I happen to be in New Orleans as we enter the final days of America's "midterm" election season. So, on the eve of whatever blue or red wave comes washing in on Tuesday, it seems fitting to offer a political Song of the Week. Yet it's striking how few songs there are about electoral politics. The best known couplet on the subject may well be from Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues":
Well, I told my Congressman and he said, quote
'I'd like to help you, son, but you're too young to vote.'
Alice Cooper wrote a number called "Elected", and despite a very dreary tune it's rhymed unusually punctiliously for a rock song:
I'm your top prime cut of meat, I'm your choice
I wanna be Elected
I'm your Yankee Doodle Dandy in a gold Rolls-Royce
I wanna be Elected...
But, on the whole, politics in pop means "You say you want a revolution" and songs promising similarly sweeping change above and beyond the ballot box – "Blowin' In The Wind", "Something In The Air", etc. So, instead, I thought I'd pick a campaign song. But the best of those, by George and Ira Gershwin, was written for a fictitious candidate, John P Wintergreen, in their satirical operetta Of Thee I Sing (1931) and an early example of identity politics set to music:
Wintergreen For President!
Wintergreen For President!
He's the man the people choose
Loves the Irish and the Jews.
That's it, that's the whole song, enthusiastically sung by Wintergreen supporters waving placards bearing such winning slogans as "A VOTE FOR WINTERGREEN IS A VOTE FOR WINTERGREEN!"
In the sequel, Let 'Em Eat Cake (1933), John P Wintergreen runs for re-election and is defeated by John P Tweedledee, with his own stirring campaign theme:
He's the man the country seeks!
Loves the Turks and the Greeks!
Ira Gershwin was much better at spoof campaign songs than the real thing. In the 1950s, he reworked "It Ain't Necessarily So" for Adlai Stevenson, beginning with a line of exquisite limousine-liberal condescension:
L'il Nixon was small, but oh, my...
It's funny how hard it is to find anything to sing about. When you look back at the specially commissioned theme songs – "Teddy, Come Back", "Wilson – That's All", "Franklin D Roosevelt's Back Again", "Nixon's The One" – you realize it wouldn't have made any difference if they'd been "Wilson's The One", "Theodore Roosevelt's Back Again", "Franklin – That's All", and "Nixon, Come Back".
But the pickings get a little richer when it comes to songwriting politicians. Retiring senator Orrin Hatch writes songs incessantly, of course, though his love theme for Teddy Kennedy is pretty much the perfect summation of what's wrong with the Senate Republicans. A century before Orrin, New York City Mayor James J Walker had a huge hit in 1905 with "Will You Love Me In December As You Do In May?" But the absolutely biggest musical success by any American politician was born in the state I chance to be in this weekend, Louisiana, and was for decades the blockbuster theme song of the two-time governor and longtime powerhouse of this state, Jimmie Davis:
You Are My Sunshine
My only sunshine...
Viewed from today, Governor Davis is an almost absurd accumulation of southern clichés: sharecropper, country-&-western singer, segregationist Democrat. But he was a powerful figure in Louisiana for a good half of his hundred-plus years, and "You Are My Sunshine" was usually the music that accompanied him to the podium, both as entertainer and politician. He was born in 1899 on a farm in the northern part of the state, in Beech Springs. It's now a ghost town, and wasn't much more of a going proposition back then, when Jimmie was the eldest of eleven children growing up in a family home with two rooms. "The first Christmas present I ever got," he remembered, "was a dried hog's bladder and a plucked blackbird. We ate the blackbird and played ball with the bladder, and I thought we were pretty well off." He was almost thirty before he landed a contract with Doggone Records. His hero in those days was "The Singing Brakeman", Jimmie Rodgers, America's Blues Yodeler. Jimmie Davis was more of a Blue Yodeler. The songs he wrote had a somewhat narrow preoccupation, rendered in double entendres that were barely double at all – "Red Nightgown Blues", "Pistol Packin' Poppa", "Organ Grinder Blues", "Get On Board Aunt Susan", "She's A Hum Dum Dinger" and "Tom Cat And Pussy Blues": according to the critic John Morthland, it was "the dirtiest batch of songs any one person had ever recorded in country music". When Davis eventually ran for Governor, his opponents attempted to exploit these early songs of "unbridled carnality". At one rally, a rival politician played them to the crowd only to find that, instead of being outraged, folks began to dance.
