went onto become a professional song writer who's best known for writing specialty material for fanny spszbry krurks e when she in the follies. the songs thabout the war a clearly about not getting in. but they've much more personal than that. we take our hats off to you. it's a kind of generalized salute. it's the kiernd of thing a grou marches down the street singing. popular songs are mainly good at the emotion that exists between two people. 98% of songs have two characters in them. i and you. and what's going on between us.

so a more tip skal song is when you start getting into the intense, personal emotions. in the civil war, young men going off to war never having been away from home before. and the country was young. a lot of them farm boys. a lot of them immigrants. arn awful lot of the union army spoke with an irish accent during the civil war. they really did fight a good parlt of that war.

there are some sentimental ballots like aura lee which are songs of praise for an idealized young women. but that's as close as you come to it. in the civil war, they're mainly about mom. and junior is writing a letter home to his mother and that sort of thing. one of the best is just before the battle. the love songs of the war are largely about a couple, whether married or not.

so in the love songs, you'll see this a little bit later, are about separation parting, lon y loneline loneliness, the hope of return. you find them in the love songs of world war i and you find them in the love songs of world war ii. and those three wars, civil, one and two, are really the songs, are really the wars where there is a large body of song. there aren't a lot of songs about korea. i'm not being snotty. it was a different kind of war. the people weren't engaged by it. in vietnam, you have some song, but they're songs in which two groups are warring with one another.

give peace a chance and i'm an oki from noskoki. we're not, as a nation, engaged. we don't have a citizen army anymore that gets 234 the way of that. so in world war i, you have a mix. there are other differences. it's the idea of staying out of it. delivering a kind of anthem in a

way that the first song is an anthem. and also, capitalizing on the kind of emotionalism that popular songs are good at. it's called "i didn't raise my boy to be a soldier." it's -- no, it's "mothers didn't raise their children." i didn't raise my son to be a soldier. i didn't do a meticulous check between the recordings and the lyrics. but they're close. >> wrochk song. >> wrong song. sorry. oh, i just screwed it up.

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>> there had been, as you know, a great wave of immigration after the civil war. people from different parts of europe. as people began to arrive, they were russians and they were italians and they were poles and jews and greeks and rumanians and they weren't like us.

over the next 50 years, they changed what us means. but it obviously was a great struggle. there had also, in the years, leading up to the war, been an increase in immigration in germany. there were a lot more new americans who were of german extraction. had been born in germany and came here. so here you've got all of these people from all of these different countries. and on top of it all, you eve got all of these people from germany, for crying out loud, were they going to fight for american? of course, nobody knew. 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. there was a sense that we were more interested in taking the side of england. at the beginning, the main feeling was let's not get involved with these people. let's get out. so there was no sense. and the special relationship that we have forged, in quotes, with the english didn't exist.

>> he sees where the country is beginning to go. and he wants to see that the new immigrants will be americans.

now, i came in here and rehearsed. imagine how bad it would have brn if i hadn't rehearsed? now, that song comes in once we've gone into the war. let me fill in the pieces broadly. as the songs come up, i'll place them for you. we get that berlin song, let's all be americans now, which comes soon after a group of songs that were in response to a specific incident. that is what really galvanizes

american support for the allies. do you know what the event was? the sinking of the lewis tan ya. and in the months after the sinking, there are dozens of songs about the sinking of the lewis tan ya. all of which have the same basic point of view. it was a dastardly thing to do. we needed to get back. whether the songs are shaping public opinion or respondsing to public opinion, it's hard to know. my guess is that both were happening. but, clearly, with the sinking of the lucitania, everything changes. and now it's just the members

that pertain to war. the song you just listened to is one of a series of songs about alexander that go back to 1911 are you with me on that one? it's one of the great serendipitous moments in history. he was working in a tough bar in china town. and ended up being told to write a song lyric, which he did. he learned that if he could do it, he could make money.

his goal at the beginning was to make $25 a week so he didn't have to sleep in allies and flop houses anymore. the song was so popular, it sold a million copies in 1911, which was very unusual. and then sold another million copy ins 1912, and berlin didn't have to work again, but, obviously, he did. the song was so popular, that a number of other song writers wrote about a character named alexander that fed off alexand alexander band called when alexander takes his rag time band to france.

