The Voices And Music Of World War I

About This Project | Music | Spoken Word | Movie Intro

Irving Berlin explained to the editor of Variety Music Cavalcade that "the history of America could be traced through its music." The 1920s became known as the Jazz Age after the popularity of jazz, a new musical upstart. The music of the 1930s captured the hard scrabble times of the Great Depression. From the American Revolution to contemporary international conflicts, popular songs also celebrated the heroism and tragedies of America's wars. During World War I, Tin Pan Alley churned out hundreds of such songs.

With radio and sound recording technology still in its infancy - and save the itinerant musician - sheet music production continued to flourish. WWI sheet music captured the sentiment of the day, both on the battlefield and on home front. Pun-laden jabs came full force in titles like We'll Knock The Heligo, Into Heligo, Out of Heligoland; while a fascination with French culture was apparent in works such as How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm After They've Seen Paree. From military leader to Red Cross nurse to stoic mother, character tributes were a dime a dozen: General Pershing, The Rose of No Man's Land and America, Here's My Boy, just to name a few.

Social commentary, too, inevitably surfaced in WWI music - most prominently in The Makin's Of The USA, "a plea in song for tobacco for the boys over there," and The Alcoholic Blues, a lilting indictment of Prohibition. Other works offered a harsher glimpse into the cultural climate of the country: Mammy's Chocolate Soldier and You'll Find Old Dixieland In France proved unequivocally that racial divisions persisted in the midst of patriotic solidarity.

Ironically, the first big hit of the war, I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier by Morton Harvey, was an anti-war song. The ballad reflected Americans' reluctance to enter the war raging across Europe. After the sinking of the Lusitania, however, America changed its tune - literally - to When The Lusitania Went Down.

The fledgling recording industry quickly hopped on the band wagon: Victor, Columbia, Little Wonder, Paramount, Gennett and other record labels cashed in on the popularity of war songs. Phonographs, a popular new media, brought the war home to American parlors, with speeches, novelty songs and patriotic anthems. Through recorded sound, the country's great leaders and orators galvanized the homefront in a way no headline could. And musical anthems such as Over There rallied the country in song.

The material presented in this website bursts with innocence, optimism, humor and struggle - and chronicles the American experience in the Great War through song and spoken word: The Voices And Music Of World War I...

About This Project | Music | Spoken Word | Movie Intro