"Long Boy"
by Byron G. Harlan with Peerless Quartet
Sheet music courtesy of Clarence Johnson |
The earliest recorded encouragements to persuade the U.S. public to acceptance of U.S. entry into the Great War centered on loyalty, trying practically to guilt auditors into support for the war. The business of the recording industry by 1917, it seems, was to inspire consensus in a more subtle way—through light-hearted humor. The name-calling and aspersions at the heart of the loyalty songs were no less a fantastical view of reality than the comical songs, but they are what we have come to expect from political speech. The comical songs, on the other hand, strike us today as being unbelievably naive. "Long Boy," a "long, lean country gink / from way out west / Where the hoptoads wink," says "I may not know what the war's about, / But you bet, by gosh, I'll soon find out," and promises to bring the sometimes reluctant west into the war effort.
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