you heard the lyric tell you that all that had to happen was for the band to play a two step, a two step was a dance. it was the way you danced to rag time songs. they would juch up out of the trenches and go cake walking back to jeremy. if we took al engs ander's rag time band to france, the war would be over. now, that was a joke, obviously. whether you or i find it funny is not the point. it was a joke in 1917. it also reflects the attitude toward that war question

realitily had a sanitized view of what trench warfare would be like. we had no idea. we knew that there was hording in this country. there's a song called the demon has braugts up all the coal chlts people were hording. we were going oufr r off there to show chi czar bilge who the doughboys were. of course, we got bloodied fast. you hear that optimism. you hear that sense of ease. we'll go over there and dance around a little bit. the song is not only a comic

take on the war, even world war ii, which is the war that had the fewest comic songs. we seem to take world war ii more seriously. there were some, but there were a lot of them in world war ii. >> what did we do last night? >> boy, are you hired. ♪

when he heard that war had been declared, he went home and he locked himself in his study. he had the study in the house. and he remained there through the rest of that day and overnight. when he came out, he gathserred the family, his wife and his children. and he made them sit on the sofa in the living room on the chairs as if they were in the theater. he went into the kitchen as if herp on a broom and got a tin pot. he put the tin pot on his head and marched back and forth singing overthere. it was the song's first performance. that is he wrote it as an impassioned patriotic response to the declaration of war. that was a typical cohan sort of thing.

he was irish. he was new york. and he was american. and he war all three on his sleeve. he never flinched from any of them. the songs that he wrote cap chufred the spirt of the time. you're a grand old flag, which he originally wrote as you're a grand olt rag, because he was thinking about the flag in warfare and how it would be torn and tattered. so it was a way of praising the flag and those who bore it.- +=3 but the american people went crazy. just to shut them up, he changed it to, "you're a grand old

flag." now, when it was time to record it soon after, did anything surprise you about that recording? might not have been what you would have predicted? sung by a woman. nora bayse. anyone know who she was? she was a great star of both the broadway stage in the early years of the 20th century. she had four husbands. he wrote with her take me out to the ball game, although he did most of the writing, a song called shine on harvest moon. when she was -- she was tough. when she caught him in a dal yans, isn't that nice? a dialysance.

with a choral us girl, she threatened to leave him. and he begs to be forgiven. but she agreed. and she exacted punishment in a way that only someone in showbiz can truly appreciate. they used to have the placards to each side of the stage? now it says nora bayse ably assisted by jack norworth. her signature song was anybody here seen kelly? her real name was leonora goldburg.

by the turn of the century, it had become an advantage. at least on the stage, in the theater, to have an irish name. and so she took one. oov shrill, you know it was common for the people in the entertainment business to change their name for many, many years. and he picked nora bayse because she had a voice like a trumpet. it's hard to hear in the old recordings. but she does kuts through all the noise chlts if you're looking for a reference point, think kate smith. she had a voice like a trumpet. if kate -- kate smith did not want to be silences. nora bayse had that kind of a voice. so he picked her, that clarion

voice, to sing his marshal anthem. it's probably america's greatest marshal patriotic song. okay. let's hear the next song. ♪ >> oh, stop it for a second. i want to play you one more comic song. i was going to play the most famous of all of the comic songs from world war one. it's the best ever. it's a brilliant song. seeing i recall vin berlin who still fit in his world war i uniform, that was it in 1942

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 you might enjoy hearing for a change.

. >> do you all understand the joke about a colonel? what is the insignia of a colonel in the army? he wears an eagle. and so the soldier says to his sdr are-are -- would you rathea colonel with an eagle on your

shoulder or a chicken on your knee. joke. you see how fashion and humor change over a century? there were comic songs. there were marshal songs. but the songs that were most effective, most affecting as always, were the love songs. again, they're going to be songs of parting. one of the differences between the songs of world war i and world war ii reflect the change in the way we wrote songs which reflect social attitudes. that is up until roughly 1930, songs are largely about behavior. let's go out and take a ride in my car. let's take a walk.

come away with me lu cil le in my merry olds mobile. we're doing things around the outside world is as real as whatever i feel for you. that is they're not only about how deeply i feel. but they keep away from the trap of uniqueness. no one's ever felt the way i feel today. that's nonsense. we've all felt that way. we all felt that no one had felt that way before. it's called young love. it's something that adults look at with fondness and mockery,

right? they remember their own feelings and how foolish they were. my my first girlfriend dumped me, my parents were saints. especially when you think about why she dumped me. because he had a car. i was heartbroken. but here i am. it's a tribute to my capacity for something or other, yeah. the songs of world war i because of when in the century they come, are as much about behavior as they are about feeling. i going to pin my medal on the girl i left behind, as opposed to a song like i'll walk alone in world war ii, which is about walking.

but it's really about the feelings, as you walk. the keyword there is alone and what that opens up in terms of emotion and memory. so the songs of world war i, while they're about the same emotions, are much more reelective, to a degree. in 1917, this song became the most popular love song of world war i. it's one of the most that we do still know. can we listen? ♪

