then upon her death left. it was opened as a public museum in 1963. we are now more than 50 years as an institution in washington, d.c. it is good to see all of you here tonight. our program is entitled "smile while you kiss me sad adieu." world war i songs. let me introduce our speaker quickly. we like to remind people here that president wilson imagines a world at peace and proposed a plan to achieve that vision. that is a remarkable accomplishment when we take about it from the vantage point of our lives 100 years later. it is more remarkable if we transport ourselves back to his time and think about the world in which he lived and the ideas that were abroad at the time and the remarkable accomplishment that it was for him in the middle of a world war to imagine what the world ought to look like at peace and propose that that should be our default position, that there ought to be a league of nations and nations ought not to engage in aggressive war. this house allows us to take that trip in time. we are surrounded in this room by gifts of state that president wilson received. one of the reason he received so many gifts, because he was the first american president to go to europe in office. but secondly because the world so hoped for him to succeed in the mission he had taken on of ending the catastrophe that was world war i. it is hard for us to think now about how shocking world war i was to the people who had to live through it. and so the music of that era, like this house, is something that can transport us back to that time. as you will see this afternoon, hearing from michael, that you will have a sense of the music existed and the america that existed before the war. and the music that reveals to us the america that came out of that war. you will see a transformation. michael lasser is a writer and teacher about american music. he has written two books. we have them available after his lecture. he is in the process of writing a third. he is the author of "america's songs ii". this is a companion piece to a book he wrote, "america songs, the stories behind hollywood and tin pan alley." he established himself as a songbird. i have heard he is not going to be singing this evening. i'm sorry to disappoint you. he is working on a book called "the song is us, love, lyrics and america 1900." i am looking forward to that fourth volume about the hip-hop thing that he is such an expert on. [laughter] he is a graduate of dartmouth. he has been lecturing on music and songs and america for 30 years. let me introduce michael lasser. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you. i'm going to be treating songs as in affect documents. -- in effect documents. that is, when you listen to a song from your own time, somehow it is a mere on -- a mirror on that time. more about love than anything else but attitudes toward love and romance and sex and marriage obviously change over the first half of the 20th century in case you had not noticed. take my word for it. and songs reflect that. but for us, 100 years after the songs of world war i, those songs are not a mirror. they serve as a window and let us look back on what people were thinking and feeling and how they behaved. songs are a good way to get at it because they have no aspiration beyond having you like it well enough to buy it. irving berlin said a good song is one that sells. and he was not simply saying, i need more money because he was a multimillionaire when he said it. what he was saying is that he trusted the judgment of the people. if you go out and buy my song for whatever it costs, $.15, 79 cents on a record, it does not matter, if you downloaded from the internet, you are in effect voting with your pocketbook. so a good song is one that sells. it is the democratic, lower case d, point of view. you can make the case that the great songwriters from the first half of the 20th century were democratic populists, although they did not see themselves that way. the irony and that is that they -- the irony in all that is they were millionaire democratic populists. you do not see that all that often. they never lost their ability to pick up what was in the air. when they walked down the street, they were listening for a catchphrase. some slang. when they read the newspapers, they were looking for a story they could turn into a song. so when war was declared in 1914. at a time when tin pan alley now had come into existence. and was flowering. you all know what tin pan alley was. you are all nodding. tell me. what was tin pan alley? notice how the room just changed. [laughter] what was tin pan alley? >> a neighborhood in a particular block -- >> let's look at more than geography. and get to the heart of what it was. >> it was more of an idea or concept. >> the songwriters would gather there. they did. why? no. it is where the music publishers were. and most of the songwriters in the early years of the 20th century, the professional songwriters, i am not talking about charlie with a guitar and a pencil. songwriters were under contract to publishers. and they would crank out what the market wanted, because they were told to do so. tin pan alley is the home of music publishing in the united states between roughly, again, you know when you get into years it is never very useful. they are arbitrary. 