What Led Harburg to Write the Song, â€å“brother, Can You Spare a Dime?ã¢â‚¬â

1932 popular music vocal

Song

"Blood brother, Can Y'all Spare a Dime?"
Sheet music cover for Americana
Song
Composer(south)	Jay Gorney
Lyricist(s)	Yip Harburg

"Brother, Tin can You Spare a Dime?" is i of the all-time-known American songs of the Peachy Depression. Written past lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Jay Gorney, "Brother, Can You lot Spare a Dime?" was part of the 1932 musical revue Americana; the melody is based on a Russian-Jewish lullaby. The song tells the story of the universal everyman, whose honest work towards achieving the American dream has been foiled past the economic collapse. Unusually for a Broadway song, it was equanimous largely in a minor key, as befits the subject matter. The song became best known through recordings by Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallée that were released in late 1932. The song received positive reviews and was one of the most popular songs of 1932. Every bit 1 of the few popular songs during the era to discuss the darker aspects of the plummet, it came to be viewed as an anthem of the Bang-up Low.

Groundwork [edit]

Unemployed men exterior a soup kitchen in Chicago, 1931.

The Great Depression in the United States, which started with the 1929 Wall Street crash, had a severe impact on the country. In 1932, 25 percent of American men were unemployed.^{[one] [2]}

Subsequently his appliance business organisation went bankrupt, Yip Harburg had gone into the music business organisation, working as a lyricist.^[iii] The melody derives from a Jewish lullaby that the composer Jay Gorney, who emigrated to the United States in 1906, heard in his native Russia. Initially it had other lyrics which discussed a romantic breakup.^{[ane] [three] [iv]} Gorney recalled that the pair came upwards with the championship "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" after walking in the Key Park where they heard unemployed men asking "Can you spare a dime?"^[5] Harburg recalled that he was working on a song for the musical Americana: "We had to take a title... Not to say, my wife is sick, I've got vi children, the Crash put me out of business, hand me a dime. I detest songs of that kind."^[1] Harburg'due south worksheets show that he went through several drafts of the lyrics, which included a satirical version attacking John D. Rockefeller and other tycoons. However, over time Harburg moved towards more than physical imagery, resulting in the final version.^[1] Both Gorney and Harburg were socialists.^[six]

Limerick and lyrical interpretation [edit]

The song is near a human being who has sought the American dream, just was foiled past the Great Low. He is the universal everyman who holds various professions, beingness a farmer and a construction worker too as a veteran of World State of war I: information technology is intended to comprehend all listeners.^{[1] [4]} The man is someone "who kept faith in America, and now America has betrayed him". Afterward three years of the Depression, the homo has lost his job and is reduced to begging for clemency. He recognizes the human whose dime (equivalent to $1.55 in 2020) he is request for.^{[7] [eight]} The lyrics refer to "Yankee Doodle Dum", a reference to patriotism, and the evocation of veterans likewise recalls the mid-1932 Bonus Army protests most military machine bonuses payable simply after 21 years.^{[nine] [10]} Harburg said in an interview: "the man is really saying: I made an investment in this country. Where the hell are my dividends? ... [The song] doesn't reduce him to a beggar. It makes him a dignified human existence, asking questions—and a bit outraged, too, as he should be."^[1] This reflects the socialist or Marxist idea that workers deserve to savor the fruits of their labor, rather than have it be diverted by others.^{[1] [6]}

"Brother, Tin can Y'all Spare a Dime?" has an unusual structure for a Broadway song. First, rather than starting in a major key, as most Broadway songs exercise, information technology begins in a minor cardinal, which is darker and more appropriate for the Depression. When discussing the prosperous past, the melody jumps an octave on the words "building a dream", emphasizing the dream, and moves briefly into a major primal, evoking energy and optimism. This is placed in inexplainable and poignant contrast with the reality ("standing in line, / Just waiting for bread"). The song then reverts to the augmented ascendant of the minor key in the word "time" in the line "One time I built a railroad, made information technology run / Made it race confronting time," marking the end of prosperous times, and changing to a contemplative mood. Each of the iii chief stanzas terminate in a direct appeal to the listener, "Brother, Can Yous Spare a Dime?" The bridge deals with the vocalist's experiences every bit a veteran of the Great War, falling from patriotism "looked swell" to the discordant harmonies of "slogging through hell". The song so ends, not on a note of resignation, merely with anger – repeating the get-go (every bit is usual for Broadway songs), an octave higher, but with a significant change: the friendly "Brother, can yous spare a dime?" is replaced with the more assertive "Buddy, tin can you lot spare a dime?"^{[1] [6]} According to Harold Meyerson and Ernest Harburg, "[r]hythmically and melodically it sounds like a Jewish chant."^[1] An article in Tablet magazine suggested that the melody was similar to Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem.^[eleven]

