Word: tuneful
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Senator Steiwer went a passing mark for his cannonade but talk of nominating him for Vice President was heard no more. A memorial to him remained, however, in the song sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice with new verses contributed daily by eager Republican poets. Examples...
Whether or not he is elected 33rd President of the U. S., squinty-smiling Governor Alf M. Landon of Kansas was last week indelibly imprinted upon his countrymen's memory as The Man Who revived the tune Oh! Susanna as a national theme song. In the course of six days at Cleveland, bands at the Republican National Convention played Oh! Susanna 1,800 times by official count. Into a class with The Sidewalks of New York and California, Here I Come passed the old banjo ballad written by Stephen Foster nearly 100 years ago and first sung into...
...tune of Three Blind Mice became paired with Oh! Susanna as a major overtone of 1936 only by accident. The rhythm of Senator Steiwer's keynote phrase, "Three long years!" automatically evoked the old nursery jingle. Prompt to answer the Republican parody were Democratic versions recalling the twelve long years of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. But Oh! Susanna was not revived by accident. Governor Landon's efficient handlers had searched carefully for a tune to set him to, a tune that could surely be plugged into another Banana Song. After discarding a "We Want Landon" chant...
...lent itself naturally to the 1904 campaign of Theodore Roosevelt, but eight years later, for his Bull Moose campaign at "Armageddon," his marching song was Onward Christian Soldiers. In the intervening campaign, won by Taft in 1908, his lady admirers sang: Taft for Me, Taft for Me to the tune of Tammany. Woodrow Wilson scorned campaign songs, but in 1916 he was forced to listen often to I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier...
Campaign songs lapsed for a time thereafter. Harding had no outstanding song. Coolidge boosters worked on "It's Coolidge and Dawes for the Nation's Cause. . . ." But the tune never caught on. Seldom were two campaign songs more evenly matched in popularity than the Smith-Hoover clash of Sidewalks and California. This year, Oh! Susanna will be pitted against the old F. D. Roosevelt reliable, Happy Days Are Here Again...