From 'love letters' to 'miss you': popular recordings, epistolary imagery, and romance during war time, 1941-1945.

I'll walk alone because to tell you the truth I'll be lonely, I don't mind being lonely, When my heart tells me you are lonely too... Martha Tilton, "I'll Walk Alone" (1944) Much has been written about the patriotic influence of commercial recordings during the First and Second World Wars. There are also several studies that explore the caustic lyrical debate over military activities, political leadership, and social disruption during the Vietnam War. Yet in all of these books and articles, the primary domestic issue of separation of loved ones caused by forced military service is treated in a cursory, secondary fashion. The flag-waving, self-sacrificing, supporting roles of mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts are uniformly depicted in passive homefront images of loyalty, patience, and prayer. Similarly, soldiers are stereotyped as being more than willing to march off to battle for God, country, and their best girls. Most studies of war-time music explore themes including: (1) admiration for the valor of U.S. soldiers; (2) anticipation of soldiers returning safely to civilian life; (3) the idealism of establishing a world free of warfare; (4) humor mocking enemy soldiers and their political leaders; (5) boredom over the mundane nature of non-combative military existence; (6) promotion of public enthusiasm and patriotic support for the war effort; (7) personal reactions to the draft system or to voluntary enlistment for military service; (8) religious support for military participants; and (9) repetition of symbols of military honor, patriotic fervor, and national unity. See Table A for illustrations. This essay suggests that the role of popular recordings during American military involvement in World War II (1941-1945) had far greater personal significance than previously reported. While patriotic justifications for opposing the totalitarian governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan and salutes to G.I. honor and valor were undoubtedly helpful in boosting stateside morale, homefront heartbreak and overseas depression were averted by the plethora of personalized romantic pledges repeated time and again on popular recordings. Radio broadcasts of love songs continuously reinforced the validity and vitality of temporarily divided relationships. As letters crisscrossed the Atlantic and the Pacific bearing understandable sentiments of fear, anguish, boredom, loneliness, and pain, music of the early '40s afforded a persistent pattern of lyrical support between soldier and sweetheart, husband and wife, brother and sister, son and mother. The root of this psychological support system was the traditional love ballad. Many of the most influential, sustaining, enthralling, and memorable songs of World War II functioned as commercial substitutes for personal letters. Not unlike 17th and 18th century epistolary novels, popular recordings served as public artistic devices embodying personal dreams, hopes, and desires. The absence of a printed motif was insignificant; the simple, oft-repeated verbal imagery of caring meant everything. Popular culture's traditional formula-driven system of producing courtship recordings took on special meaning during the four-year period of forced, fearful separation. Lyrics conceived and presented in an I/you format became even more personalized during a time of distanced love. Epistolary tendencies were reinforced through radio repetition. The following pages speculate on the peculiar nature of war-time love songs as audio letters and, through a variety of specific recorded illustrations, trace specific tunes that are still hailed as the songs that got Americans through World War II. I. I memorize every line, And I kiss the name that you sign. I'm not alone in the night, When I can have all the love you write. Dick Haymes, "Love Letters" (1945) Conventional wisdom dictates that personal letters have very little in common with sound recordings. …