Ringing Down the Curtain on the Old War Songs
By MAJOR CLEFF
Apeda
Walter Donaldson
YOU probably remember the day peace was declared. Yes, some day, wasn't it? Of course, it is old stuff now, just a memory and a date in history, but no one will ever forget it. The worn, tired soldiers over there recall it as the moment when the sun broke through the drab, terrible war cloud that had hung over them for four years and brought them peace; it is remembered by folks at night when a dozen New Year's and election nights were rolled into one, bringing them a darned fine, four-ply, 18-karat headache, guaranteed to wear several days.
Mention the signing of the peace agreement to a song publisher or writer, and he will raise his brows and grunt, "Yes, I remember it." And he has reason to. Not that he didn't welcome the cessation of hostilities as much as anyone, but while the war had turned the world upside down and inside out, the sudden declaration of peace had the same effect on the song publishing business.
Joe Young
And the explanation is simple. With the war over and the boys starting for home, people had no further use for war songs. Songs that were selling at the rate of 50,000 a day became back numbers over night, and were stuck down in the music cabinet along with "Two Little Girls in Blue" and "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me."
People who had been singing songs full of tender sentiment and fond memory to boys over there, wanted something different—something about their coming home and what would happen to them when they reached here, etc. The war was over and they wanted to forget it and they wanted songs to help them forget it, and the song writers and publishers knew it. No doctor or professor of psychology knows the public mind better or clearer than the song publisher or the boys who write the songs. Don't forget that! And so, the moment that the news of peace was verified, these keen readers of the public mind knew that they must get a different kind of song, a lot of them, and get them quick. Only those with a staff of trained, competent writers could cope with the situation, and the one that forged immediately to the front and met the emergency was Waterson, Berlin & Snyder.
Sam Lewis
I dropped into their establishment on that historic day. A hurry call had been sent out for every writer on the big staff and they were all at it. In every available room on the two floors, behind locked doors, writers like Joe Young, Sam Lewis, Walter Donaldson, Edgar Leslie, M. K. Jerome, Bert Grant, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and a score of others, were working the l'il old inspiration for all it was worth. Something new! Something different! "Baby's Prayer at Twilight" would no longer do. Baby's father was through fighting, out of danger of the Hun's guns, and didn't need baby's prayers, or anybody else's. "Hello Central, Give Me No Man's Land," that wonderful song that Al Jolson started spreading like a prairie fire over the continent, must give way. The little girl of the song could hang up the receiver and climb upstairs to bed, 'cause daddy wasn't in No Man's Land any longer. He was on his way home. That seemed to be the real theme—out of the trenches, out of France, home and happiness—and so the songs came—"Goodbye France," "Don't Cry Frenchy," "How're Ya
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