1895 to 1935. give or take. during the 1930's, hollywood was becoming with talkies and musical, the studios bought up the publishers and moved their offices to california. they do not want to pay royalties anymore. even though tin pan alley still exists after that, and comes to me to be a generic term for american popular music. in its heyday, it was located in a place just off broadway in the west 20's. and was where the songs came from by the thousands. these people did not sit around waiting for inspiration. it is a highly overrated gift. when you limit yourself to work produced by inspiration, you end up with a very, very small bibliography. you force it. some days you fill up wastebaskets. occasionally you have a day when you do not. but you work. the coming of the war, even though we were determined to stay out of it, i am not going to do a history of isolationism because i am here to talk about songs and not give you a capsule of history of world war i. the coming of the war was a boon to the song business. that is, publishers and songwriters did look around for markets to appeal to and they looked for a way to appeal to those markets. with the coming of the war in europe, even though we were determined to stay out of it, there was not surprisingly a wave of patriotism in this country. that started to produce songs because patriotism is the exactly the kind of clear emotion that something as brief as a song can do something with. remember that most of the songs i am talking about and most of the songs written during what has come to be known as the great american songbook were 32 bars long. they fit on one side of a 78 rpm record. if you're old enough to remember those, you know you could get at most three minutes and 20 seconds of music on the side. then you flipped it over and had another three minutes and 20 seconds. that is what -- as a kid, i bought them for 79 cents. it was not until the late 1940's that you get the lp, which promises you about 40 minutes of music. but you still, if you are listening to a concerto or symphony, you have to flip it to get the whole symphony. when you bought an album of the symphony, it came with its own wheelbarrow. it was so heavy. it was like a big book. you put it on the record player and every three minutes you had to, every five minutes because they used 12 inch records, you had to change it to the next recording. you never heard a whole, but you -- you never heard it whole, but you heard it. that was the point. with the coming of the war, we started writing songs. and the first songs we wrote were about staying out of the war. you have got more songs on the list than i can ever play. i thought you would like to see some titles. on the list of lyrics you have got more songs than i am going to play because there is not enough time. most of these songs are available. you can go to itunes or amazon. you can go to the public library. there are collections. i do not have any secret connections to find the songs. they are out there if you want to hear songs of world war i. are there as many available as there were in world war ii? of course not. the recording business was much more sophisticated. distribution was much more effective. but, by the way, there is one song on the list i want to point out to you apropos of nothing because it is a good story. under 1918, you will see a song called "smile and show your dimple" by irving berlin, who sometimes i think wrote every song. and names like cole porter and george gershwin are just pseudonyms for irving berlin. does anybody happen to know the song? do not sing it. no. i did not mean that. i want to surprise them. he published it. it did not do well. he pulled it and put it back in his trunk. they never threw anything away. rogers and hart wrote new lyrics to the song that became "blue moon." they never give up on the song. that does not mean they all succeeded, but sometimes they do. so berlin pulled the song and in 1932 he was trying to write an act i finale for a political review called "as thousands cheer." he couldn't come up with a song. he remembered this song from world war i. and he pulled it and listen to it. and he said, that will do. and he wrote a new lyrics for it. would you like to sing with me? ♪ in your easter bonnet, smile and show your dimple you will find it is very simple ♪ it is about a young woman who has kissed her doughboy good-bye and she is standing on the platform. someone told her -- someone older sees her and tries to comfort her. "smile and show your dimple. he's coming home. we're going to beat the kaiser." isn't that a neat story? the first song to become a hit in world war i, and by the way, it is thought to be of most musical war. more songs in response to the war than any other war in american history. because tin pan alley was so explosively productive. there was a young woman who wrote a song. and there were a number of songs like this. i am not going to play this one. because the recording -- the only recording i could find was so bad in quality you would not have been able to get the words. but i did include the words for you. it is called -- the first one. it is the second one. "we take our hats off to you, mr. wilson." written by a woman who went on to become a professional songwriter who went on to write a lot of the materials for fanny brice when she was in the ziegfeld follies. there were the songs of the beginning of the war that are clearly about not getting in. but they become much more personal. we take our hats off to you, mr. wilson, is a generalized salute. it is a kind of thing a group marches down