I have posted about this long out-of-print album here, here, here, and here.
Finally, a commenter has noted that the entire album is available for downloading online.
Enjoy.
Tag: Tolerance
Little Songs on Big Subjects: “Ol’ Commodore Gray”
In a previous post, I spoke about “Little Songs on Big Subjects,” tunes of tolerance written by Hy Zaret & Lou Singer and performed by The Jesters.
The album, recalled with great nostalgia by many, was recorded in the late-40s. It is long out of print and almost completely unavailable. The album was widely played on radio and was used in cartoons shown on early regional television. Here are the lyrics to one of the “little songs, “Ol’ Commodore Gray, and below, a link to its musical cartoon Continue reading “Little Songs on Big Subjects: “Ol’ Commodore Gray””
Little Songs on Big Subjects
When we were very little, my brother and I had a record entitled Little Songs on Big Subjects. Sung by The Jesters, one of the first groups to record commercial jingles, the tunes, written by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer, emphasized tolerance. Zaret, who died in 2007 just a month shy of 100, told me in 2002 that he thought of the songs as short, catchy jingles.
We played the LP until the grooves wore out.
Little Songs on Big Subjects was a big hit. In 1949, The New Yorker, in a Talk of the Town Continue reading “Little Songs on Big Subjects”
Un-Racism: You Have to Be Carefully Taught
James Michener‘s short story collection, Tales of the South Pacific, a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner in 1948, was eclipsed a year later by South Pacific, the blockbuster Richard Rodgers–Oscar Hammerstein musical that includes some of the most memorable songs written for the stage. One song, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” includes this verse:
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught
The converse is also true: you have to be carefully taught to be color-blind. Witness this exchange between one of my daughters and her almost-four-year-old son:
Continue reading “Un-Racism: You Have to Be Carefully Taught”