I was on my way to the office on Sunday and made my monthly stop at CD Trader in Hollywood. For music aficionados post Pearl Harbor and pre Sputnik, it is a gold mine of otherwise unavailable jazz and crooner music for less than $3.00 a cd. I always buy 4 or 5 cd's a month, download them to my Itunes and Ipod and listen to them the next week while walking my dog and wish I were somewhere else (permanently). I picked up a collection called Wartime Anthems. The song "You Can't Say No To A Soldier" was part of the set. The lyrics astounded me. I listened two more times. Here is a reconstructed audio/video of the tune:
Amazing. This is 1942. Can you imagine someone singing this today about the troops in Iraq or Afghanistan? Never. The message is clear: it is patriotic to succumb to the prurient desires of some soon to be GI who will be putting his life on the line for his country. And this was no bar room melody sang in brothel parlors in the seedier parts of town. It was mainstream stuff. It makes me laugh when I listen to this song and think back to 1974. I always thought I invented sex and then perfected the art form with my first girlfriend in the back of my father's Bonneville station wagon. What a conceit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great find! I love CD Trader, but I have to admit the scope and depth of Amazon's inventory makes shopping for obscure or deleted catalog items a pleasure and so totally unlike how it used to be even 15 years ago.
ReplyDeletevery interesting video. I heard this in one of those docs on history channel. Actually, it's very innocent compared to some Rap music out there. The only critiscism I have is the girls hair. No woman wore her hair like that in 1942. She'd actually be laughed at.
ReplyDelete