Monday, December 11, 2017 – Tom Lehrer and The Roy Moore Victory Song – Vote Doug Jones!
Good Morning, Music History Class,
Today we will examine victory songs that for whatever reason did not become popular. Take for example, The Confederate Victory Song.
Cindy Lee don’t wring your hankie; I just shot me a Yankee
Tell the slaves to keep on working in the fields.
While still popular in certain parts of The South today, those four days in Gettysburg in 1863 put a damper on that tune.
But we have this never made it tune from April 1912 first recorded by Ice Berg.
Bon Voyage to you new Titanic; you’re the greatest ship on the sea; Bon Voyage to you new Titanic, say ‘Hello’ to the Statue of Liberty; We know with what your costing you’re unsinkable; to wish you a safe crossing is unthinkable…
Another from the lost vaults of no victory songs include from 1937:
There’ll be a hot, hot time in Lakehurst, New Jersey when the Hindenburg lands today.
It has the great line:
All the way from Germany, you’ve flown her to us and we know that the motto was New Jersey or bust!
Ah yes, we have such great songs as “We’ll all be there to meet her When Amelia Earhart Circles the Globe” and the ever popular Custer’s Victory Song from Little Big Horn.
When the great satirist, Tom Lehrer recorded the following song first in 1953 in Boston and then with Songs Revisited in 1960 and again in 1966, I suspect he never foresaw or hoped to see individuals who still actually believe the world was better then. The 1960’s were violent enough let alone the 1860’s!
Dear Mr. Lehrer,
If you have a problem with I Want to Go Back to Dixie as the Roy Moore Victory Song, let me know.
Satirically, yours,
DrD
Dear Voters of Alabama,
Do the right thing and vote for Doug Jones.
Unless, you wanna go back to Dixie, as when “things were better” as suggested by Roy Moore.
From Twitter: Jesus said “Go forth and sin no more.” Not “Go forth and sin Roy Moore.”
Seriously concerned US Citizen with current voter registration card in Texas,
DrD
The text and a sing along.
Well, what I like to do on formal occasions like this is to take some of the various types of songs that we all know and presumably love, and, as it were, to kick them when they’re down. I find if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene, or — as they say in New York — sophisticated. I’d like to illustrate with several hundred examples for you this evening, first of all, the Southern type song about the wonders of the American South. But it’s always seemed to me that most of these song really don’t go far enough. The following song, on the other hand, goes too far. It’s called I wanna go back to Dixie.
I wanna go back to Dixie,
Take me back to dear ol’ Dixie,
That’s the only li’l ol’ place for li’l ol’ me.
Ol’ times there are not forgotten,
Whuppin’ slaves and sellin’ cotton,
And waitin’ for the Robert E. Lee.
(it was never there on time.)
I’ll go back to the Swanee,
Where pellagra makes you scrawny,
And the honeysuckle clutters up the vine
I really am a-fixin’
To go home and start a-mixin’
Down below that Mason-Dixon line.
Oh, poll tax, how I love ya, how I love ya,
My dear old poll tax.
Won’tcha come with me to alabammy,
Back to the arms of my dear ol’ mammy,
Her cookin’s lousy and her hands are clammy,
But what the hell, it’s home.
Yes, for paradise the southland is my nominee.
Jes’ give me a ham hock and a grit of hominy.
I wanna go back to Dixie
I wanna be a dixie pixie
And eat cornpone ’til it’s comin’ outta my ears
I wanna talk with southern gentlemen
And put my white sheet on again,
I ain’t seen one good lynchin’ in years.
The land of the boll weevil,
Where the laws are medieval,
Is callin’ me to come and nevermore roam.
I wanna go back to the southland,
That “y’all” and “shet-ma-mouth” land,
Be it ever so decadent,
There’s no place like home.
Here's What I'm Thinking 