the street singing. popular songs had to do that, but popular songs are mainly good at the emotionalism that exists between two people. in all of the history of popular music in this country, probably 98% of the songs have two characters. i and you. and it is about what is going on or not between us. so in a typical song is when you start getting into the intense personal emotions. now, in the civil war, young men going off to war, never having been away from home before. and very young. and it was a much less sophisticated country. a lot of the farm boys. a lot of them immigrants. an awful lot of the union army spoke with an irish accent during the civil war. they really did fight a good part of that war. the songs of the civil war that were in effect love songs were about a boy and his mother. there were very few that were stories of romantic love, about how much i miss you and i will come home to you. she is home saying i will be faithful. very few of those. there are some sentimental ballads like "cora lee" and "lorena" in the south which are songs of praise for an idealized young woman but that is as close as you come. in the civil war, they are mainly about mom. junior is writing a letter home. one of the best of them is a song called "just before the battle, mother." during world war ii, jump. there are a few mother songs. mother is proud that you are in uniform, sonny. that has not survived. [laughter] the love songs of the war are largely about a couple whether married or not. separated. so the emotions of warfare in songs in love songs, and you will see this a little bit later are about separation, loneliness, longing, the hope of return. you find those in the love songs of world war i and the love songs of world war ii. and those three wars, civil, one and two are really the wars where there is a large body of song because there was a sense of the nation engaged, that there was not in the wars since. there are not a lot of songs about korea. and i am not being snarky. it was a different kind of war. the people were not engaged. in vietnam you had songs in which two groups are warring with one another. give peace a chance. i'm an okie from the skokie. iraq and afghanistan do not produce a lot of songs. in a way, they are invisible, and we are not as a nation engaged enough. we do not have a citizen army anymore. that gets in the way of that. so in world war i, you have a mix. in the middle between the two wars and it showed. there were songs about mom and songs about sweeties. soldier sings i am going to pin my medal on the girl i left behind in world war i. there are other differences between world war i and world war ii love songs. it is the mother song that i want to get to. again, it is the idea of staying out of it. delivering a kind of anthem in a way that the first song is an anthem and yet also capitalizing on the kind of direct emotionalism that popular songs are good at. it is called "i did not raise my boy to be a soldier." it is not that mothers did not raise their children, not lets all march in favor of mothers who opposed the war. but i did not raise my son to be a soldier. listen to the words. i do not vouch for their accuracy. i took them off the internet. i confess i did not do a meticulous check between the recording and the lyrics, but they are close. ♪ >> wrong song. sorry. i just screwed up. stay with me. i should not be allowed near technology. ♪ >> three thousand miles from home, an american army is fighting for you. everything you hold worthwhile -- is at stake. invoking the spirits of our forefathers the army asks your , unblinking support. high ideals for which america stands. >> that is pershing. ♪ ♪ >> ♪ 10 million soldiers -- who may never return again 10 million are the ones who died in vain in sorrow in her lonely years, i heard a mother murmur through her tears i did not raise my boy to be a soldier i brought him off to be my pride and joy. it's time to lay the sword and runaway there would be no more today -- there would be no war today as mothers always say i did not raise my boy to be a soldier ♪ >> ok. there had been, as you know, a great wave of immigration into the country beginning in the years after the civil war. people not from ireland and scotland and england but people from different parts of europe. and there was a certain amount of resistance to them. there was a rise in nativism as people began to arrive -- they were russians and italians and poles and jews and greeks. and they weren't like us. and over the next 50 years they changed what us means. but it was a great struggle. there had also in the years leading up to the war been an increase in emigration from germany. -- increase in immigration from germany. there were a lot more new americans who were of german extraction, had been born in germany and came here. so here you have got all these people from all these different countries who have not been here that long. on top of it, you have got all of these people from germany for crying out loud. were they going to fight for america? of course, nobody knew the answer. they needn't have worried. they came here because they wanted to come here and they joined up and they fought. but it was still an open question. so irving berlin wrote a song aimed in 1916 aimed specifically at this audience. because the tide was turning. there was a sense increasingly that america was siding with the allies, that we were more interested in taking the side