But "You Are My Sunshine" was an even bigger crowd-pleaser. It's really only eight lines, but they're very affecting when set to those notes:
You Are My Sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are grey
You'll never know, dear
How much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away.
"You Are My Sunshine" is not yet eight decades old and the man who wrote it died in 2000, but it has the quality of a "traditional" song. In the Sixties, a lot of fellows strained for that effect when brand-new "folk" songs were in vogue, but it's not so easy writing instant "folk" songs when you're a long way from the cotton fields. I once spoke to a Vegas pal of Bobby Darin's, who gave an hilarious account of Darin, coming out of his finger-snappy tuxedo phase, and re-writing and re-re-writing his "folk anthem" "A Simple Song Of Freedom" because he was having terrible difficulty getting it to sound sufficiently simple. "You Are My Sunshine" doesn't have any problems in that department. Even the verses' avoidance of rhyme gives them a strange vernacular quality:
The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms.
When I awoke, dear
I was mistaken
And I hung my head and cried...
Where did it come from? Jimmie Davis could never quite explain. He wasn't thinking of this or that girl, he'd say. Maybe it was two or three he hand in mind. According to some musical archaeologists, it began life as an anonymous poem that wound up being sung by the Pine Ridge Boys, then covered by the Rice Brothers' Gang, with the music credited to Paul Rice, who sold it to Davis, and Davis gave his steel guitarist Charles Mitchell co-authorship of the song. It's true there's nothing like it in the rest of the Governor's catalogue, but it would not have been beyond the range of the man who wrote "Tom Cat And Pussy Blues". Davis' 1940 recording was the smash of his career and the song figured prominently when he ran for governor in 1944. A lot of the band wound up on the state payroll, and Davis can claim to be the only governor in American history to have a Number One hit record - no, not "You Are My Sunshine" but "There's a New Moon Over My Shoulder", which hit the top in the first year of his first term.
Louisiana forbids governors from serving consecutive terms, but in 1960 Davis was back, again with "You Are My Sunshine" as his theme song. He tried again in the Seventies and, though it didn't work out this time, the political class in the state thought enough of him to make "Sunshine" a Louisiana state song, complete with state-song-type lyrics:
Louisiana, my Louisiana
The place where I was born
White fields of cotton
Green fields clover
The best fishing
And long tall cornYou Are My Sunshine...
Etc. Also:
Crawfish gumbo and jambalaya
The biggest shrimp and sugar cane
The finest oysters
And sweet strawberries
From Toledo Bend
To New Orleans...You Are My Sunshine...
I'll stick with the original.
~Mark tells the story of many beloved songs - from "Auld Lang Syne" to "White Christmas" via "My Funny Valentine", "Easter Parade" and "Autumn Leaves"- in his book A Song For The Season. Personally autographed copies are exclusively available from the Steyn store - and, if you're a Mark Steyn Club member, don't forget to enter the promo code at checkout to enjoy special Steyn Club member pricing.
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Hi Mark,
the State song rendition is weird but I recall You are my Sunshine as the campaign song for politician in oH brother where art thou. that was a fun movie, I understand a variation off The Iliad? Odyssey?
thanks
The neighborhood elementary school used to do a music show every 4 years featuring every presidential campaign song through Nixon, after which, according to them, no other candidate had one. The only one that I recall having an actual argument was Herbert Hoover:
If he's good enough for Lindy, he's good enough for me
If he's good enough for Lindy, he's good enough for me
If he's good enough for Lindy, he's good enough for me
Herbert Hoover is the only man to be our nation's chief!
And the song itself seems to have been good enough for Cookie Monster to pick up...
Me again. Another song written by a politician (which Mark and I discussed last night) was #1 on the Billboard charts for six consecutive weeks 60 years ago (from late September to November 9, 1958). Originally written as "Melody in A Major" in 1911 by banker Charles Dawes, it was arranged for orchestra to be his campaign tune (sans lyrics) when he ran for Vice President with Silent Cal Coolidge 1925-29. (Dawes also won the Nobel Peace Prize for his World War I reparations plan.) After Dawes died in 1951, Carl Sigman added words and Tommy Edwards created the 1958 teary-eyed rendition of...Many a tear has to fall, but "It's All in the Game." This song has a sentimental place in my heart as it won me my first playoff round in "Name That Tune" on The Jazz Cruise in 2015!
