With all the talk of income inequality and diminishing life chances for more and more Americans, this song came to mind.
“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” was written in 1930 by lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and composer Jay Gorney. It was featured in the 1932 musical “New Americana,” a broadway show that failed. Incredibly, the song almost didn’t make it to the stage or radio as Republicans considered it anti-capitalist propaganda and wanted to suppress it. Let me see, 1932. What could have been going on then to cause people to look at capitalism critically?
Fortunately, the censors did not get their way as the song was certainly one of the most prominent of the Depression Era. No doubt it counts as a protest song as it describes a worker who helped build the country and fought in WWI but can’t find work in hard times.
The best know versions of the time belong to Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee, and Bing Crosby. As for timing, both Vallee and Crosby released versions in 1932 just before FDR became president, each scoring a number one hit, not that FDR needed the help.
In the 1970, the New York Times asked Harburg to update the lyrics for the politics of the moment. This is what he came up with:
Once we had Roosevelt
Praise the Lord
Life had meaning and hope
Now we have Nixon, Agnew, and Ford
Brother, can you spare a rope?
I’m sure others could bring the lyrics even further up to date.
Here’s the Crosby version obviously in the style of the early thirties and less what we came to expect of Bing later. He would have been just under 30 when he recorded this.