of england than germany. at the beginning the main feeling was, let's not get involved with these people. let's stay out. there was no sense. and the special relationship that we have forged with the english did not exist. this came after world war i. so it was tricky. it was tricky. so berlin writes this song because he thinks he knows what we ought to be doing, and he sees where the country is beginning to go. and he wants to make sure the new immigrants will be americans. i have to change the track. give me one minute. ♪ wrong track. sorry. i should have someone doing this for me. i am going to waste a lot of my time and yours fooling around with this. but you can edit it out, right? >> [indiscernible] >> yes. try three and see what we get. ♪ go back, really? let it play. ♪ >> ♪ what is that tune i hear? playing in my ear come on along come on along in alexander's ragtime band he's going over there to do his share when alexander takes his ragtime band over there he'll take them one by one he'll put the germans -- they will throw their guns away hip hip hooray they'll get so excited they will come over near and far and go back to berlin all will know he has no chance when alexander takes his ragtime band to france ♪ now, i came in here and rehearsed, so imagine how bad it would be if i had not rehearsed? up once we have gone into the war. at let me fill in the pieces are oddly and out of the songs come up, i will play some for you. we get that berlin song called " "et's all be americans now which comes soon after a group of songs that were a response to a specific incident. that is what really galvanizes an american patriotism. what really galvanize his american supports for the allies -- do you know what the event was? the sinking of the lusitania. and in the months after the sinking, there are dozens of songs about the sinking of the lusitania. all of which have the same basic point of view. it was a dastardly thing to do. they were heartless those songs, whether the songs are shaping public opinion or responding to public opinion is hard to know because they come out over a series of months. my best guess is that both were happening. of thee sinking lusitania, everything changes and now it is a matter of getting to the war. , tensions build, and there we go. to hisg you just listen want of a series of songs about 1911.der that go back to what are we talking about? one?is the important alexander pross ragtime band -- alexander's ragtime band. he was working in a tough bar in chinatown, and ended up being told to write a song lyric. it's a whole story. , and realized he could make a few bucks. he made $.38 royalties on that first song. beginning was to make $25 a week so he did not have to sleep in alleys anymore. the song was so popular that is sold a million copies in 1911 at a time that was very unusual, and sold another million copies in 1912. berlin basically never had to work again, but obviously did. was so popular that a number of other songwriters wrote about a character named alexander that fed off of band, ands ragtime even into world war i, when there was a comic song called "when alexander takes his ragtime band to france," and if you were reading the words, you heard the lyric tell you that all that had to happen was for the band to play a ragtime song that we used to dance to -- a two-step was a dance during one step and two-step was the way you danced to ragtime songs. they would jump up and go cake walking back to germany. if we took alexander's ragtime band to france, the war would be over. obviously.ke, whether you find it funny, whether i find it funny is not the point. it was a joke in 1917. attitudeeflects the towards that war as we left home to teach the kaiser a lesson. we had never fought in a european war before. viewally had a sanitized of what trench warfare would be like. we had no idea. we knew there was hoarding in this country. there is a song called "the demon has bought up all the there were songs about the so-called butchery of , which by the germans was to a significant degree propaganda. we were going off there, show kaiser bill who the doughboys are. we got bloody fast. you hear that optimism. we will just go over there and dance a little bit, slap kaiser bill and come home. comicng is not only a take on war, which every war has produced -- even world war ii, which was the war that had the fewest comic songs. we seem to take world war ii more seriously. world war ii gave us "oh, how i hate to get up in the morning." let's play the next song. ♪ johnny, get your gun take it on the run mer them calling you and delay right away, no make your daddy glad to have sad -- had such a lad over there over there send the word over there that the yanks are coming the yanks are coming prepare say a prayer send the word send the word we'll be over we're coming over till it's't come back over over there ♪ hand heardrge m.co that war had been declared, he went home and he locked himself and hestudy in the house remained there through the rest of that day and overnight. when he came out, he gathered and hee and his children made them sit on the sofa in the living room and chairs as if they were in the theater. it went into the kitchen and he and a big ten pot. he put the 10 pot on his head -- tin pot on his head and he marched back and forth, singing "over there." he wrote it as an impassioned patriotic response to the declaration of war. typical sort of thing. he was irish, he