Musical and cover versions [edit]

The song was outset performed by the vaudeville vocaliser Rex Weber equally part of the musical Americana,^{[3] [v]} which ran from Oct to Dec 1932 and was non a success. Iii weeks after Americana opened, the vocal was covered by crooner Bing Crosby for Brunswick Records; it was also covered by Rudy Vallee presently thereafter for Columbia Records. Unusually, Vallee's version includes a spoken introduction, in which the narrator states that the song is "a chip out of character" for him. The song became popular through these versions, which were both oft aired on the radio and competed for listeners. By the end of the year, Al Jolson had also covered the vocal on his pop show for NBC.^[3] The song has been covered by at to the lowest degree 52 artists in the United States^[11] including Judy Collins and Tom Waits.^[12]

In the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, it was recorded past Harry Roy and his Orchestra (From the Cafe Anglais, London) in 1933 and issued by Parlophone, with vocals by Bill Currie, featuring non-song spoken language by Currie and Roy. A version past Lew Stone and his Band (again at the Buffet Anglais) was recorded the aforementioned year for a "Lew Stone Favourites" medley, with vocals by Al Bowlly, and released past Decca.^[13] In 1948, a revival of the song past British vocalist Steve Conway was released on Columbia.^[14]

During the 1970s stagflation and in light of the Watergate scandal, Harburg wrote a parody version for The New York Times:^{[15] [16]}

Once we had a Roosevelt
Praise the Lord!
Life had significant and hope.
Now nosotros're stuck with Nixon, Agnew, Ford,
Brother, can you spare a rope?

Reception and legacy [edit]

At the time, reviews of musicals rarely devoted much space to the songs' lyrics and melody. That was not true of the reviews of Americana.^[17] In The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson wrote that "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was "plaintive and thundering" and "the showtime vocal of the twelvemonth that can be sung... Mr. Gorney has expressed the spirit of these times with more heart-breaking anguish than any of the prose bards of the day."^{[17] [18]} Gilbert Gabriel in New York American wrote: "Gorney and Harburg accept written something so stirring that information technology will run away with the whole bear witness".^[17] Theater Arts Monthly 's review stated that the song "deflates the rolling bombast of our political nightmare with greater effect than all the rest of Mr. McEvoy'due south satirical skits put together"; Multifariousness said that "Brother" was the only part of the show worth praising.^[17] Harburg later on wrote that the song earned him several g dollars and helped him get started in the music business.^[19] Business leaders tried to have information technology banned from the radio, viewing the song as "a dangerous attack on the American economic system". They were unsuccessful, due to the song's popularity.^{[2] [12]} William Zinsser writes that "[t]he song and then lacerated the national conscience that radio stations banned information technology" for existence "sympathetic to the unemployed".^[20]

Few thematic Low songs were popular, because Americans did not want music which reminded them of the economic situation, but "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was "the exception that proved the dominion".^[3] Unlike other pop songs of the aforementioned era which tended to exist upbeat, with titles such every bit "Happy Days Are Here Over again" (1929), "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930), and "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (1931), "Blood brother" "put words and music to what many Americans were feeling—fright, grief, even anger".^{[two] [12]} The song was one of the starting time musical works to take the Low seriously.^[one] It was one of the almost popular xx songs of 1932 in the United States.^[3] Philip Furia and Michael Lasser wrote that the song "embodied the Depression for millions of Americans... No other popular vocal caught the spirit of its time with such urgency."^[7] In 2007, Clyde Haberman wrote that the song "endures as an canticle for the downtrodden and the forgotten".^[12] In 2011, Zinsser wrote that "Blood brother" "still hovers in the national retention; I can hear its ghostly echo in the chants of the Occupy Wall Street marchers".^[xx] In a 2008 retrospective, NPR described it as "the anthem of the Great Depression".^[half-dozen]

According to Meyerson and Ernest Harburg, the challenge that Yip Harburg faced in crafting the lyrics was "much like the challenge confronting the street-corner panhandler: to found the grapheme's individuality and the moral and political basis for his merits". They write that the latter achieved this by gradually building intimacy with the listener, starting in third person and moving into commencement, second, and then both first and second combined ("I'm your pal"). The internal rhymes aid the listener remember that the vocalist was working towards a dream, which is now shattered. They as well write that the song is a "masterpiece of economy" in building towards a "climactic assertion of commonality and interdependency" in "I'chiliad your pal". "The music and lyrics together brand us experience the placidity desperation of the singer."^[ane]

