts. For the first time since the Great Depression began, it seemed, someone had put words and music to what many Americans were feeling—fear, grief, even anger.
The song itself, though, angered some rich and powerful Americans. Pro-business leaders believed the tune was a dangerous attack on the American economic system. They tried to ban it from Broadway and block it from being played on the radio. But it was too late: The song’s popularity drowned out all grumbling.
Music, movies, family, and government aid helped people get through this dark period. The Great Depression, though, dragged on for more than ten years. For many Americans, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” became an anthem for that decade of hardship.
The songwriting team was very fortunate that Bing Crosby chose to record the song. In addition to his crystal clear articulation, Crosby had the habit of zeroing in on the phrasing of the lyrics and the mood expressed by the melody to determine his approach to a given song. In Will Friedwald’s A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, he quotes Tommy Dorsey’s advice to a young crooner: “I used to tell Sinatra over and over, there’s only one singer you ought to listen to and his name is Crosby. All that matters to him is the words, and that’s the only thing that ought to for you, too.” Crosby nailed the vocal to “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” expressing both empathy for the man down on his luck (Al) and a sense of outrage that a man who believed in the American Dream and proudly served his country in wartime had to beg for coins to buy a meager meal and a thin cup of coffee. Harburg wisely turned Al into a version of Everyman, reminding listeners of the tangible contributions made by workingmen to build the American Dream and the reality that any of us can catch a bad break and might need a little help to get back on our feet.
They used to tell me I was building a dream,
And so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear,
I was always there right on the jobThey used to tell me I was building a dream,
With peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line,
Just waiting for bread?Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
Brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower; now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee-Doodly-dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al;
It was Al all the time.
Why don’t you remember, I’m your pal?
Say buddy, can you spare a dime?
The song came out a few months before Roosevelt’s inauguration, and it’s not far-fetched to claim that “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” helped make his effort to provide relief to the average Joe and Jane a little easier by sparking empathy among listeners and a “we’re all in this together” ethic.
“All of Me,” Louis Armstrong: When it comes to spreading joy, Kamala Harris could learn a lot by listening to Louis Armstrong.
Satchmo was a little late to the game with this song, releasing it after the Paul Whiteman-Mildred Bailey version hit the top of the charts. The delay didn’t matter—Armstrong’s version made it to #1 as well. As soon as I hear the cornet in the opening passage I start to smile, and when he launches into his vocal filled with offbeat phrasing, complementary detours from the melody and scat fills I wind up positively radiating with joy. When he switches to the trumpet in the closing passage I am the happiest camper on the planet—and that’s from a girl who hates camping!
I’ll shut up now and allow you to experience what joy truly sounds like.
1933
Backstory: FDR kicks off his first term by telling the American people to stop freaking out even though they had plenty to freak out about. The unemployment rate rises a tick during his first year in office to 24.9 percent but the GDP only shrinks by a point and a half. The national figures fail to capture the distress in locales like Toledo, Ohio, where the unemployment rate hits a whopping 80%. With a massive congressional majority in their pockets, FDR and his Brain Trust launch several initiatives to ease the pain of the plain folk while demonizing the financial wizards who brought on the crisis, turning them into sworn enemies. The boss man thrills the masses by initiating the end of prohibition so everyone can get drunk and pack their troubles away. Gangsters like Pretty Boy Floyd and Machine Gun Kelly make full use of their Second Amendment rights, ensuring that Edward G. Robinson, George Raft and Jimmy Cagney would not have to stand in the bread lines. Late in November, a huge dust storm kicks up in South Dakota, an ominous portent of things to come. Oh yeah—some weird-looking guy named Hitler becomes the German chancellor, putting another nail in the coffin of Charlie Chaplin’s movie career. Mood: Exhausted but a teeny bit hopeful.
Songs: An unfortunate shutout. The collection tilts in favor of Swing Era songs from the latter years of the decade and the only 1933 track I haven’t covered is Crosby’s “Shadow Waltz,” which became a huge hit for reasons that escape me. The two most significant chart-toppers in 1933 are Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” (covered) and Ethel Waters’ version of “Stormy Weather” (missing from the compilation). The compilers wisely avoided Mae West’s “I Like a Guy What Takes His Time,” for though Mae possessed a great rack, she couldn’t sing worth sh*t.
We’ll just have to agree that the song of the year was “Happy Days Are Here Again” and move on.
1934
Backstory: FDR’s alphabet soup programs ease the pain a bit, with the unemployment rate falling to 21.7% and the GDP growing 10.8% over 1933. While the president continues to chat amiably with the populace over the airwaves, J. Edgar steals most of the headlines when his boys wipe out most of the big-name gangsters. The Dust Bowl comes up with its worst storm to date, sending thousands of Okies to California and guaranteeing John Steinbeck a future in literature. The soon-to-be-legendary Apollo Theatre opens in Harlem, while in Hollywood, Shirley Temple and Three Stooges make their cinematic debuts. Hitler is now Fürher, Stalin purges everyone who hates his mustache and Fenway Park goes up in flames. Significant births include Rue McLanahan, Hank Aaron and Johnny Burnette. Mood: Are we there yet?
