Customer Reviews

God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War

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One of the best general discussions about popular music during World War II currently available. Her presentation of the tensions between those who wanted a "war song" and those who supported a more evenhanded approach to records and sheet music is thought-provoking and unusual. Highly recommended.

Despite the efforts of several government agencies, and the willingness of many topflight songwriters, including Frank Loesser and Irving Berlin, no single song emerged from Tin Pan Alley during World War II that took the war as its subject directly. Berling's own "God Bless America," which became one of the great hits of the wartime era, was actually written at a time slightly preceding the entrance of the US into World War II. Kathleen Smith, the author of this study, whose name oddly enough suggests that of Kate Smith, the moon-faced and wildly popular radio star who made "God Bless America" a monster sensation, suggests that the reason for this is that, enraptured by swing music, the teenagers who controlled the chart did not want to buy martial tunes. They wanted love songs and they wanted music they could dance to. In this way the era seems oddly close to our own. The book's accompanying promotion materials suggest that a similar situation has transpired today, after 9/11 American musicians wanted to create a hit that would show the Al-Qaeda that we were unbowed, but despite the best efforts of everyone from Paul McCartney to Bruce Springsteen and back around again, from all shadings of the right and left, the song that is most mentioned as a result of the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center was that country number by Toby Keith about the red, white and blue, with the pugnacious lyric, "You'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A./ 'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/ It's the American way." Some of the WWII would be hit songs expressed similar sentiments against the "Nips" and "Krauts" of Axis fame.

Smith is an okay writer but her book is somewhat padded, and Kentucky should hire a proofreader, it is trying indeed that Melvyn Douglas and Ralph Bunche both have their names misspelled.