>> lovely song, isn't it? yeah, it's a lovely song. the composer is richard a who wents onto become a major composer in 1930s movies. his leer cyst was a minor, but certainly professional leer cyst called whiting. up fortunately, died young. he die ds in his early 50s but

wrote with some giants in hollywood when he got there. ñ whiting and

they worked on it until 2 or 3:00 a.m. before they finished it. they were pretty well pooped. egan said i'll see you in the morning and he left. just to put the icing on it, the lid on it, whiting played it for himself one more time. he said for a war sochk, this is too simple and sweet. this is going to sound like a bad movie, but it's a true story. the boss's secretary comes in the next morning and she sees some crumpled up music paper with notes in the wastebasket. and she's curious. she knows who was there when she

left the day before. so she pullings it out. she can play piano. that's nice. so she takes it into the boss and plays it for him. she says that's wonderful. we're going to publish it, but don't tell the boys. we'll surprise them. then he said, oh, yes, what's the title. she looked at the piece of paper and said they're calling it auf wiedersehn. she said what does that mean? and she said till we meet again. would you believe they won the contest?

the most popular love ballot of the war. there are lots of sochks until we get into the love song, that we don't everyone know. just keep going. there's a passings reference. so it still qualifies as a love song. there were lots of stuttering songs. during prohibition, irving wrote a song called i'll see you in c-you have-b-a.

cuba was only 9d 0 miles from shore and you could drink there. there was lots of spelling in songs. and stuterring songs. there's a song called you tell her -- again, attitudes change. you tell her i s-s-s-s hch stutter. that is, i want to tell her i stutter, but i can't get it out. so i'm getting my friend, you tell her. i s-s-s-s-s-stutter. that had nothing to do with the war, but k-k-k-katie is one of the most famous. the love songs happens with songs not about war but especially in war. you look to the future. you anticipate the return.

because the world war ii love songs are more familiar. you see attitudes changing like a song, don't get around much anymore, from 1942, could not have been written in '45. and a song like kiss me once and kiss me twice and kiss me once again, it's been a long, long time from 45 could not have been written in '42. that is things that we learned from the war. that's not as true in world war i about the love sochks. it is true about the body of song.

so we thank you, mr. wilson son, but they're not limited to love sole judges. when the war ended, world war i love songs continue, but they changed almost overnight. sudd suddenly, we're not going off to france, we're coming home from france. and we're coming home to a different country. we don't know that yet, obviously. it takes us a while to figure that out. but we're coming home changed. we now have several million doughboys who had had furloughs in paris. i'll let you sort that out for yourselves. they've seen the world in ways that kpept for a tiny percentage of the population, the leaf of the guilded age had not seen the war. my wife likes to say that she wished she had been born in the

guilded age so she could wear the clothes. it was the guilded age, people who went to europe. they were on the good deck of the titanic. everything worked out for this em so the sense of people being changed, returning to a nation changed, begins to appear in our songs in 1919. which is really where you get the last of the world war i songs. what's 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 farmer.

that is unsophisticated and not urban. he gets it. let's hear the next song. >> that was eddie canter. the verse to that song says that ma and pa are talking.

and this is what pa says to ma. she wants to welcome junior home and she's so happy he's coming home. and, pa, who's wiser and recognizes something's happened, says how are you going to keep him down on the farm? there's also another comic song from 1919. about a soldier who goes home and is running the factory for his father and his captain comes looking for a job. so it's a song of revenge. comic revenge. and there's one other wonderful song, comic song, from 1919. an irish couple goes down to washington square to watch the troochs march up 5th avenue. and they're as proud as they can

be because look, they say, they were all out of step by jim. there's an irony to all of this. they're not only the changes to greater freedom, which is what we've associated. freedom going over into license. in terms of pernl habits, largely. mar glet sachker smuggled the first diaphragm in the the united states in 1915. this is not a matter of technology. this is technology which creates the possibility and then the reality of major social changes. the spread of the automobile, also.

>> kids used to practice. they used to go to the movies and girls would practice kissing. it was not that they were lesbian. it's that they were learning how to kiss by w567ing whoever. mary pickford -- well, not mary. she wouldn't. but the others. the vamp. who was her name? the vamp? peetser barra, thank you. you get these songs that reflects our change, but there's something that restricts our freedom. the doughboys find they're not even free to take a drink.

so we treat prohibition with contempt and we make breaking the law part of our determination to be free. and i thought i would end by having you hear a song from prohibitions. 1919, 1920 and 1921, you get the prohibition sochks. avenue that, it's not new and interesting anymore. although, when prohibition gets repealed in the 1930s, there are a few songs that talk about how good it is to be able to drink kben. this one is called biminy bai. blavng blank ♪

♪ >> prohibition sorng. i only know one prohibition song that disaprufs. and even there, it does it comically. you don't need the wine to have a wonderful time while they've still got the beautiful girls. obviously, we soon grow disenchanted with the piece we turn our backs on the rest of the ward and you get the roaring 20s, the first time in american life when pleasure

becomes an ends in itself. the puritan etic is set aside. so a five-year span that begins by isolationism as an image of our uniqueness, ends with an old order dead and a new one not yet formed. there are many ways to look back at those years. i would suggest to you that none gives us a better mirror of how we felt and how those attitudes changed in the face of new and songs we sang as we marched off to war and then a changed people marched back home again. thank you very much. >> thank you.

