Using words from songs to cheer us up

Politician use lines from old songs as their themes. Who’d have thought two of the most memorable lines in the Obama Inaugural address would have come from Scripture and Tin Pan Alley?

Scripture, sure, and St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians advising them it was time to put aside childish things fit nicely into this dreadful economy. And so did Jerome Kern’s and Dorothy Fields’s call to “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.â€

“Starting today,†Obama said, “we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin the work of remaking America,† his words paraphrasing a song from the 1938 Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire movie “Swing Time:â€

“Nothing’s impossible, I have found

For when my chin is on the ground,

I pick myself up

Dust myself off

Start all over again.â€

Those were the days when the American people, regardless of age or station, listened to the same popular music and during those Depression years, they often picked themselves up to the tune of cheerful and hopeful songs like “We’re in the Money,†“Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella†and a 1932 Irving Berlin song that gently mocked President Hoover and his simple solution to a grave crisis:

“Mr. Herbert Hoover

Says that now’s the time to buy,

So let’s have another cup of coffee,

And let’s have another piece of pie.â€

Hoover, who never struck me as a toe tapper, apparently appreciated the power of these songs and when Rudy Vallee, the most popular vocalist of the time, visited the White House, Hoover asked him to record a cheerful song that could provide a little escape for the people who were about to vote for him or the upstart Franklin Roosevelt.

Unfortunately, both Vallee and rival Bing Crosby recorded what was to become a dirge for the Hoover Administration and the anthem of the Depression:

“Once I built a railroad, made it run,

Made it race against time.

Once I built a railroad — now it’s done.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Around the same time, Roosevelt was finding a theme song of his own, something new he first heard the band playing at the 1932 Chicago convention that nominated him for president. It assured those reduced from building a railroad or a tower to the sun that change was not only coming, it was already here:

“Your cares and troubles are gone —

There’ll be no more from now on!

“Happy days are here again,

The skies above are clear again.

Let us sing a song of cheer again —

Happy days are here again.

“All together, shout it now —

There’s no one who can doubt it now,

So let’s tell the world about it now

Happy days are here again.â€

Which brings us back to the Obama Inauguration and to note that we should probably see no significance or symbolism in the song the Obamas chose to dance to at each of the 10 Inaugural Balls. It also dates back to the Depression era, but to 1941, when the long economic nightmare was ending.

Its title:  “At Last.â€

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com

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