was new york, and he was american. ,e wore all three on his sleeve and never flinched from any of them. he wrote that certainly captured the spirit of that time, songs like "yankee and "give my regards to broadway to get and "you are a grand old flag," which he originally wrote as "you are a grand old rag." he was thinking about the flag in warfare and how it would be torn and tattered trade -- tattered. it was way appraising, the flag and those who bought it or it -- it. the american legion went crazy and would not tolerate any explanations. he changed it to "you are a grand old flag." when it was time to record it soon after, did anything surprise you about that recording? not have been what you would have predicted. son by a woman. anyone know who -- sung by a woman. anyone know who nora bayes was? she had four husbands, one of which was jack norwood, a vaudevillian who appeared with of and wrote with composer "take me out to the ballgame" and wrote with her, although he did most of the writing, a song called "shine on harvest moon." she was tough. when she caught him in a dalliance with a chorus girl, she threatened to leave him and he begged to be forgiven and begged for her to stay. she agreed, but she exacted punishment in a way that only someone in show business would truly appreciate. they used to have the placards to each side of the stage, and announcing the act in vaudeville. it used to say, "nora bayes and jack norwood." bayes, ably"nora assisted by jack norwood." [laughter] until he fooled around again and then she dumped him. "hasignature song was anybody here seen kelly." name,d that lovely irish except her real name was leonora goldberg. [laughter] by the turn of the century, it had become an advantage, at least on the stage and in the theater, to have an irish name. and so she took one. you know it was common for people in the entertainment business to change their names for many, many years. bayes becausenora she had a voice, he said, like a trumpet. it is hard to hear in the old recordings, but she does cut through all the noise. if you are looking for a reference point, think kate smith. she had a voice like a trumpet. kate smith did not want to be silenced. if she wanted to be heard by everybody in the room, she would be. nora bayes had that kind of a voice, and so he picked her, that clarion voice to sing his martial anthem. the songs from the war we still do sing today. it is probably america's greatest martial patriotic song. let's hear the next song. ♪ a second.r i want to play you one more comic song. i was going to play the most famous of all the comic songs from world war i, and it is the best of them. it is called "oh how i hate to get up in the morning." but you all know that, and you have heard it a thousand times. you can get the movie out of the library or buy it, turner classic movies for $10. hearing and seeing irving berlin singing "oh how i hate to get up in the morning," and keeping time like this as he sings -- but this is another song about life in world war i, also a comic song that i thought you might enjoy hearing for a change. ♪ daddyen, laddy, to your once and go for any skirt you fall you're too clever you will never be a general grand i should worry i'm not sorry can't if i would you rather be a colonel with a eagle on your arm or a private on the 723? i can't help that all the ladies go crazy over me whatu're too green to see i mean colonelu rather be a with an eagle on your arm or a private with a chicken on his knee? ♪ >> do you all understand the joke about a colonel? what is the insignia of a colonel in the army? he wears an eagle. so the soldier says, would you rather be a colonel with an eagle on your shoulder or a private with a chicken on your knee? joke. you see how fashions in humor change over a century. there were comic songs, marshall songs. the songs that were most effective, most affecting as always were the love songs. again, because they're going to be songs of parting. and of separation, and of longing. one of the differences between the songs of world war i and the reflect world war ii the change in the way we wrote songs which reflect social attitudes. roughly 1930,til songs are largely about behavior . let's go out and take a ride in my car. let's take a walk. lucille, inth me, my merry oldsmobile. we are doing things, and the outside world is as real as what ever i feel for you. they are not only about how but they keep away from the trap of uniqueness. no one has ever felt the way i feel today. that is nonsense. we have all felt that way. we all felt that no one had felt that way before. it is called young love. and it is something that adults look at with fondness and mockery. they remember their own feelings, and they remember how foolish they were. me.irst girl dumped my parents were saints. they did not kill me. i was a walking wound for months, especially when you think about why she dumped me. and i wasar, heartbroken. but here i am. [laughter] to my capacity for something or other. the songs of world war i -- because it went in the century they come -- are about to hit your as much as they are about feelings. i'm going to pin my metal on the girl i left behind, as opposed a song like "i walk alone in world war ii," which is about walking, but really is about the feelings as you walk. the key word there is not walk, it is alone. what that opens up in terms of emotion, and memories. the songs of world war i, while they