Vintage

  • Influenza Blues — From Flu to Rock

    Lame DogR & B, Vintage

    For a long time, the Dog has been too preoccupied to indulge his musicological pretensions.  But I want to do something to commemorate the fact that, like much of the world’s population, I am under orders to shelter in place.  In this time of crisis, I find myself reflecting on the great flu pandemic of 1918-19.  I find doing so oddly comforting.  In dim historical retrospect, it appears as a discrete event that came and went, with nothing comparable to follow for over a century.


    But the pandemic was horrifying.  It may have killed fifty million people, over triple the toll of the First World War.  Indeed, it was so traumatic that for decades it was largely blotted out from our cultural memory.  


    The British journalist Richard Collier once wrote that the “Spanish Lady,” as the pandemic was called, “inspired no songs, no legends, no works of art.”  This, of course, is an overstatement.  Among the exceptions were three different songs published from December 1918 to June 1919 entitled “Infuenza Blues,”  — a ragtime composition; a Broadway show tune; and a lament for a lost sweetheart.  Google the phrase, however, and you will be linked to a fourth song,  It informs us that the flu was a punishment from God:

    This fascinating, if rather offensive piece, has a curious history. It is not clear if it was written about the great flu pandemic at all.    

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  • Meet the Preps

    Lame DogVintage

    Tracing musical influences back through the layers of popular culture can be reminiscent of an archeological dig.  When I first saw this clip, I felt as if I’d stumbled upon a prior civilization.

    “I’m Marv.”  “I’m Glen.”  “I’m Ed.”  “I’m nervous.” Who were these people?

    Contrary to their billing, the Four Preps were not graduates of an elite private preparatory school, but a group of friends who attended Hollywood High.  They originally formed to compete in the school’s annual talent show, but managed to get signed by Capital Records in 1956.  Two years later, they enjoyed their biggest hit with “26 Miles.”  Bruce Belland, the group’s ostensibly nervous leader, admitted that it was a “corny” piece that he wrote in fifteen minutes without ever having set foot on Catalina Island, the subject of the song.

    For a time, the Preps were the all-American band.  They played backup to Ricky Nelson on the Ozzie and Harriet Show and performed in the original Gidgit movie.  They were clean cut, wholesome, and sometimes stultifyingly bland, but did not lack harmony or a wry sense of humor.   They are said to have influenced a later California-based sensation, The Beach Boys.  And in the early 1960’s, they were repeatedly honored by Billboard Magazine as the “nation’s number one college concert attraction.”

    That changed when Capitol Records began releasing singles by another group with which you may be more familiar — The Beatles.  The Preps’ days as youth idols were over.  But not before they took their revenge.
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  • “Vera, Vera, What Has Become of You?” — Pink Floyd

    Lame DogClassic Rock, Vintage

    In 1980 or thereabouts, the hottest thing of which I was aware was the English rock bank Pink Floyd’s double album The Wall.  Some of the lyrics were disturbing, if not repugnant (“We don’t need no education.”). At least one song was superb (“Comfortably Numb”).  And then there was this track, which I found puzzling.

     Who was Vera Lynn?  As a young American of the pre-internet era, I had no idea.  A friend said, “Oh, it’s like some girl he knew in high school.”  That seemed as an good an explanation as any.
     
    By now, the actual story is readily available even on this side of the Atlantic.  As an infant, Roger Waters, the principal lyricist of Pink Floyd, lost his father — a conscientious objector who felt compelled to change his mind and volunteer — in the Battle of Anzio.  The Vera Lynn to whom Waters referred was the British singer most closely identified with the Second World War. She boosted morale by singing, “There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,” and  — most famously — “Don’t know where. Don’t know when. But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day….”  I had actually heard the latter song without making the connection to Pink Floyd.  It was used to memorial effect for the conclusion of the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
     

    But let’s return to Pink Floyd’s question. The answer is improbable.  Vera Lynn — who was born in London Borough of Newham on March 20, 1917 — 

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