NRR Project: Harry Truman’s speech at the Democratic National Convention (July 15, 1948)

 

NRR Project: Harry Truman’s speech at the Democratic National Convention

Delivered July 15, 1948

It was the first presidential nomination acceptance speech to be broadcast on TV. To really understand the effectiveness of this speech, one must understand the circumstances preceding it. To do so, read David Pietrusza’sessay on it at the National Recording Registry.

It was delivered at close to 2 in the morning, almost four hours late. The party was deeply divided. Truman was unpopular, and could not get the legislation he wanted through the Republican Congress. No one thought he would win the election.

He came up with a feisty little address, retailing the sins of the Republican Party. “ . . . the people know that the Democratic Party is the people's party, and the Republican Party is the Party of special interest, and it always has been and always will be,” he said. That he managed to rouse and unify the crowd that stood unsteadily after a long day of nominating is remarkable. He veered away from political rhetoric and spoke plainly. He illustrated his character with his words. And damned if he didn’t win the election!

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Flatt and Scruggs play ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown.’.

NRR Project: The Jack Benny Program, “Jack Is Robbed of Ronald Colman’s Oscar” (March 28, 1948)

NRR Project: The Jack Benny Program

“Jack Is Robbed of Ronald Colman’s Oscar”

Performed by Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, “Rochester” (Eddie Anderson), Don Wilson, et al

Performed March 28, 1948

28:59

It was the best comedy show on radio, hands down. It lasted from May 2, 1932 to May 22, 1955, one of the longest-running and most successful shows in the history of media. What made it so great?

Benny didn’t have the improvisational wit of Fred Allen, nor the cracked logic of Burns and Allen, nor the folksy tones of Vic ‘n’ Sade, Fibber McGee and Molly, Lum and Abner, and, yes, even Amos and Andy. What he had were killer writers who slowly transformed it from a variety show to a character-based situation comedy that featured its star as an inspired straight man.

The writers deserve mention – over the years Harry Conn, Al Boasberg, Howard Snyder, Hugh Wedlock Jr., Bill Morrow, Ed Beloin, Sam Perrin, Milt Josefsberg, George Balzer, and John Tackaberry all contributed to the Benny mythos.

He gathered top-notch performing talent who took what was essentially his direction of the show and made it really perc. He was a master of timing and reaction. Most importantly, he let his compatriots on the air get the laughs. He set them up with a deeply flawed persona – “Jack Benny” was vain, cheap, shrimpy, and balding, a petty smart-aleck who was almost always wrong. He played a schlub.

There are many sources of information about this show, such was its importance. You can read the explanatory essay by Kathy Fuller-Seeley at the National Recording Registry. The greatest capsule explication of The Jack Benny Show is in John Dunning’s On the Air, pgs. 355-363. You can also check out Benny’s and daughter’s memoir, Sundays Nights at Seven, and show writer Milt Josefberg’s The Jack Benny Show.

He started off cracking wise about New York, from whence the show originally came. This morphed into him doing parodies in between orchestra numbers for dancing. Benny started to banter with his fellow performers. Gradually, the gags about his pretended attributes turned into sources of endless jokes. He was so stingy he kept his money in his sock, his mattress, a secret bank vault under his house. He saw himself as a leading man. No one else did. He and his hair often got separated. He had himself driven, slowly, around town in a car made in 1925.

He moved the show to Hollywood in 1935. His announcer beginning in 1934, Don Wilson, was a jolly man mocked for his weight, who could deliver the integrated wisecracking commercials Benny and company snuck into the show. Benny’s wife Sadye Marks became Mary Livingstone, at first a daffy poet and singer and eventually a sharp-tongued deflater of Jack’s pretensions.

In 1935, he hired a talented tenor, Kenny Baker, to play a numskull version of himself. In 1936, he hired bandleader Phil Harris, who started off subdued and soon became a bragging, vain hipster with his mind on women and booze, a real ignoramus. In 1937, he brought on Eddie Anderson, who morphed into Benny’s put-upon butler, valet, chauffeur, and manservant, Rochester. He was the most beloved character; audiences cheered his entrances.

In 1939, Baker quit and Dennis Day became the new dopey tenor. Now the cast was complete. The show changed. Instead of spoofs of current movies, the show focused on Jack’s foibles – his lousy dates, his efforts to make and save a dollar, his disastrous encounters with studio executives. The show became about the creation of the show,  a “backstage” comedy, meta ahead of its time.

The great film actor Ronald Colman and his wife Benita first guest-starred on the show in December of 1945. Playing his next-door neighbors, these proper English were driven mad by Benny, who was always borrowing something, inviting himself to their parties, and generally being a pest.

The thrust of this episode consists of Jack selfishly asking to borrow Colman’s recently won Oscar to show to Rochester. Colman reluctantly consents, and Jack walks back to his house. A robber stops him in the street, and says, “Your money or your life!” Pause. “Look, bud, I said your money or your life!” “I’m thinking it over!” Jack replies. This is often cited as the biggest laugh Benny ever got – although the famous “Drear Pooson” gag of 1950 was more convulsive.

Benny made the transition to television in 1955, and continued for another decade. He continued to work until his death in 1974, making him one of the longest-lived comedians in American history.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Truman speaks at the Democratic National Convention, 1948.

NRR Project: Mahalia Jackson sings 'Move On Up a Little Higher' (1948)

 

NRR Project: “Move On Up a Little Higher”

Composed by W. Herbert Brewster

Performed by Mahalia Jackson

Mildred Falls, piano; Herbert James Francis, organ

Recorded Sept. 12, 1947

First read the expert essay on this piece by Robert F. Darden at the National Recording Registry.

