It's funny how things work to create ideas for posting. I've been thinking about Stacey's moving post about her father on the anniversary of D-Day, and also about DL's upcoming book on American popular music. How closely are images of WWII linked to the soundtrack of the popular music of the day!
My parents would have been married for 66 years this month, so they've been on my mind a lot. My father, as I've written about here before, served in the Navy during WWII; my mother, like many women famously did, went to work in a defense plant, punching out control panels for bombers on a huge machine press. We speak of this generation as "the greatest generation." This would have embarrassed my father and made my mother laugh. But I think that's just the point: their greatness is connected to their ordinariness, the fact that they were not all born under some miraculous heroic star, but were just trying to make lives for themselves, like their grandparents before them and their grandchildren after them. Remember too that these were young folks, not our fathers and mothers yet, but kids in their twenties. And yet, they exhibited the kind of bravery and selflessness, and made the kind of sacrifices, that we still marvel at and measure ourselves against, almost 70 years later.
Mom and Dad, circa 1943
Maybe that's why the music of the era has such special resonance for us today. Some of it is silly ("Drinking Rum and Coca-Cola"; "Mairzy Doats"; and so on), but much of it still has the power to move us, and a lot of it is arguably some of the best popular music ever written. It's nearly impossible, though, to untether it from its circumstances – the almost unbearable poignancy of young men listening to it far from home, afraid, lonely; their wives and sweethearts listening to it back home, waiting for them and praying they'll come back safe. Corny, sentimental, it's true; but the sentimentality is based on real suffering. My folks didn't see each other for almost two years after they were married, except for one brief furlough when my father was able to get back to New York for a day or two. And the threat of death was always there: my mother used to tell me how two of her friends, one who was married the week before she was, one the week after, had shared a bridal veil, and both lost their husbands within the same month. The friend whose veil it was had offered it to my mother, and she declined because she had already bought hers. My mother was not a superstitious woman, but the relief she felt when she told this story was obvious.
Music had special importance, because, other than by letters that might take months to reach their destination or not reach it at all, it was the only way people could stay in contact, albeit at a distance: "When I hear this song, I'll think of you; when you hear it, think of me." When this is the only way to connect, it becomes almost as important as food and shelter. The Armed Forces recognized this. From 1942 to 1945, there was a government-ordered moratorium on recording music; the exception were V-Discs, special records made expressly for servicemen and sent in huge numbers overseas to them. (A wonderful side benefit of the V-Discs was that entertainers were able to play with other musicians they usually would not be permitted to record with because of their exclusive recording contracts. So we have some great musical combinations and band line-ups that we would not otherwise have.)
Like most young people in love, my parents had "their" song. It was "I'll Walk Alone," the 1944 version by Dinah Shore. Not the most powerful singer (her range was small and her voice a bit weak), and this arrangement is overly-sweet, but that's nitpicking. Here it is.
And here is the quintessential WWII song for every GI, sailor, and airman, and the girls they left back home. Sung by the British singer, Anne Shelton.
Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.