Her~'s
WHY We Have No Hit War Song
tor World War Number Two'
, By Private H. L. Mitchell
E province
of the customer is hardly the
of the music merchant. Al-
though occasionally he may actually mer-
chandise a tune by means of some novel
tieup or attention-getter, for the most part
he is just what his name suggests: a sup-
plier of music for dancing or simply the
listening pleasure of the location's pa-
trons, filling his machines with top and
rising tunes-or, as in these days of record
shortages, whatever discs he can get.
Dedicated primarily to meeting the law
of supply and demand, music is apt to be
pretty much a routine matter to you, the
music man. But even in routine, the sort
of thing that becomes commonplace and
can be carried on more or less mechanic-
ally leaving the mind free for other things,
it is probable that ever so often the thought
springs up to puzzle you as to where we
get some of the tunes that bring in the
nickels. (If you were a Service man, forced
to listen to Put That Pistol Down on every
machine in every PX in camp, and every
tavern in town, and apparently every
whistle stop from here to Harlem, you
would wonder, indeed.) And you may even
wonder why we don't get songs of certain
types. Where, for example, is this war's
good song? Why don't we have one?
On a recent Sunday, PM, New York's
advertisingless newspaper, showed evidence
of having been puzzled by that question,
and it went out into the highways and by-
ways-well, some of them, anyhow-to ask
questions and find out.
The first thing it discovered was that the
question has more answers than you have
locations. The whole thing is a vicious
circle, it seems: Some songwriters, we are
told, blame publishers who avoid even hear-
ing a new number by disguising themselves
as crates of lettuce and going down the
freight elevators. The publishers counter
with a crack that they'd be happy to wel-
come a good war song; unhappily, when
DUCA TION
they're lousy the band leaders won't plug
'em. And the band leaders have their own
troubles, what with the draft, and the jerks
responding to a performance of "This Is
Worth Fighting For" with such nasty re-
marks as "If it is, why ain't you in the
Army?" And so it goes.
One of the stock answers is radio. Radio
prevents the appearanc;e of a good war song
which would sweep and remain in the pub-
lic fancy. Reason? Radio plugs any reas-
onably good tune to death. (By some curi-
ous stroke of fate, it seems that no one
mentioned the phonograph as a similar ex-
ploiter of tunes, also capable, at least when
it comes to the weak sisters among popular
songs, of making them short-lived.)
And then there's the common declaratil'm
that th is is a mechanized, and not a march-
ing war. Troops that don't march don't
need marching songs, certain authorities
assert. Brother, the infantry may ride
(who's kidding who?) but from the ex-
perience of personally sore feet I can say
that a lot of other branches of the service
get where they're going on foo t.
To go on j ust a little farther, there are
those who say that a song isn't really a
war song until it has been kicked around
by the troops. Usually that means jiving
up' the words in unprintable fashion (may.
be some of the boys in the back room have
rendered one or more versions of some of
the current favorites, for you. ) And that
brings up the eternally definitive question
- just what is a war song?
Some of the more thoughtless element in·
sist that a war song is any song that makes
people feel good-so long as it's heard dur-
ing wartime. So when a soldier, getting
married, hears "I Love You Truly" and it
makes him feel good because he's getting
married, and it's wartime, that makes this
little Carrie Jacobs Bond opus a war song
in two ways, no doubt?
And there are the straight· laced individ-
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Phone or write today:
CLARK DISTRIBUTING CO.
In California: Formerly California Simplex Distributing Co.
Exclusive Wurliner Distributors for the West Coast.
SAN FRANCISCO
LOS ANGELES
SEATTLE
Don W . Clark
Aubrey V. Stemle r, Mgr.
E. L. Horiskey, Manage r
415 Brannan Street
SUtter 5342
1561 W . Washington Blvd. 906 Elliott Ave. West
GArfi'eld 0930
REpublic 4155
uals in the clan who are determined that a
war song can't be classed as such un less it
defines all the aims we're supposed to be
fighting for-and presumably the aims of
all our allies, too, since it isn't just our
fight. That usually results in a lot of h igh-
sounding idealism which rhymes as badly
as the never-ending efforts to find some-
thing that goes with orange.
T here can be no denying, though, that
good songs bind people together. Over
The re did it in the last war, and Tip·
perary, and a lot of others. And in th is
war there have been the Chetnik songs
uniting the Yugoslavs, the Chinese Ch'i
Lai, and, more than ever, for Frenchmen
who must shrug off tyranny's yoke once
more, the Marsellaise. There have been
others. We've heard some of the last war's
favorites again, and it mightn't be a bad
idea to go back to the righteous song of the
Civil War, the Battle Hymn of the Re-
public. At least while we're waiting.
Of course Irving Berlin says that the way
it works is this: songs are written, and
some of them turn out to be war songs, and
some of the war songs turn out to be great.
And Richard Rodgers, whose record of hit
tunes is remarkably high, humorously sug·
gests that "We might even win the war
without a war song."
Anyway, if you've been wondering why
you have no real war songs with which to
greet your public, you'll be interested in
knowing that something is being done
about it. Of course song-writers are grind-
ing 'em out, regardless, but there's direc·
tion for their efforts in the offing. The
American Theatre Wing, perhaps most
widely known for its Stage Door Canteen,
has organized a Music War Committee,
which is now conducting quests for the
tunes that will sweep the troops and the
Navy and the Air Force and the Marines-
oh, yes, and the Naval Air Force, too, since
you won't catch those boys singing Army
Air Corps- and all the lady branches of
these outfits.
And amateurs from all over the country
are be ing invited to submit their wares,
with no favori tes given the breaks in the
( See HE R E'S W H Y, Page 32)
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SEPTEMBER
1943