Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

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For the 1975 documentary film, see Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (film).

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"
Sheet music cover for Americana
Song
Composer(s)Jay Gorney
Lyricist(s)Yip Harburg

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" is one of the best-known American songs of the

American dream has been foiled by the economic collapse. Unusual for a Broadway song, it was composed largely in a minor key. The song became best known through recordings by Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallée
that were released in late 1932. The song received positive reviews and was one of the most popular songs of 1932. As one of the few popular songs during the era to discuss the darker aspects of the collapse, it came to be viewed as an anthem of the Great Depression.

Background

Unemployed men outside a soup kitchen in Chicago, 1931.

The

1929 Wall Street crash, had a severe impact on the country. In 1932, 25 percent of American men were unemployed.[1][2]

After his appliance business went bankrupt,

socialists.[6]

Composition and lyrical interpretation

The song is about a man who has sought the

Marxist idea that workers deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labor, rather than have it be diverted by others.[1][6]

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" has an unusual structure for a Broadway song. First, rather than starting in a major key, as most Broadway songs do, it begins in a

Tablet magazine suggested that the melody was similar to Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem.[11]

Musical and cover versions

The song was first performed by the vaudeville singer Rex Weber as part of the musical Americana,

Rudy Vallee shortly thereafter for Columbia Records. Unusually, Vallee's version includes a spoken introduction, in which the narrator states that the song is "a bit out of character" for him. The song became popular through these versions, which were both frequently aired on the radio and competed for listeners. By the end of the year, Al Jolson had also covered the song on his popular show for NBC.[3] The song has been covered by at least 52 artists in the United States[11] including Judy Collins and Tom Waits.[12]

In the UK, it was recorded by Harry Roy and his Orchestra (From the Cafe Anglais, London) in 1933 and issued by Parlophone, with vocals by Bill Currie, featuring non-vocal speech by Currie and Roy.[clarification needed] A version by Lew Stone and his Band (again at the Cafe Anglais) was recorded the same year for a "Lew Stone Favourites" medley, with vocals by Al Bowlly, and released by Decca.[13] In 1948, a revival of the song by British vocalist Steve Conway was released on Columbia.[14]

During the

1970s stagflation and in light of the Watergate scandal, Harburg wrote a parody version for The New York Times:[15][16]

Once we had a

Roosevelt

Praise the Lord!
Life had meaning and hope.
Now we're stuck with Nixon, Agnew, Ford,
Brother, can you spare a rope?

Reception and legacy

At the time, reviews of musicals rarely devoted much space to the songs' lyrics and melody. That was not true of the reviews of Americana.

New York American wrote: "Gorney and Harburg have written something so stirring that it will run away with the whole show".[17] Theater Arts Monthly's review stated that the song "deflates the rolling bombast of our political nightmare with greater effect than all the rest of Mr. McEvoy's satirical skits put together"; Variety said that "Brother" was the only part of the show worth praising.[17] Harburg later wrote that the song earned him several thousand dollars and helped him get started in the music business.[19] Business leaders tried to have it banned from the radio, viewing the song as "a dangerous attack on the American economic system". They were unsuccessful, due to the song's popularity.[2][12] William Zinsser writes that "[t]he song so lacerated the national conscience that radio stations banned it" for being "sympathetic to the unemployed".[20]

Few thematic Depression songs were popular, because Americans did not want music which reminded them of the economic situation, but "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was "the exception that proved the rule".[3] Unlike other popular songs of the same era which tended to be upbeat, with titles such as "Happy Days Are Here Again" (1929), "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930), and "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (1931), "Brother" "put words and music to what many Americans were feeling—fear, grief, even anger".[2][12] The song was one of the first musical works to take the Depression seriously.[1] It was one of the most popular twenty songs of 1932 in the United States.[3] Philip Furia and Michael Lasser wrote that the song "embodied the Depression for millions of Americans... No other popular song caught the spirit of its time with such urgency."[7] In 2007, Clyde Haberman wrote that the song "endures as an anthem for the downtrodden and the forgotten".[12] In 2011, Zinsser wrote that "Brother" "still hovers in the national memory; I can hear its ghostly echo in the chants of the Occupy Wall Street marchers".[20] In a 2008 retrospective, NPR described it as "the anthem of the Great Depression".[6]

According to Meyerson and Ernest Harburg, the challenge that Yip Harburg faced in crafting the lyrics was "much like the challenge confronting the street-corner panhandler: to establish the character's individuality and the moral and political basis for his claim". They write that the latter achieved this by gradually building intimacy with the listener, starting in third person and moving into first, second, and then both first and second combined ("I'm your pal"). The

internal rhymes help the listener remember that the singer was working towards a dream, which is now shattered. They also write that the song is a "masterpiece of economy" in building towards a "climactic assertion of commonality and interdependency" in "I'm your pal". "The music and lyrics together make us feel the quiet desperation of the singer."[1]

Pianist Rob Kapilow remarked that the title is "the entire history of the Depression in a single phrase" and the listener ends up "feeling the time-immemorial complaint that the working man doesn't get the rewards". He says that Harburg and Gorney were brave to express this message in 1932 "when no one was saying this out loud".[6] Furia and Lasser write that the song is unusual in relying on a strong narrative instead of emotion or imagery.[7] Thomas S. Hischak wrote that the song was "one of the first theatre songs to have a potent sociological message, and it remains one of the most powerful of the genre".[21] The song was the most prominent cultural representation of the Bonus Army.[9]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-472-08312-1
    .
  2. ^
    The Kennedy Center
    . Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0-313-33522-8
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-307-26628-6
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8108-5655-4
    .
  6. ^ a b c d e Kapilow, Rob (November 15, 2008). "A Depression-Era Anthem For Our Times". NPR. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-1-135-47192-7
    .
  8. ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved February 29, 2024.
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-520-93120-6
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-06-184346-4
    .
  11. ^ a b Boehm, Lisa Krissoff (5 April 2018). "How a Russian Jewish Lullaby Turned into the Anthem of the Forgotten Men and Women of Our Country". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
  12. ^ a b c d Haberman, Clyde (27 November 2007). "A 1930s Song of Americana Still Resonates". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
  13. OCLC 17951884.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link
    )
  14. Sunday Pictorial
    . September 19, 1948. p. 11.
  15. ISBN 978-0-86360-014-2
    .
  16. ISBN 978-0-19-923716-6
    .
  17. ^ a b c d Meyerson & Harburg 1995, p. 54.
  18. ^ Atkinson, Brooks (October 6, 1932). "The Play: Design and Dance in an "American Revue" That Represents Modern Taste in Artistry". The New York Times.
  19. ISBN 978-0-8195-7124-3
    .
  20. ^ a b Zinsser, William (4 November 2011). "Brother, Can You Spare a Job?". The American Scholar. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  21. ISBN 978-0-313-29407-5
    .

External links
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