>> we will answer your questions for a couple minutes. >> is there a pete seger or bob dillan of world war i? there's no market for songs of reality. >> if there was, how would we have found him and how would he he have found us? remember that in the teens it was mainly still a sheet music business. recordings begin to oust -- recordings of individual songs begin to outsell the sheet music of that song in the 1920s. so in the teens it would have been enormously difficult. you also now are getting distribution, you're getting

roads, trucks and so things are beginning to happen to get the songs around but i don't -- i mean, obviously there was folk music, people were singing in the hollers of west virginia and i don't -- 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 carters begin with that radio station down in new mexico? anyone know? that was in the late '20s probably, that would have been a decade later, they were really formative. jimmy rogers is later so the formative people need radio. >> did the british songs make it here during the war? >> "keep the home fires

burning." yeah, they did. just as they did in world war ii, we'll meet again and the nightingales sang. they don't sway it as the shift is on, it joins it, but it's not deeply influential, it's more our songs that reflect our attitudes. and, again, the fulcrum is the lufthansia. >> you mentioned there were not many comic songs in world war ii. i remember my mom playing in the '40s playing "in the furor's face." >> yes, that's one of them which was a notable hit at the same you know what macon said about the american people. no one ever underestimated the taste of the american people.

and the song like mares eat oats goes to prove it. there were some and the soldiers had very bawdy songs they made up. but again, that's not where i'm focusing. so, there were some. but in world war ii, the sheer number of love songs -- by the way. the war information -- the office of war information, world war ii, that's the propaganda arm of the government. wanted the songwriters to stop writing love songs for the duration. they wanted them to write only patriotic songs and the music publishers and songwriters said, okay, we want to be patriotic and they tried and the songs were almost all dreadful. we did it before, we can do it again, let's remember pearl harbor. they weren't really good songs. finally the publishers and songwriters said forget it.

they didn't want those songs. they wanted love songs, they wanted songs about their lives. and the songs of world war ii spoke to women whose men were away and who could catch a few minutes at the radio. that's what they wanted. and they did speak to them profoundly. world war i, it was still sheet music and music was encountered, much more publicly. you didn't have a phonograph or a radio where you could go into your corner, it was much more at the piano, which was a public setting, which is why they were less introspective. >> to follow up on that, i was thinking that one reason they were less introspective is because courting was also a very public activity. >> sure, although it does -- that's breaking down.

one reason before 1920 you have so many songs about taking walks or going on canoe rides, it was a way to be alone for a few minutes. a wonderful song by a british songwriter called "and her mother came too." [ laughter ] we go off together and her mother came too. and we step around a tree to kiss and her mother came too. this goes on for the song, and then at the end it's a very hot day and the mother faints and i'm set to kiss the girl and her mother came too. that's the punch line of the song, it's a charming song. >> hold on, hold on. you've asked two, let me see if there's anybody else. >> were there american songs --

europeans were concerned about the horror of war? these are all very optimistic. >> sure. >> for example, "the bells of hell." >> there were a few, like the one about belgium. the one about the hoarding of coal and other things, there were a few, but we didn't know anything about the war until we first got there, obviously, and the songwriters were not the ones who were going. and the function of tin pan alley is not to write political tracks on the horrors of war. it's not what it does or what it did. it's to write 32 bar love songs. there is much about dreams as

anything else and so it's a fair question, but you're asking them to do something they don't do. it's like blaming shakespeare for not writing novels. it'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. there's a tendency these days to say that great songwriters were poets. i don't think they were. i think it does a disservice to poets and lyricists to -- and i could find it artsy fartsy honestly. they do different things. just because it quacks and waddles doesn't prove it's a duck. for example, poets make their own music, song lyricists hear

the music and language and they have to keep it. they also have to make it serve the language of somebody else's melody. that's an inherent and significant difference between a song and a poem. that's another lecture that would take me an hour and a half. that's a good question. thank you for coming. >> we have a steinway piano that was the wilson's they bought it for their daughter at a time when before people listened to music the way we do today. you had pianos in your home. it was bought in 1893. it was in the white house with the wilsons and we do keep it tuned. if anyone would like to play we would be happy to accompany you with our own vocals. thank you all for being here.

coming up on american history tv programs from reel america. next a nasa documentary detailing the first mission to land two men on the moon. that's fold by the story of the construction of the hoover dam. in an hour a 1960 interview with herbert hoover who discusses life beyond his presidency. and later u.s. army captain william johnston with his work on the republic of vietnam in the 1960s. that's all ahead here on c-span 3. this labor day, on this c-span network, on c-span at