are about the same emotions , try to call on the same emotions, are much more overt, much more reflective, much less inward looking. for the most part. it is a matter of degree, obviously. in 1917, this song was published and became the most popular love song of world war i. i'm glad to say it is one of the few songs from the war that we do still want -- we do still know. ♪ you kissed me when a plow drove by i'll come to you then the skies will seem more blue loveng my dear one wedding bells will ring so merrily every tear will be a memory oh, wait and pray meh night for till we meet again ♪ >> it's a lovely song. richard aer is whiting, who went on to become a major composer in 1930's movies. lyricist was a minor but certainly professional lyricist named raymond egan, who wrote his best songs with whiting. whiting had a bad heart and died in his early 50's, but wrote some giants when he got to hollywood. among them, john mercer when he was young. that -- whiting is margaret whiting's father. he story is that whiting and egan were working for one of the major music publishers. they were working in the detroit office. and there was a contest in detroit for the best world war i song. there was going to be a competition, and they would be performed and there would be a prize. remick wanted to win the competition because it would help sell the song when he published it. to get whiting and egan going. so they stay late at the office and pounded out a rather simple, on it waltz and worked until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. until they finished it. they were pretty well pooped. egan said, i will see you in the morning. and he left. just to put the icing on it, whiting played it for himself one more time and said, no. , this is much too simple and sweet. he crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket and he went home. this is going to sound like a bad movie, but it is a true story. he slept in the next morning, as you would expect. the boss's secretary comes in the next morning and she sees some crumpled up music paper with notes in the wastebasket. she knowsous, because who was there when she left the day before. and she can out -- play piano -- and she plays it. that's nice. she takes it into the boss and plays it for him. he says, that is wonderful. we are going to publish it, but don't tell the boys. we will surprise them. [laughter] then he said, what is the title? she looked at the piece of paper they are calling it [indiscernible] [laughter] we can't have a german title. what does it mean? she said "till we meet again." would you believe they won the contest? it was the best loved and most of the worldballad war i years. and there was some good competition. there are lots of songs, world war i songs of that until you get into the song we don't even know. there are always songs that don't appear to be love songs. somewhere in the third chorus, somebody will mention a girl's name or the way i love you and then just keep going as a passing reference, so it still qualifies as a love song. , one of the chorus most popular songs of the war years, you find out it is a world war i song in that song is "katie," the stuttering song. there were lots of stuttering songs and spelling songs. during prohibition, irving berlin wrote a song called "i because you in c-u-b-a" boats over toan cuba. a song called "you tell her." attitudes change. "you tell her i stutter." i want to tell her i love her but i can't get it out there and i love her. that had nothing to do with the war. -katie" is the most famous of the stuttering songs. this song, like so many songs happensar -- it especially in war -- you look to the future. you anticipate your return. love songs of world war ii are more internalized. they are reflective. because almost all the songs of world war ii are love songs here it -- songs. there are many fewer of these other kinds. you really see attitudes changing. "don't get around much anymore" from 1942 could not have been written in 1945. "kiss me once and kiss me twice" from 1945 could not have been written in 1942. that is attitudes we learned from the way things were going in the war affected the love songs. that's not as true in world war i about the love songs. it is true about the body of songs. we thank you, mr. wilson. my boy to be a soldier, and "lusitania," and "ovary there." -- "over there." ended, world war songs continue, but they change almost overnight. not going off to france, we are coming home from france. we are coming home to a different country. we don't know that yet, obviously. it takes us a while to figure that out. we are coming home changed. we now have several million doughboys who have had for lowe's in paris -- furloughs in paris. i will let you sort that out for yourselves. the world in ways that, except for a tiny percentage of the population, the elites of the gilded age, have not seen the war. my wife likes to say that she wished she had been born in the gilded age so she could wear the clothes. i say then, you better be born rich else you will end up in a photograph by jacob rees. people whogilded age went to europe. they were on the good deck in the titanic. everything worked out for them. the sense of people being changed, returning to a nation changed begins to appear in our 1919, which is where you get the last of the world war i songs. what is interesting about this song is that the perception of change does not come from the young