The Songs That Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939-1945 - Hardcover

John Bush Jones

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1584654430 ISBN 13: 9781584654438

Publisher: Brandeis University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Poet Rod McKuen once observed that “1939–1945 was a terrible time for the world, but it was a glorious time for songs and fighter pilots.” Anyone who was alive during World War II remembers with fondness the music of the period. Songs such as “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “It’s Been A Long, Long Time,” and “Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition” became standards that are still around today. But what’s most amazing about the popular songs of the war years is just how many there were. World War II was one of the most fertile periods of American popular songwriting; it was also the heyday of such “big bands” as those of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Harry James, and of vocalists such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Kitty Kallen, and, of course, the Andrews Sisters. This outpouring of music included romantic ballads, rhythm numbers, dance tunes, and novelty songs, and the war itself occasioned the writing, publishing, recording, and performance of thousands of war-inspired songs. Professionals wrote virtually all of the wartime songs we still sing today, but thousands of other numbers were written by inspired (or not-so-inspired) amateurs: men, women, and even children eager to express their patriotism through lyric and melody. Although a central part of home front popular culture during World War II, these war-related and war-inspired songs had never been systematically analyzed or interpreted. In The Songs That Fought The War, John Bush Jones examines hundreds of these tunes in the context of the times. He begins with a look at the contemporary music industry and the astonishing array of songwriters (including amateurs) prior to Pearl Harbor and during the war. Then he turns to songs written and popularized before Pearl Harbor, including tunes that touted isolationism and patriotism in the late 1930s, songs written by Americans about the European allies, and songs from England that became popular in the United States. Post–Pearl Harbor tunes included songs about the draft, enlistment, army life, national pride, and a few about wartime personalities such as FDR and MacArthur. Humorous songs about shortages, rationing, and Victory Gardens and sentimental ballads about boys abroad missing girls back home (and vice versa) expressed home front anxieties and efforts, not least of which was the German hit among both the Allies and the Axis, “Lili Marlene.”

About this title

About the Author:

RABBI DANIEL JUDSON is the associate dean, and a lecturer in Jewish history, at the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. He has written extensively on new trends in contemporary synagogue finances, and his research has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Haaretz, and the New York Jewish Week.

Review:

"Mr. Jones's approach is both thematic and chronological, beginning with music from before America entered the conflict . . . As young as he was, John Bush Jones remembers World War II on the home front. He was 5 at war's end but has vivid memories of meals under rationing, bombers dropping war-bond leaflets over his Chicago suburban neighborhood, and most of all, the music."--Chronicle of Higher Education

" . . . scholars have too often ignored [the pool of popular song, which reveal the moods, the yearnings, the memories of the ordinary people . . . John Bush Jones's book is a valuable and even charming corrective to this scholarly neglect."--Vingtieme Siecle

"The Songs That Fought the War serves as a way to comprehend the immensity and impact of World War II on the American people . . . The result is a comprehensive thematic overview of the mindset of the American people and how writers of popular music tried to document the collective understanding of their generation." --Indiana Magazine of History

About this edition

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1584654430
• ISBN 13: 9781584654438
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 364