Pianist Rob Kapilow remarked that the title is "the entire history of the Depression in a single phrase" and the listener ends up "feeling the time-immemorial complaint that the working human being doesn't get the rewards". He says that Harburg and Gorney were brave to express this message in 1932 "when no one was saying this out loud".^{[half dozen]} Furia and Lasser write that the song is unusual in relying on a stiff narrative instead of emotion or imagery.^[seven] Thomas South. Hischak wrote that the song was "one of the first theatre songs to have a potent sociological message, and it remains one of the most powerful of the genre".^[21] The vocal was the most prominent cultural representation of the Bonus Army.^[nine]

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f one thousand h i j chiliad} Meyerson, Harold; Harburg, Ernest (1995). Who Put the Rainbow in the Magician of Oz?: Yip Harburg, Lyricist. Academy of Michigan Press. pp. 46–52. ISBN978-0-472-08312-1.
2. ^ ^{a b c} McCollum, Sean (September 17, 2019). "Brother Can You lot Spare a Dime? The story behind the song". The Kennedy Heart. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Immature, William H.; Young, Nancy K. (2007). "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?". The Bully Low in America: A Cultural Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 72–74. ISBN978-0-313-33522-8.
4. ^ ^{a b} Kazin, Michael (2011). American Dreamers: How the Left Inverse a Nation. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 176. ISBN978-0-307-26628-6.
5. ^ ^{a b} Gorney, Sondra (2005). Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?: The Life of Composer Jay Gorney. Scarecrow Printing. pp. 12–thirteen. ISBN978-0-8108-5655-four.
6. ^ ^{a b c d e} Kapilow, Rob (Nov xv, 2008). "A Depression-Era Canticle For Our Times". NPR. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
7. ^ ^{a b c} Furia, Philip; Lasser, Michael (2006). "Brother, Tin You Spare a Dime?". America'due south Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Can Pan Alley. Routledge. pp. 72, 99–100. ISBN978-1-135-47192-7.
8. ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Existent Coin? A Historical Toll Index for Apply equally a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antique Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Alphabetize for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Lodge. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved Jan 1, 2020.
9. ^ ^{a b} Hairdresser, Lucy Chiliad. (2004). Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition. University of California Press. pp. 104–105. ISBN978-0-520-93120-6.
10. ^ Zinn, Howard (2009). The Twentieth Century: A People'south History. Harper Collins. p. 116. ISBN978-0-06-184346-iv.
11. ^ ^{a b} Boehm, Lisa Krissoff (5 April 2018). "How a Russian Jewish Lullaby Turned into the Anthem of the Forgotten Men and Women of Our Country". Tablet Mag . Retrieved 26 May 2020.
12. ^ ^{a b c d} Haberman, Clyde (27 Nov 2007). "A 1930s Song of Americana Yet Resonates". The New York Times . Retrieved 26 May 2020.
13. ^ Rust, Brian; Forbes, Sandy (1987). British dance bands on record 1911 to 1945. Harrow: General Gramophone Publications. ISBN0-902470-15-9. OCLC 17951884. {{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
14. ^ "Record Round-Upward". Sunday Pictorial. September 19, 1948. p. 11.
15. ^ Brahms, Caryl; Sherrin, Ned (1984). Song by Song: The Lives and Work of xiv Keen Lyric Writers. R. Anderson Publications. p. 140. See rope, dime. ISBN978-0-86360-014-2.
16. ^ Sherrin, Ned (2008). Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN978-0-19-923716-6.
17. ^ ^{a b c d} Meyerson & Harburg 1995, p. 54.
18. ^ Atkinson, Brooks (October 6, 1932). "The Play: Blueprint and Dance in an "American Revue" That Represents Modern Taste in Artistry". The New York Times.
19. ^ Alonso, Harriet Hyman (2013). Yip Harburg: Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activist. Wesleyan University Press. p. 32. ISBN978-0-8195-7124-3.
20. ^ ^{a b} Zinsser, William (four Nov 2011). "Blood brother, Can You lot Spare a Chore?". The American Scholar . Retrieved 22 May 2020.
21. ^ Hischak, Thomas Due south. (1995). "Brother, Tin Yous Spare a Dime?". The American Musical Theatre Song Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN978-0-313-29407-five.

External links [edit]

• Autographed score (1932) published past Paramount-Publix

malleymottee.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother,_Can_You_Spare_a_Dime%3F

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