Music hath charms to soothe a savage beast

By Tim Henney
Reader Contributor

The last era in which our beloved 250-year-old democracy was faced with extinction, as it is today, was the early 1940s, when we of the free world (Allies) defended ourselves against fascist Germany and Italy and the Empire of Japan (Axis). 

Some 50 million people perished in World War II. Popular songs like “Remember Pearl Harbor,” “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,” “When the Lights Go on Again,” “Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” were culturally critical in soothing the savage Axis beast into submission by contributing emotionally to the hopes of those at home — including this writer. 

We didn’t just grow victory gardens and ration food, tires, gasoline and countless other necessities — we listened on the radio and sang along to “Always,” “This is the Army Mr. Jones,” “I’m Making Believe,” “I’ll Walk Alone” and, especially poignant to American POWs in Nazi prison camps during the winter, “White Christmas.”

The threat today — while led by internal anti-American foes, rather than foreign ones — is as dark and dangerous as early WWII, when the Allies were being whipsawed on land and at sea. 

Few readers of this newspaper are old enough to remember the deep emotions stirred by popular songs of the war years via radio and 78-rpm records. Some hardy fellow elders might recall the intensity of patriotism, cultural pride, neighborliness, and faith in our civilian and military leadership during the early 1940s. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt first led America out of the Great Depression with the New Deal and then, with free-world friends who in those more trusting times looked to the U.S. not with loathing but for leadership, on to victory and peace.

So what might we citizens do today to quell our anxieties? Well, we haven’t been asked to substitute margarine for butter or to stop using sugar, as we were in the early ’40s. And burly masked ICE agents (a scary reminder, many suggest, of Hitler’s dreaded Gestapo) have not been ordered to deport voters for humming along to the great songs that define this monumental democracy — musical odes to America like Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” and Linda Ronstadt’s “Back in the U.S.A.”

The late Romain Rolland, a celebrated  French novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote, “The thought of the eternal efflorescence of music is a comforting one, and comes like a messenger of peace in the midst of universal disturbance.” 

This writer agrees. 

So, fellow readers, give TV a rest and ask Alexa, Pandora or other musically savvy devices to be “a messenger of peace in the midst of universal disturbance,” because that’s what we’ve got. 

Construct a personal Alexa playlist or ask individually for the following; and, as you listen, reminisce about just how special America is and why it’s worth defending as defined in the United States Constitution — and not by someone some citizens contend is an egocentric thug and world-class con artist. 

Oh my, really?

So let’s get aboard: “The Wabash Cannonball” by Roy Acuff or The Carter Family. “The City of New Orleans,” a train tune by Sammi Smith or Willie Nelson. That musically fabled urban railway, “Take the ‘A’ Train” by Sarah Vaughn. And “Chattanooga Choo Choo” by Glenn Miller.

Now out to Hawaii for “Sweet Leilani” by Bing Crosby or “Blue Hawaii” by Elvis Presley. And back to the continental U.S. to pay homage to some beautiful states: “Georgia On My Mind” by Ray Charles. “On The Sidewalks of New York” by Nat King Cole. “California, Here I Come” by Al Jolson. “Stars Fell on Alabama” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (West Virginia) by John Denver. 

“Oklahoma!” by the cast of the musical, Oklahoma! By Oscar Hammerstein II and “Land of Enchantment” (New Mexico) by Michael Martin Murphey. “The Tennessee Waltz” by Patti Page. “Rocky Mountain High” (Colorado) by John Denver. “Iowa Stubborn” by the cast of The Music Man. “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” (Arizona) by Jo Stafford. “Deep in the Heart of Texas” by Gene Autry. “Indiana (Back Home Again In…)” by Kay Starr or Nat King Cole. “My Old Kentucky Home” by the Osborne Brothers or Johnny Cash. “Carolina in my Mind” by James Taylor and “Goodbye Old Paint” (Montana) by Charley Willis.

Let’s zip up the Old Post Road (circa 1673) to ancient New England: “Massachusetts” by The Bee Gees. “Moonlight in Vermont” by Ella Fitzgerald or Margaret Whiting. “The Maine Stein Song” by Rudy Vallee. “Poor Little Rhode Island” by Guy Lombardo. And, although it’s not a state, this writer’s former favorite family summer playground, “Old Cape Cod” by Patti Page.

Next, musical tributes to cities, towns and memorable places: “Back in your Own Backyard” by Madeleine Peyroux. “San Antonio Rose” by Patsy Cline. “On the Banks of the Wabash” by The Mills Brothers. “26 Miles (Santa Catalina)” by The Four Preps. “California/Avalon (Medley)” by Mitch Miller & The Gang. “Tallahassee” by Bing and the Andrews Sisters. 

“I Left my Heart in San Francisco” by Tony Bennett or Sarah Vaughan. “Apalachicola, Fla.” by Bing and the Andrews Sisters. “Basin Street” by Louis Armstrong. “Easter Parade” by Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. “Don’t Fence Me In” by Ella Fitzgerald. “Surfin’ U.S.A.” by The Beach Boys. “Route 66” by The King Cole Trio. “Blue Bayou” by Linda Ronstadt. “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo” by Glenn Miller. “Chicago (That Toddlin’ Town)” by Judy Garland. “San Fernando Valley” by Bing. “A Little Girl from Little Rock” by Carol Channing. 

“Red River Valley” by Patsy Cline or George Strait. “Is It True What They Say About Dixie?” by Al Jolson. “Amarillo By Morning” by George Strait. “Lazy River” by The Mills Brothers. “Take Me Back to Tulsa” by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. “St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith or Cab Calloway. “Along the Navajo Trail” by Sons of the Pioneers or Dinah Shore. “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)” by Willie and Waylon Jennings. “Sioux City Sue” by Willie and Leon Russell. “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding. “Oklahoma Hills” by Jack Guthrie. 

And a pair by the incomparable Billie Holiday: “Autumn in New York” and (as previously mentioned) “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

If the above has stirred a yearning for a nifty ’50s-type sing-along, ask Alexa for tunes by Mitch Miller & the Gang and/or the late British crooner Max Bygraves. You’ll get uninterrupted songs from “Oh My Darling Clementine” to “Bye Bye Blackbird” to “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.”

At the end of WWII, Johnny Long and his orchestra recorded a pumped up 78-rpm version of “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town” and its B-side, “Blue Skies.” The latter, in retrospect, seemed a fitting musical closure to the war’s horrors. 

As more Americans have concerns about the frightening downward spiral of our 250-year-old democracy into a fascist dictatorship, maybe we should end this merry musical compendium by humming along to the epic recording of “America The Beautiful” by the inimitable Ray Charles. Ah, finally, the end!

No! Wait! Early in this opus we cited songs about states. And like a scrumptious dessert, we saved the best for last: “Here We Have Idaho” by Rick Pickren. Bon appetit!

Tim Henney is a nonagenarian who, starting in 1951, edited an Air Force base newspaper in Georgia, a college newspaper in California and corporate publications in New York before retiring in 1986 as director of public relations of the original AT&T, parent company of the former Bell Telephone System, the world’s largest corporation at the time.