“I’ll Be Seeing You”

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Images of WW II come to mind with their own soundtrack of big band music. Yet the big bands derived from ragtime, a WW I-style of music using swing beats, brass instruments, and ensemble arrangements. Ragtime artists, such as Irving Berlin and James Reese, influenced music in France, England, and Russia. Reese led the 369th Infantry Band of the American Expeditionary Force (Badger 48-67), a famous dance and brass ensemble and the first band to introduce such music to France and England during a 1918 tour. After that, ragtime gained momentum in those countries. Irving Berlin’s first hit song, “Alexander's Ragtime Band,” was a worldwide hit. The song started a ragtime dance craze and paved the way for Russians to transition from ragtime to the big bands in the years following.
The first English big band formed in 1928 and was named the BBC Dance Orchestra. Soon after, additional Big Band artists came on the music scene in England including Billy Cotton, Geraldo, Joe Loss, and Oscar Rabin. In France, one of the most important jazz groups to form as a result of American influencers was Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934. North American dance bands in the 1930s included those led by Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Glen Gray, Benny Goodman, and Jimmie Lunceford. Many others during the Depression were laying the groundwork of this new music.
Music in World War II had an unprecedented impact on America, both on the home front and on troops serving overseas. By December 1941, 96.2 percent of American households had radios. Never before had recordings of songs and live musical performances been broadcast to so many Americans. The mass distribution of music had a unifying effect by raising the morale of troops overseas and inspiring Americans at home to support the war effort. Swing and jazz numbers surpassed all others in popularity. Banned throughout Germany and occupied Europe, this uniquely American music served as a defiant hope for liberation and freedom. According to one music critic, “In a very real sense, American popular music was the popular music of World War II.”
The big bands’ music reflected the events of the war. The fall of France in 1940 brought us “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” Later on came “Goodbye Dear, I’ll Be Back in a Year”; “Ma, I Miss Your Apple Pie”; “He’s 1-A in the Army and He’s A-1 in My Heart” (1-A was the highest draft qualification in the United States); and “Twenty-One Dollars a Day, Once a Month,” referring to an army private’s salary.
Only days after December 7, 1941, bands recorded “Remember Pearl Harbor,” “Goodbye Mama I’m Off to Yokohama,” and “We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again.” The band’s numbers sometimes followed events with unusual rapidity. The battle of the Philippines still raged when “Hats Off to MacArthur” was written in March of 1942. The tribute was somewhat premature, given the campaign’s disastrous ending. “Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima” and Nat “King” Cole’s rendition of “D-Day” were both recorded barely a month after those events.
Patriotic songs abounded but in a class by itself was “God Bless America.” Originally composed by Irving Berlin in 1918 for an all-soldier show, it was “put in the trunk,” to use the show-biz term Kate Smith resurrected it, and her recording remained the standard for many years.
The U.S. military services had their traditional songs—“Anchors Aweigh,” “The Marine’s Hymn,” and “The Caissons Go Rolling Along”—but the Army Air Corps had none. That problem was solved in 1939 with the song whose opening lines became familiar: “Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder.” The final stanza contained the phrase “off with one helluva roar,” deemed too offensive for 1940s’ tastes, and the word “ter-ri-ble” was substituted for radio use.
With so many men at war, American women listened to Ella May Morse sing “No Love, No Nothin’ (Until My Baby Gets Home)” and Bette Davis grumbled of her suitors that “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old.” Cass Daley moaned that “He Loved Me till the All-Clear Came,” and any number of singers complained they “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Some women claimed that “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week,” but Kitty Kallen sang “You Can’t Say No to a Soldier.” Women’s contributions were signified in “First Class Private Mary Brown” and “Rosie the Riveter.”
Servicemen’s worries about the faithfulness of their wives and sweethearts back home found voice in “Somebody Else Is Taking My Place” and “Everybody Knew but Me,” but the best-known song on this theme was “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me.” Wildly popular with soldiers and civilians alike, the most famous version of the song was by the Andrews Sisters. They also introduced “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)” in the 1941 film Buck Privates. An article during the war cited Clarence Zylman of Muskegon, Michigan, as the original boogie woogie bugler. An ex-jazz musician, he lent his talent to his military duties, playing in an army band.
Wartime songs tapped into hope, longing, loneliness, and love. “When the Lights Go On Again All over the World” referred to a better time to come; “I Left My Heart at the Stagedoor Canteen” reflects the longing of a lonely soldier; and “I’ll Be Seeing You” evokes yearning. When the war ended, the bands played such titles as “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” “My Guy’s Come Back,” and “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.”
Big band music was positive and optimistic music and an inspiration to millions during the war.  It fulfilled the yearning for a sentimental, romantic escape from worldly cares. In December 1946, however, economic factors spurred the decline of the big bands. Six major American bands broke up that month, but the music survives: millions still dance to the joyous, ebullient music they created. 

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