Sing Out, Sweet Land

Sing Out, Sweet Land was an attempt to bring American folk music to Broadway in the waning days of World War II. Opening in late December 1944, it remained afloat for a little over three months before being sunk by its weak and contrived book.

The play was mainly an excuse for a lengthy parade of music whose connecting tissue was that it was American. The original playbill called it "A Salute to American Folk and Popular Music," and as such it presaged the crossover success of such artists as the Weavers later in the decade.

Burl Ives

While Alfred Drake starred in the show, fresh from his triumph in Oklahoma!, the breakout performer became Burl Ives. In this production, the big folk singer first presented a number of songs that became associated with him, including "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "Blue Tail Fly."

Decca recorded the show - or at least some of it - in 1945 for an album  that first appeared on LP in this 1949-50 incarnation. The complete show must have seemed endless. The list of songs in the playbill (included in the download) goes on and on, with 13 separate scenes and locations. Drake is common to all as a character called Barnaby Goodchild, who runs afoul of the Puritans and somehow is consigned to wandering through history singing and such.

This idea came from playwright Walter Kerr, better known as a critic. In the program (also in the download), the author is at pains to say that this is not a pageant - but that's exactly what it is. I suppose it is an ancestor of the jukebox shows that have thrived on Broadway in recent decades.

Alfred Drake with Alma Kaye as "Little Mohee"

Much of the music will be familiar to anyone of my age and background. Most of this "folk music" came from commercial sources, although perhaps once of folk origin. "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," while certainly a hobo song, was recorded (and perhaps written) by Harry "Haywire Mac" McClintock in 1928. "Blue Tail Fly" probably came from a minstrel show. "Little Mohee" will be instantly recognizable to many as being closely related to "On Top of Old Smoky" (later a hit for the Weavers) and "Birmingham Jail." The melody may go back to Elizabethan times. "Frankie and Johnny," although possibly based on older material, was first published in 1912 and recorded in 1924. (The notes to a Pete Seeger anthology, provided in the download, provide clues to the origins of these songs.)

Program cover

American composer Elie Siegmeister arranged the music, and managed to get his name on the record packaging 20-some times. Less fortunate was the great Juanita Hall, who has an important part on the record and presumably in the show. She barely rates a mention in the playbill and program, and her "Watermelon Woman" character became an unfortunate caricature on the LP cover.

Also in the cast is the delightful Bibi Osterwald, who sings the vaudeville hit "Casey Jones" with appropriate gusto.

Decca's sound is reasonably good, although something went wrong in the LP mastering of "I Have Been a Good Boy."

1945 Decca ad

Elie Siegmeister

What you are seeing above is actually not the cover of the 10-inch LP that contained Elie Siegmeister's Ozark Set. It is the cover of the original 78 rpm album that came out in 1945, and is a much better example of cover artist Alex Steinweiss' work than the LP. It also is more evocative of the somewhat idealized version of rural America celebrated by this music – and other conservative music of the time.

Like Aaron Copland, who was eight years older, Siegmeister was born in Brooklyn and studied in Paris under Nadia Boulanger. It's too bad that Siegmeister's music is largely forgotten today. This is quite well done, and the quieter moments are very beautiful and evocative. There is much to enjoy here for enthusiasts of Copland's Americana pieces, even though the performances by Dimitri Mitropoulos and his Minneapolis troupe are neither subtle not especially well played. With this ensemble providing the music, "Saturday Night" in the Ozarks seems quite a hectic experience. One wonders if the barn survived the barn dance. A harsh recording and typically rough pressing are not helpful, either.

Also included on the 10-inch LP is the overture to Lalo’s opera Le Roi d'Ys, which sounds less like Ys and more like Liszt in this performance.

The cover of the LP that yoked the yokels with the Ysians is below. As you can see, the Ozark mountain on the 78 set has been reduced to a Ozark pimple down in the right-hand corner of the LP. Another interesting difference is that the liner notes for the 78 set quote an enthusiastic Russian review of the music, but by the time the LP came out in 1950, the Cold War had begun and the Russian commentary is nowhere to be found. Possibly a coincidence – who knows.

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