"Keep Your Eye on Uncle Sammy"
by Peerless Quartette
Record from the Archeophone Records collection |
This unusual song has yet to turn up in a sheet music edition. The composer is Abner Greenberg, but the lyricist is unknown. The Peerless Quartette recorded it in July 1914, just as the Great War was breaking out, and the lyrics seem eerily prescient, with respect to American neutrality and eventual preparedness campaigns.
The ambiguous, saber-rattling attitude of "Keep Your Eyes on Uncle Sammy," set as a parody of "Yankee Doodle," with clever quotations from classics of the Old South in the score, has Uncle Sammy come to town "riding in a motor." Quoting "Dixie" and "Marching Through Georgia," written to commemorate Sherman's ravaging of Georgia in the Civil War, amalgamates the potentially disparate North and South factions of the United States, and covering them with "Yankee Doodle" makes them both a part of the American Spirit. Before the message, the writer has unified his constituency. "Had a feather in his cap placed there by a voter," blandishes Wilson's slim mandate over Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party in the 1912 election. The confidence of Americans in Wilson is clearly reflected when we are told that it "makes no difference where he's going / Uncle Sam will make a showing," but, most importantly, we are told that Uncle Sammy is "willing to fight for a cause that is right / Still, at home he's just as gentle as a lamb." The lyric, seemingly, validates Wilson's pride, as in "too proud to fight" and his decision to keep Americans out of a war that was not their affair. In a final volley, we are reminded of American aid to those in need: Belgium (a little later), Greece (against the Turks), Cuba (against Spain), the Boers, and the Irish (against the Brits) when we hear that Uncle Sammy is "Always doing good for others" and, Wilsonism again, "his love for peace you can't destroy." When the song ends we learn that Uncle Sammy is "just a good old Yankee Doodle Boy." The exchange of Uncle Sam for Yankee Doodle, the symbol of American Independence in 1776, and then of Wilson for Uncle Sam, places Wilson on a plane beyond the ordinary and seems to be illustrative of the tenor of the times, and the popularity of the pre-war Wilson.
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