Over There -- the only studio recording made by George M. Cohan

This is a rare find: the only known recording of George M. Cohan singing his classic hit "Over There" in a studio. Four years after this 1936 radio broadcast, he sang it again as part of music festival in San Francisco called "A Cavalcade of American Music" (1940) organized by ASCAP. But the sound quality there is not quite as good as at is here, nor does it include Cohan speaking about the song at all. Further, here one gets the chance to hear, first-hand, Cohan's long-held belief that he wasn't much of a singer -- which may explain why he only did a single day in a recording studio in 1911. On that day, he didn't record any of his big hit songs (this one wasn't written yet), so it's especially lucky that we have this one preserved for posterity.

Cohan was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for writing this song (as well as "You're a Grand Old Flag") in May, 1936 -- the same year as this recording. Sadly, I can't tell you which came first, so it's hard to know if Cohan knew that he'd been awarded this honor when he made this broadcast. (It seems odd that the announcer wouldn't have made mention of it, had it been public knowledge, so probably not.) Anyhow, while Cohan began as a supporter of FDR, he came to dislike him due to the President's support of unions (and Cohan was strongly anti-union, if you know anything about his tangle with formation of Actors Equity union in 1919). So while awarded the honor in 1936, Cohan didn't actually go to the White House to meet the President and receive the medal until 1940. After returning home, all Cohan could say was, “Funny about them giving me a medal. All I wrote was a bugle call.”

An interesting account of how Cohan got awarded the Congressional Gold Medal -- and how it was opposed -- can be found here:

http://history.house.gov/HistoricalHi...

Curiously, the song was not an instant success. According to Rick Benjamin (whose Paragon Ragtime Orchestra created a valuable album of Cohan's music), Cohan wrote the song upon reading the newspaper headline that U.S. had declared war on Germany -- April 6, 1917. He wrote it overnight and premiered if for his family the next morning. Shortly thereafter, however, the song fell flat when Cohan gave it its first public performance at a
troop rally in Virginia. But finally, in the Fall of 1917, “Over There” began to click: It was successfully sung by the film actor Charles King (1895–1957) at a huge Red Cross benefit concert, and then—better still—it was taken up with gusto by the vaudeville star Nora Bayes (1880–1928) who plugged it relentlessly (her photo graces the cover of the sheet music’s first edition). Overnight it seemed, “Over There” had the nation singing, humming, whistling, and—most important -- marching. Cohan had published the song through his own sheet music subsidiary, but soon the rival Leo Feist firm offered him an unprecedented $25,000 for the song, and he accepted. (Characteristically, the Yankee Doodle Boy donated every cent to charity.) Of the more than one thousand songs written about the “Great War” during 1917–18, “Over There” was by
far the most popular and longest-lived. By the end of the conflict, it had sold more than two million copies of sheet music and an even larger number of phonograph records (numerous singers covered it, including Caruso). Today, “Over There” remains one of the few generally recognized “artifacts” of that terrible conflict. [Note: Rick Benjamin has since told me that the orchestration used in this recording is the same one that Cohan had created in 1917 for his personal performances of the song.]

In 1918, anticipating the war's end, Cohan wrote two "sequels" to "Over There" -- "When You Come Back (And You Will Come Back)" and "Their Hearts Are Over Here." Neither one was as popular as his earlier hit (what could be?) but details on them can be found midway down the page on this wonderful piece devoted to some of Cohan's music:

http://parlorsongs.com/bios/cohan/coh...

More important than the song, in this case, is the rare chance to hear Cohan himself, in all his self-deprecating charm, performing in his unique style. Note the way he pronounces certain words: "Ovah The-ah
... so prepa-ah
... say a pray-ah"
It's second nature to him, but a clue to the way he and his contemporaries learned song delivery in the early part of the 20th century.

By the way, Cohan is introduced by "Tex O'Rourke" who reportedly was the son of a circus artist, and became well-known as a boxer and a fighter who eventually became a jester and roastmaster.

We're grateful that "The Magic Key" -- a weekly RCA radio broadcast from 1935-39 -- had the good taste to invite him on its program, whatever the occasion.