Songs:
“The Very Thought of You,” Al Bowwly with the Ray Noble Orchestra: Most Americans living today have never heard or heard of Al Bowwly, which tells me that most Americans do not consider themselves Richard Thompson fans.
That is one sad state of affairs.
“Al Bowwly’s in Heaven” appeared on RT’s album Daring Adventures and became a fan favorite and concert staple. I will now cede the floor to Mr. Thompson for a brief introduction to Mr. Bowwly:
Well, we were heroes then,
And the girls were all pretty
And a uniform was a lucky charm,
Bought you the key to the city
We used to dance the whole night through
While Al Bowlly sang “The Very Thought Of You”
Now Bowlly’s in heaven and I’m in limbo now
I hope you were able to deduce that Al Bowwly was a popular Big Band singer whose signature song was “The Very Thought of You” (it was Ray Noble’s signature song as well). He was THE most popular crooner in the U.K. in the mid-1930s. He temporarily lost his British fan base when he and bandleader Ray Noble hoofed it to the United States but managed to win back British hearts around the time when war broke out. One might say that Bowwly received a warm welcome in the USA, but that would be an understatement. Thanks to a wise decision on the part of RCA Victor, Americans had heard some of his records (including “The Very Thought of You”) before he arrived and music fans embraced him as if he were one of their own. NBC gave him his own radio series and a magazine devoted to Al Bowwly appeared shortly thereafter. In 1936, he beat none other than Bing Crosby in a nationwide popularity poll.
Not bad for a guy who entered the world with no connections. Born in the then-Portuguese colony of Mozambique to a Greek father and a Lebanese mother in the year 1899, he grew up in Johannesburg, became a singer-guitarist who played with several bands all over the Southern Hemisphere, then wound up in Berlin, where he made his first recordings in 1927. From there he made his way to Jolly Old England, where he bounced between two bands for a while (Lew Stone’s band for touring, Ray Noble’s for recording) and recorded over 500 songs in four years.
Bowwly’s voice is classified as a lyric baritone, “a sweeter, milder sounding baritone voice, lacking in harshness.” Those qualities are on full display in “The Very Thought of You,” where he melts hearts with his gentle crooning and accomplished steadiness as he moves to the peak of his range (he also gives himself away as a British singer when he pronounces “idea” as “idear”). The only beef I have with the recording is that the intro and outro take up more space than that allotted to the singer. Yeah, yeah, I know that was a thing in the 30s but I really wanted to hear more Bowwly than Noble.
When Al returned to the U.K. he ran into problems with his voice due to a wart in his throat and underwent surgery to correct the problem. His comeback was going as well as could be expected during the Blitz until . . .
“After the show . . . he returned to his flat in Dukes Court, Piccadilly as London was suffering one of its heaviest air raids. Instead of taking cover in the air raid shelter, Al was sitting up in bed reading a cowboy book. Outside, a German bomb came silently down and exploded in the street outside Al’s window. After the ‘all-clear’ had been sounded, the caretaker made his rounds to see that everyone was all right. When he entered Al’s apartment, he found him dead in bed, killed outright by the blast from the bomb.” (source: Al Bowwly fan website)
As the man left behind so many cherished memories for people who lived during that time, I think it’s appropriate to end this segment with the closing verse of “Al Bowwly’s in Heaven”:
Well I can see me now,
I’m back there on the dance floor
Oh with a blonde on me arm, redhead to spare
Spit on my shoes and shine in me hair
And there’s Al Bowlly, he’s up on a stand
Oh that was a voice and that was a band
Al Bowlly’s in heaven and I’m in limbo now
“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” Paul Whiteman Orchestra featuring Bob Lawrence: Whiteman was the Energizer Bunny of the Big Band Era . . . or maybe the Timex watch. He took a lickin’ from jazz purists but kept on tickin’. His version of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was the first out of the gate and the fourth best-selling song of 1934.
Whiteman’s arrangement of this Jerome Kern classic is melodically delightful and bathed in elegance, calling up pictures of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing to the song in the film version of Roberta. Whiteman divides the renditions of the melodic lines between the horn section, the violin and the clarinet, beautifully showcasing the strength of the melody. Alas, I wish Whiteman had employed Astaire to provide the vocals, as Bob Lawrence’s performance is hammy and excessively emotive.
Before I close this segment I want to thank YouTuber “The78Prof” for making an impressive collection of 78 rpm recordings available to the masses.
Okay—Abyssinia next week!
If the previous sentence baffles you, repeat the word “Abysinnia” very slowly and you’ll get it.
