April 4 movie: The Ed Sullivan Show: Tribute to the Red, White and Blue. Patriotic clips from the Ed Sullivan show. I rented this because it included a "rare performance by Irving Berlin," about whom I'm doing a tribute show on May 11. Well, Irving Berlin's song was recorded in 1968, when he was 80 years old and his voice was shot. And for the second half of the song he's backed by about a hundred Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Blech!
Otherwise the clips have some great moments, notably Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" and the drill teams of the Army and Navy doing amazing tricks with bayonets. And ridiculous as well, especially a couple of Vietnam-war era numbers. First Loretta Lynn did "God Bless America Again," a spoken word piece about how troubled America was, and how God should take her by the hand and get rid of those damned hippies. Well that was the gist of it.
Second was an astonishingly offensive number by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, admonishing antiwar protesters to quit their yapping or else. I quote the refrain: "If you don't love it, leave it! Let this song I'm singing be a warning. When you're running down our countrymen, you're walking on the fighting side of me." The song also included a couple of anti-immigrant jabs about how Roy and Dale love America because it's the country of their birth.
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It's possible to hear a young Irving Berlin, I believe. I've noticed one or more 78s at archive.org having Irving Berlin listed as performer. I say "it's possible" because maybe they've given artist credit to the composer, though there is at least one piece he wrote that doesn't portray him as a performer. ("That Mysterious Rag" -- by lucky fate, I just got the sheet music for that as well.)
wow, thanks for the tip! That is going to be hugely helpful. Berlin was performing at that time so it could well be him. I have a couple of Berlin biographies (research for the show) and I hope one will say whether he was recorded back then.
I think that's the site where I found a 1906 recording of "How'd You Like to Spoon With Me," which I played on the Jerome Kern tribute show in January. I need to spend some time exploring that site.