Music: Campaign Songs

After the Democratic National Convention adjourned in Chicago last summer, many a hotel corridor resounded with the tune of God Bless America, but the words were different:

God damn Republicans — scum of the earth

We will meet them — and beat them

In a fight with the right on our side —

Out of Wall Street

Came a Willkie

He’s a silky S. 0. B.

God Damn Republicans — the G. 0. P.

Such a blasphemous song was obviously not the thing for official Democratic campaign material. Nor was the official 1936 campaign song, Happy Days Are Here Again, relevant to 1940. Last week the Democratic National Committee insisted that they had no official song, would have none. At campaign headquarters in Manhattan, 20 or more people turned up every day to sing (with typical composers’ voices) until Democrats were beside themselves. Some 300 songs were submitted by mail, promptly rejected. The Committee likewise explicitly disavowed songs like Roosevelt’s Campaign Song, by two Chicagoans, whose chorus goes “We want Roosevelt, he gave us all of our loans. . . . We want Roosevelt, he saved our loved ones’ homes. . . .”

Nearest thing to an official Willkie song is a jazzlike tune, the favorite of the music committee of the Associated Willkie Clubs: Wendell Willkie Goes to Washington, by Murray Whitman and Noel Bear. Chorus:

Wendell Willkie goes to Washington,

Wendell Willkie’s on his way,

Wendell Willkie goes to Washington,

Let’s shout “Hip! Hip! Hooray!”

But other Willkie songs last week clamored for recognition. Robert Crawford, Alaska-born Princetonian (1925), wrote one called Thank God! We’ve Found the Man. In San Francisco the Willkie Volunteers were singing Where There’s A Willkie There’s A Way (“Even the Milky Way will twinkle the Willkie Way”). The New Jersey Associated Willkie Clubs sang: “Heigho, heigho, It’s back to work we go: With Wendell Willkie leading us the jobs will grow.” Headquarters of the Associated Willkie Clubs had received 1,000 Willkie songs, winnowed them to three, sent a Negro band about the U. S. to play them.