I had the pleasure of being with Mark this weekend and introducing his talks in New Orleans. It was great to see his choice of songs this week, since "Sunshine" was the first of 12 songs I programmed in honor of my wife at our 50th anniversary mini-concert last January, backed by my jazz quartet on our small island. I met Karen at a "get acquainted" college beach party in 1966. On the bus to the beach, I led a sing-a-long with this popular tune but few joined in until I heard her gorgeous soprano descant from the last row ("across a crowded room...") She became the soprano soloist of our choral group, opposite my comic tenor. But alas, I later fell for another lass, who dumped me at the altar, hence the meaningful words of this song, "I dreamed I held you in my arms. When I awoke dear, I was mistaken. I hung my head and cried." (P.S. She was Karen's roommate)
By the way, the second and third songs of my 50th anniversary tribute to my bride got more interesting. "I Could Write a Book" and "Have You Met Miss Jones?" (by Rodgers & Hart) -- a "preface on how we met."
In my younger days I liked this one by Mike Nesmith written in 1974. The final verse is still pretty good.
The Candidate
Half the world concerned
With a slightly tarnished masterpiece
Hoping to return
As the once forgotten culture thief
Lying on its side
The stately vessel now replete
With harbingers of peace
Telling lies
Waiting at the door
With a stance secure in second thoughts
Overlooking signs
Of the spiritual bereavement's cost
Trying to arrive
At a destination that they've lost
To ignorance
Which winks at them and smiles
Listen well
The patience of the people soon will end
Time will tell
As the melting of your plastic smile begins
Sailing ships of state
And ignoring navigation laws
Through the sea of man
The captains mad with power pause
And congratulate themselves
On the virtuous and noble cause
Which must surely save the world
And alter time
This simple, bittersweet sing has always moved me as few others do. There is music that rouses me, and music that soothes me, and music that gives me a spiritual uplift, but "You Are My Sunshine" makes me wish I had someone to sing it to.
I hope you find your someone.
Just lovely. I love this song. I sang it to all my kids and it makes me completely verklempt because they are my sunshine, and I can't imagine a life without sunshine. My grandparents used to sing it to me along with a bunch of other oldies like I Love You (A Bushel and a Peck), In the Good Old Summertime, When the Saints Go Marching In, The Grand Old Duke of York. They had a little organ in the living room and some easy to read sheet music and those songs have stayed with me for my whole life. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Laura - if this is the same Grand Old Duke of York that I remember, it's a perfect political statement. He marched his "ten thousand men" up to the top of the hill, and he marched them down again. And "when they were only half way up they were neither up nor down"! I walk down memory lane with you, thanks.
That's the one! Extra memory lane points if you do the marching action, and put your hands up and down at the appropriate time...
I actually used to do that, and my memory lane is now so long I'll at some point meet myself coming back. Didn't we make arches with a partner and all the ten thousand walk through? I'm a former Brit from York in the north of England, and I'm almost sure that's how we did it - now so long ago and far away.
Wow! Now there's a niche, "Politicians Who Were Also Composers." A lot of writers have run for office but almost zero published composers. (Are the novels of Benjamin Disraeli stii in print?) Giuseppe Verdi was a member of the parliament of Piedmont-Savoy and Ignacz Paderewski was Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Poland but that's all I can come up with. Both of course had a pretty good catalogue. Edward Heath was an accomplished musician and conductor but I don't think he wrote anything. Europeans have been at this for a lot longer than Americans so maybe it isn't surprising that Governor Davis is the only American office holder with a top-of-the-charts hit.
Mark replies:
I'm not sure I'd call Ted Heath an "accomplished" conductor, John.
Dont forget Vice-president Charles G. Dawes!
"He loves the Irish and the Jews".
Growing up as a lad in the former Empire State, every election had a "balanced" ticket with an Irish, Italian and Jewish candidate for any election in NYC.
Gov. Jimmie Davis and his saga makes me think of Pappy O'Daniel in the film "O Brother Where Art Thou" which includes a nice version of You Are My Sunshine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeSqMbevg0w
It was also used as the opener to a protest song by Jonathan Edwards, Sunshine Go Away Today. But that song sounds like a protest against Nixon, not Davis.