man himself. it comes from his father, who is a former. -- farmer. unsophisticated, not urban, lives out in the boonies somewhere. he gets it. let's hear the next song. ♪ how you gonna keep him down on the farm after they have seen paris how are you going to keep him away from broadway jazzin' around, painting the town how are you going to keep them away on the farm that is a mystery imagine rubin when he meets his pa how you going to keep him down on the farm after they have seen paris ♪ >> that was eddie cantor. the verse to that song says that ma and pa are talking, and this is what pa says to ma. she wants to welcome jr. home and she is so happy he's coming home. pa, who is wiser and recognizes something has happened, says, how are you going to keep them down on the farm. from is another comic song 1919 about a soldier who comes home and goes back to work in his father's factory, running andfactory for his father, his captain comes looking for a job. it is a song of revenge. comic revenge. there is one other wonderful comic song from 1919. couple goes down to washington square to watch the .roops march up 5th avenue they are as proud as they can be. say, they were all out of step but jim. there is an irony to all of this. among the great changes that led into the 20's were not only changes that resulted in greater freedom, which is what we associate with the 1920's -- over intond going license in terms of personal habits, largely. thearet sanger brought first diaphragm into the united thees in 1916, and in 1920's, diaphragms became available to women. this is not a matter of technology. this is technology which creates the possibility and the reality of major social changes. at the , we now havelso lovers lanes. movies teach generations of us how to kiss. kids used to practice. used to go to the movies, and the girls would practice kissing. not that they were lesbians been. they were learning how to kiss by watching whoever, mary pickford -- not mary, she wouldn't -- it's the others. vamp?s her name, the >> [inaudible] >> thank you. you get these songs that reflect this change. at the same time, there is something going on that restrict our freedom. the doughboys come home and find they are not even free to take a drink. treat prohibition with contempt, and we make breaking the law part of our determination to be free. i thought i would and by having you hear a song from prohibition. 1920 and 1921, you get the prohibition song. after that, we have absorbed it. it is not new and interesting anymore. although when prohibition gets thealed -- repealed in 1930's, there are a few songs that talk about how good it is to be able to drink again. the real prohibition songs are in those years between 1920 and 1921. it is called "the many beit." -- "bimini bay." ♪ ♪ in the winter, home again way down on bimini way way down on bimini bay when men talk honey bay all rave about bimini come along with me treethe judas the cocktails are calling sweet orange awaits you down yonder absinthe willy make every love hotter where the green river flows wind up the cabins without the clock won't you come with me down to bimini bay ♪ >> prohibition song. i only know one prohibition song that disapproves. and even there, it does it comically. you don't need the wind to have a wonderful time while they still got the beautiful girls. to have a wonderful time while they still got the beautiful girls. we soon become disenchanted with our piece. ofturn our backs on the rest the world. we get the roaring 20's, when pleasure becomes an end in itself. the puritan ethic is set aside. byive-year span that begins affirming traditional american isolationism as an image of our uniqueness and is with an old order dead -- ends with an old new one notnd a yet formed. there are many ways to look back at those years. i would suggest to you that none than howetter mirror those attitudes changed in the face of new and troubling experiences than the songs we sang as we marched off to war and then a changed people marched back home again. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] questions for a couple of minutes. seeker ofe a peace world war i, is there a bob dylan of world war i, or because there's no market, the songs are about reality? >> if there was, how would we have found him and how would he have found us? that in the teens, it was mainly still a sheet music business. recordings begin to out -- individual recordings. recordings of individual songs begin to outsell the sheet music of that song in the 1920's. in the teens, it would have been enormously difficult. you also now are getting distribution. you are getting roads and trucks. things are beginning to happen to get the songs around. was folk music. obviously people were singing in the hallways of west virginia. i should tell you that my concentration is on the commercial, popular song rather than on folk music or country music. i assume they were out there. when did the carter's begin with that radio station down in new mexico? anyone know? that was in the late 1920's, probably. that would have been a decade later. they were really formative. jimmy rogers is later. did the british songs make it here at all? >> yeah, they did. did in world war ii. "we will meet again" and "a nightingale sang." .hey don't sway it as the shift is on, it joins it. it is more our songs that reflect our attitudes. "lusitania."s the >> there were not many comic songs in world war