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Yesterday I was listening to a CD of Peggy Lee with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, and came across a song called "Freedom Train." Which sounds like a wartime song, but does not at all reference the war. Instead it talks about how great it is to be "riding on the freedom train" (i.e. living in America) and extolls the value of political dissent. For instance the song encourages people to tell the President they think he's doing a bad job, and to protest laws they don't agree with.

Wow! I wish I'd known about this song last 4th of July, when I did all patriotic music on Divaville. It ended up being an extremely hawkish show, which I felt a little weird about, not being a hawkish person. This song would have been much more in line with celebrating America.

I sent a copy of the song to Sean, who used to do (and still does, I hope) a "freedom" show every year for Independance Day. Then today I was listening to a box set of Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra. Excellent box set, by the way. It features a whole other dimension to Sinatra's singing that I wasn't very familiar with. This is the Sinatra who shows up in the Merry Melody cartoons. You know, when the skinny Sinatra rooster sings and all the hens swoon? If all you know is the later, brash, swinging, koo-koo crazy Sinatra, that cartoon makes no sense. That's the Sinatra in this box set.

Anyway, I was listening to this set of Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra, and on comes "Free For All," another song about freedom! Like "Freedom Train," it's not a very good song, musically speaking. Still, it's not bad. And any song that quotes Patrick Henry is all right with me.

I'm enchanted by having heard two songs about freedom in two days. Talk about serendipity. I wonder if the universe is trying to tell me something.

(Turns out "Freedom Train" was written in 1947 to promote a traveling exhibit called the Freedom Train. The lyrics and MP3s of a couple different recordings are here.)