We'll Meet Again

SteynonLine ^ | June 2, 2024 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

I hadn't intended to write about war songs this week. But I was struck by some of the responses to yesterday's D-Day special, and, as always, impressed by the resilience of the accompanying music. It's eighty years since June 6th 1944, four score and six since the first troops shipped out, and yet that sound remains unmistakeable. For those who were there, a few bars of "White Cliffs of Dover" will always mean a crowded railway platform in East Anglia as the troop train pulls out, and a snatch of "Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner" will always evoke the final pub singalong of the evening on your last night of leave...

Tin Pan Alley didn't get the First World War quite right. There were chin-up songs ("Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag") and gung-ho rousers ("Over There") but most everything else wore its opportunism rather too obviously - "Goodbye Broadway, Hello France", "The Beast Of Berlin (We're Going To Get Him)"... The trick was to take the song forms you peddled in peacetime and add a topical twist, so we had the wartime mother song - "So Long, Mother" - and the wartime telephone song - "Hello, Central, Give Me No Man's Land". In 1939, it looked as if the music business was going to make the same mistake all over again: The big song the British Expeditionary Force would be marching off to was supposed to be "We're Going To Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line", a song whose breezy confidence didn't survive first contact with the enemy:

[PGR88]

I love when Steyn writes about his true love - Broadway, big bands and show-tunes.

[Rummyfan]

Marking.

[Dawgreg]

I love those war years songs. They touched the heart for all those soldiers so far away from home giving all for what we have today. Bear that in mind when we fight for the very freedoms they fought and died for. Thanks Mark

[llevrok]

I still tear up when I hear Vera Lynn sing this, all the years gone by

[D_Idaho]

“We’ll Meet Again”

Great song! Always makes me think of “Dr. Strangelove.”

[Fiji Hill]

[Vera Lynn had] sung with the Charlie Kunz orchestra and had made a solo record of a leaden novelty called "Up The Wooden Hill To Bedfordshire".

Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire--Vera Lynn (1936)

"Bedfordshire" means bed and the "wooden hill" is a stairwell. Not sure what a GG is.

[Fiji Hill]

Hollywood Square Dance--Vera Lynn & Anne Shelton (1950)

[MV=PY]

He is excellent!

Dry wit and deep knowledge.

[dangus]

Someone remembers Vera Lynn...

[Songcraft]

"Gee-gee" is a UK child's name for "horse", according to this source.   (The kid in this song must have rode up the wooden hill on daddy's back.)

[ScaniaBoy]

Bedfordshire is a small county in east England situated between London and Cambridge. (Image with wooden hill.)

I don't know what GG means (Governor General does not quite fit), but the first time she sings about her father it sounds like he is the old GP (general practitioner). The second time I also hear "GG", but could that have been a mistake? No possibilities to make a digital correction in those days.

[Songcraft]

See this post.

[Fiji Hill]

My favorite Vera Lynn song:

Calling Me Home (1936)

This sounds like an answer to Old Fashioned Lady by Vaughn De Leath (1929).

[mass55th]

I grew up in the 50's. My mother was a big fan of Glenn Miller's. On one of our trips downtown, she stopped in a store that sold record players and records. She bought the RCA Records Limited Edition boxed collection of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, 45 RPM vinyl records. There are 15 records in the collection....60 songs. Several years ago when my oldest son was working for a record company, he copied the collection onto CD's, and then when cars no longer came with CD Players, I reformatted them to mp3 files.

I've been a fan of Big Band/Swing for a very long time: Benny Goodman, Bob Crosby and his Orchestra, Duke Ellington, etc., along with special collections of Spike Jones, the Andrew Sisters, and music collections from Britain that were popular during the war.

[mass55th]

This is one of my favorite songs by Tony Pastor and his Orchestra:

Twenty-one dollars a day once a month (1941)

[mass55th]

And this one from Johnny Mercer (1944)

G.I. Jive

[Dawgreg]

Thank you for this. I must admit I never heard this one. I could see the GI’s dancing across the floor with some pretty girls with flowers in their hair......;) My Hub watches the old war movies and TV shows...I miss my Daddy and uncles that made it home. First class guys.

[Mears]

I remember her.

….

[dangus]

Not sure if you got the reference. In Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the pain at the core of the protagonist is the fact that his father never came back from the war, so he sees “We’ll Meet Again” as a broken promise.

There’s a very short song, “Vera,” which goes:

Does anyone here remember Vera Lynn
How she said we’d meet again some sunny day?
Vera, Vera, what has become of you?
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?