ii. >> right. >> i remember my mom playing "in the fuehrer's space." >> it was a notable hit at the same time as [indiscernible] what lincoln said about the american people. he said no one underestimated the test of the american people and that goes to prove it -- taste of the american people and that goes to prove it. the soldiers had very body -- made up.gs that they that is not where i'm focusing. there were some, but in world war ii the sheer number of love the war information -- the office of war information, -- wanted the song to stop writing love songs. they wanted them to write only patriotic songs. if some music publishers and the songwriters says ok, we want to be patriotic -- the songs were almost all dreadful. we did it before and we can do it again. let's are member pearl harbor. they were not really very good songs. finally, the publishers and songwriters said, forget it. people wanted love songs. and mainly women. they wanted songs about their lives. the songs of world war ii spoke away,en whose men were and who could catch a few minutes at the radio. and they did speak to them profoundly. world war i, it was still sheet music, and music was encountered much more publicly. you did not have a photograph or radio where you could go into your corner. it was much more at the pn oh. it was a much more public setting -- piano. it was a much more public setting. >> i was thinking one reason they were less introspective was because courting was also a public activity. >> sure, although that is breaking down. one of the reasons before 1920 you have so many songs about taking walks and going for canoe rides is it was a way to be alone for a few minutes. a wonderful song by the british songwriter novello written, "and her mother came to." [laughter] we go off together and her mother came, too. we step around a tree to kiss and her mother came too. this goes on for the song. at the end -- it is a hot day, and the mother faints. i am all set to kiss the girl, a nd eher mother came to. that is the punchline of the thing. it is a charming song. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> let me see if there is anyone else. sir? >> are there american songs that are equivalent to some of the european -- concerned about the horror of war? these are all very optimistic tin pan alley. there were a few, like the one about belgium. there were a few. but we did not know anything about the war until we got there, and the songwriters did not go there. the function of tin pan alley was not to write political tracts on the horrors of war. bar lovewrite 32 songs. isy are as much about dreams anything else. it is a fair question, but you do somethingem to they don't do. it is like blaming shakespeare for not writing models. that's not what they did. it was not their work. if you want to read that sort of thing in brief form, you should read the poetry of world war i. poetry -- there is a tendency these days to say that -- were poets.rs i don't think so. think they do different things. just because it quacks and wattles does not prove it is a duck. quick example. pellets make their own music -- music.ake their own song lyricists hear the music and language. they have to keep it, but they have to make it serve the language of somebody else's melody. that is an inherent and significant difference between a song and a poem. that is another lecture that would take me an hour and a half, but good question. [applause] >> we have here in this room that is a steinway piano that the wilson spot for their daughter at a time before people -- wilsons bought for their daughter at a time -- it was in the white house with the wilsons. we do keep it tuned. if anybody would like to play after we're finished here, we would be happy to accompany you. thanks all for being here. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. all weekend long, american history tv is joining with our media, cable partners to showcase the history of iowa's capital city, des moines. to learn more about the cities on our 2014 tour, visit www.c-span.org/local content. we continue with our look at the history of the mowing. this is american history tv on c-span3. for thes surreal longest time. that first 24 hours, when the water started coming up -- like i said, we knew there would be flooding. we had had flooding before. the people started talking about how this was not going to be like any flood we have ever experienced. we were covering some of the floods before. it was a nice break that saturday night. then all hell broke loose. all hell broke loose. the confluence of the des moines river and the raccoon river is really the center point of the city, not only geographically buto

Related Keywords

Vietnam , Republic Of , Green River , New York , United States , Germany , Afghanistan , California , New Mexico , Russia , Washington , District Of Columbia , Des Moines , Iowa , United Kingdom , West Virginia , Des Moines River , Iraq , Washington Square , Hollywood , Belgium , Ireland , Cuba , Paris , Rhôalpes , France , Berlin , Greece , Italy , Americans , America , Greeks , Italians , British , German , Germans , Scotland , Russians , Irish , American , Cora Lee , Eddie Cantor , George Gershwin , Jacob Rees , Cole Porter , Kate Smith , Margaret Whiting , Margaret Sanger , Jimmy Rogers , Mary Pickford , Richard A Whiting , John Mercer , Michael Lasser , Bob Dylan , Jack Norwood , Fanny Brice , Broadway Jazzin , Raymond Egan , Leonora Goldberg ,