The Life Album of Presidential Campaign Songs (1964)
Life was so much simpler before TV and radio took over political campaigns. Back in the Olden Days, candidates relied on songs to help them get the word out and get elected. Imagine if that were still true– would Clinton have been elected on the strength of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinkin’ About Tomorrow?” I doubt it.
Anyway, this is a collection of campaign songs from days of yore, ranging from 1800 with Jefferson’s Anti-Adams ditty about Fair and Free Elections, up through a lively Irishoid ballad for Kennedy. In between are snippets of ephemera sung by an uncredited group of people, complete with brass bands, barbershop quartets, banjo pickin’ and women with abnormally shrill voices.
Inside is a nice little lyric booklet that spends a paragraph or two putting each of the different songs in a historical context for you non-history buffs out there. On the back cover is a startling array of facts detailing the readership of Life magazine. For example, did you know that 26.6% of all US females 18 and older per average issue read Life (at least in 1964)? I bet you didn’t. I’m not exactly sure what this has to do with presidential elections, but it makes for good reading, I suppose. The inside has similar commentary on Life.
This is my personal favorite– wow, they were really reaching for sloguns there. It reminds me of high school when everyone made up last-minute slogans to run for Student Council, like “Make it Happen, vote for Chapman” and “Don’t be Odd, Vote for Todd.”
This is a song in support of Rutherford B. Hayes. Remember him? He won the election by one electoral vote, when his opponent (Tilden, the one the song suggest should “stay home”) won by 250,000 popular votes.
This is a total dis on Benjamin Harrison, and accuses him of riding his grandfather’s coattails.
Irving Berlin actually wrote this one! Unlike the lengthy ballads of the earlier songs (like the anti-Martin Van Buren one which has 4 fiery verses and invokes satan), The I Like Ike one is pretty straightforward. I think the “Uncle Joe” they keep mentioning is Stalin. It has a pretty complex rhyme scheme, too: AABC AABC DEDE AAFGGA. Holy crap, I can’t believe I just charted that out. I’m a dork.