Mahalia Jackson was gifted with an enormous, resonant voice. She represents a new force in gospel music. Her full-voiced, keening sound is redolent with the blues influence. (The first blues singers who made it big in the 1920s were women such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.) The ‘shouting” of lyrics, the big swooping lines of melody, the intense passion, all transformed gospel music and how we judged the practitioners of same. This was a soul-infused sound that combined a sense of urgency with deep feeling.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Jack Benny Show.

NRR Project: Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 performed by John Kirkpatrick (1945/1948)

 

NRR Project: Piano Sonata No. 2

Composed by Charles Ives

Performed by John Kirkpatrick

Recorded 1945; released 1948

First, read Drew Massey’s excellent explanatory essay on this piece at the National Recording Registry.

At first listen, the music seems pure chaos. Is this even music, much less classical music?

It is the music of Charles Ives (1874-1954), an absolute original who followed no existing musical tradition when it came to composing. He heard music in cacophony and dissonance, and was not afraid of transcribing this completely new sound to paper. He confounded his contemporaries. (In fact, he was a weekend composer; he sold insurance for a living.) Not popular early in his career, he became noted in later decades, after he had ceased to compose.

Once you open yourself to his work through repeated listenings, you can find things you like. He can be unexpectedly lyrical. He has a stirring energy that overcomes your senses. He dots his work with hilarious musical quotations and paraphrases. Most importantly, he respects your intelligence and challenges you to hear what he hears. His work is, in its own way, beautiful.

The Sonata consists of four movements. The piece is popularly known as the “Concord Sonata.” Each movement represents an author or authors who typified the Transcendentalist movement in America during the mid-19^th century. “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts,” and “Thoreau” follow each other. Interestingly, Ives stated that he saw the musical score s a mere suggestion, a platform for improvisation by the interpreter. There can not be said to be a “definitive” performance of it.

The piece was recorded in 1945, but released in 1948. Interestingly, it became a best-seller, and accelerated the general interest in the ‘til-then forgotten compositions of Charles Ives – symphonies, “sets,” overtures, songs, marches, choral works, solo piano studies, works for organ, and flat-out unclassifiable pieces. Ives was fearless and prolific.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: “Move On Up a Little Higher”.

NRR Project: The Chuck Wagon Gang sings 'I'll Fly Away' (1948)

 

NRR Project: “I’ll Fly Away”

Composed by Albert E. Brumley

Performed by the Chuck Wagon Gang

Recorded 1948

2:43

Oooh! Here’s a really good explanatory essay by Bill C.Malone at the National Recording Registry.

This gospel standard is an elegant and tuneful number, easy to remember and easy to harmonize. No wonder it’s so popular! Its fervent energy speaks of the longing for spiritual release, a feeling everyone can identify with.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: John Kirkpatrick plays Charles Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 2.

NRR Project: 'I Can Hear It Now: 1933-1945' (1948)

 

NRR Project: “I Can Hear It Now: 1933-1945”

Produced and co-written by Fred Friendly

Co-written and narrated by Edward R. Murrow

Compiled for Columbia Records 1948

46:44

Another excellent essay by Cary O’Dell is available here – it explains this entry quite well!

The idea of producing an album of significant sound slices from recent world history was Fred Friendly’s. His experience as a radio producer led him to think of a way to summarize the historical period of 1933 to 1945 through sound excerpts. The project was initiated in part due to a musician’s strike. Without material to put out, the record companies were hurting. They needed content! In addition, the invention of audio tape made it much easier to create sound collages.

Friendly collaborated with CBS’s star reporter, Edward R. Murrow, on the project. They put together a sonic “scrapbook,” bridged with narration, that provided a timeline of memories for people to listen to. Starting with the voice of Will Rogers in 1933, the album moves through the Depression and the onset and completion of World War II. We hear Churchill, Roosevelt, Mussolini, Hitler. We travel to distant places and listen to the voices of history.

The record was a huge hit. It is interesting to hear these snippets set off and contextualized by the reassuring voice of Murrow. His words seem to make the progress of events seem purposeful and connected. In fact, the concept of the “sound bite” started here. Excerpts were more listener-friendly than long passages. This encapsulation of significant historical events proved a winner; subsequent albums overed the periods 1945-1949, 1919-1932, and the 1960s.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: “I’ll Fly Away.”

NRR Project: “Evangeline Special”/“Love Bridge Waltz”

 

NRR Project: “Evangeline Special”/“Love Bridge Waltz”

Performed by Iry Lejeune

Recorded 1948

2:27/2:52

Another entry I had no awareness of! What does this say?

It seems that no matter how hard you try to absorb all the sounds and the sights that’re out there, you’re going to miss some. OK, a lot. No matter how hard you try.

But that doesn’t mean you should give up! Let them pry the books out of your cold dead hands and pull the headphones from your dead ears. Get all the culture you can, every day. Of every kind.

This is a recording of Cajun music by the excellent accordionist Iry Lejeune. I learned everything that I know about the two songs from Ron Yule’s amazing essay on them at the National Recording Registry. You should read it. Then you will learn as much as I have.

These songs, one rollicking one plaintive, epitomize the Cajun sound – a tradition grounded in a different language, different customs, an unlikely embedded jewel in the American culture. These are dance tunes, made deliberately for live performance. As such, they are compelling musical documents.

As you may know, I am listening to and writing about every entry in the National Recording Registry, in order. In conjunction with this project, I am viewing and writing about all the entries in the National Film Registry in order as well. These twin Everests are half-climbed now. I have been doing this for years. I do not know if I will ever finish, but it’s certainly worth a try.

The great thing about these two endeavors is their inclusivity. I have been exposed to all kinds of cultural influences by watching/hearing them; their contents are as pieces in a museum. To write my way through them is a way to honor and examine them. They constitute part of America’s cultural pantheon.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: “I Can Hear It Now.”