Interesting story about the Governor of Louisiana. The movie "O Brother Where Art Thou" has a lot of parallels, though some of the events are split among various characters. The southern incumbent Governor, running for re-election, crushes his opponent at the penultimate moment in the movie by embracing the Soggy Bottom Boys and their "Man of Constant Sorrow" song when his opponent tries to make it into a scandal. "You Are My Sunshine" also seems to be his theme song. Wonder if the movie was loosely based on your man?
A few thoughts, if I may:
1.) Two possible clues about the provenance of "You Are My Sunshine" are that, as Mark notes, (A) it doesn't sound like anything else in Governor Davis's catalogue, and (B) he could never quite explain how he came up with the song.
Translation: For songwriters, those are usually tip-offs that the credited composer has likely "borrowed" (read: stolen, or largely stolen) the song from someone else.
Not that I'm actually accusing Governor Davis. To the musically-inclined, any kind of song idea can appear at any time. For all I know, Davis came up with the idea all on his own while doing the sorts of things any Louisiana Democratic politician did back then for fun: ironing his Klan robes, taking kickbacks, lighting crosses on fire, rigging elections, scaring black citizens away from polling booths, etc.
I'm just saying that (A) and (B) are what you tend to find in cases of theft, which of course were far more prominent in a world with no internet or home recording devices.
For example, for years, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page mentioned in interviews that he "couldn't quite remember" where he'd gotten the idea for his iconic song "Dazed and Confused", and couldn't quite explain why it didn't sound like anything he'd ever written before or since.
The explanation, we now know, was that he'd stolen it literally note for note from an obscure singer-songwriter named Jake Holmes. He just didn't want anyone to know.
Anyway, just throwing that possibility out there.
2.) One interesting popular tune which mentions politics is The Who's classic rock tune, "Won't Get Fooled Again".
Most of the lyrics are a bit vague. Apparently, they had something or other to do with Pete Townshend's interest in "universal Sufism" (this was before his interest in child pornography really got going).
But he does describe a post-revolutionary world which looks disconcertingly identical to the pre-revolutionary world. That is, he expresses skepticism about the power of revolutionary violence to effect any real, lasting change in human affairs. "Meet the new boss", he says. "Same as the old boss".
Whatever its merits, that sounds like an idea worth mulling over, and I figure you have to give the guy credit for getting that into a big-time rock song.
Anyway, just a few thoughts.
T.
"...soing the sorts of things any Louisiana Democratic politician did back then for fun: ironing his Klan robes, taking kickbacks, lighting crosses on fire, rigging elections, scaring black citizens away from polling booths, etc."
Literally LOL. Good thing I have already finished my coffee.
Right you are, Tal: For songwriters, those are usually tip-offs that the credited composer has likely "borrowed" (read: stolen, or largely stolen) the song from someone else.
Is it me or does this sunshine song remind anyone of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" tune? Checking into that tune's origin for inspiration found Woody was inspired by The Carter Family's "The World's on Fire." Damn! It's true what they say about Art! Art steals from other Art.
It's actually "When The World's on Fire."
Now i can't keep from singing "you are my sunshine from California to the New York Island...
No mention of "Do You Know You Are My Sunshine" by the Statler Brothers? Might be too country for Mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNxt9S7IuHM
"You Are My Sunshine" was a tune my late grandmother often hummed when I was a very small boy. If you are looking for something more than that, you are wasting your time. Your reference to this tune simply brings back a time when I felt very secure and there was nothing this world could do to hurt me.
Dave, my sentiments (literally) exactly.
My father used to sing this song when I was growing up, usually while playing the guitar. I had no idea it was a political song, I thought it was just another country song about a jilted lover.
I don't know if this counts, but how about an anti-politician song: "California Uber Alles" by the Dead Kennedys. It's a punk rock song about California governor Jerry Brown. A great listen, or at least do an internet search for the lyrics.
As far as political songs go the most apt for the present day is Cream's "Politician" co-written by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown.
"Hey now baby, get into my big black car.
Hey now baby, get into my big black car.
I wanna just show you what my politics are.
I'm a political man and I practice what I preach
I'm a political man and I practice what I preach
So don't deny me baby, not while you're in my reach.
I support the Left, tho I'm leanin' to the Right.
I support the Left, tho' I'm leanin' to the Right.
But I'm just not there when it's comin' to a fight."