Smartest users of music to make political points are the Almanac Singers, four young men who roam around the country in a $150 Buick and fight the class war with ballads and guitars. Their recorded collection Songs for John Doe, ably hewed to the then Moscow line, neatly phonograph-needled J. P. Morgan, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and particularly war (TIME, June 16). The three discs of Talking Union, on sale last week under the Keynote label, lay off the isolationist business now that the Russians are laying it on the Germans.
One of the Almanacers' ablest vocalists is Pete Bowers, and he gets to sing the punchiest of the six numbers, the title song of the collection. A lanky New Englander, he talks union with plenty of persuasion, reasoning, scorning, joking, dropping a G where it will do the most good and putting it right back where necessary.
Not for Union Clubbers is this lyric, nor the bitter sincerity with which Pete sings and strums it:
Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous
And they're paying you all starvation wages,
You go to the boss and the boss will yell
Before I raise your pay I'd see you all in hell!
Well, he's puffing a big cigar, feeling mighty slick
'Cause he thinks he's got your union licked,
Well, he looks out the window and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree!
He's a bastard . . . unfair . . . slave-driver . . .
Bet he beats his wife. . . .
Other nonclassical recordings of the month:
Red Army Chorus (Keynote). Eight military and folk songs proving that the U.S.S.R.'s fighting men also sing in a big way. Tachanka, ballad of Budenny's horse-drawn machine guns, is the most stirring; Meadowland has the sweetest melody.
God Bless the Child (Bea Wain; Victor). Billie Holiday's new hard-times song, sung with the appropriate lump in the throat.
Birth of the Blues (Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street; Victor). An album of W. C. Handy tunes as played by the popular radio act, sung by Lena Home.
'Til Reveille (Bing Crosby; Decca). The only U.S. war song to date that seems tuneful and honest enough to outlast the war; Decca's second best seller.