The car in melody

Historical events are captured in the music of the time. ‘Over There’, ‘How ‘Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm after They’ve Seen Paree’ and ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ were some of Doughboy’s WWI songs. Al Jolson sang ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime’ and ‘Dust Bowl Blues’ marked the Great Depression. ‘Fightin Side of Me’ revealed the nation’s conflict over Vietnam in the 1960s. So it’s only natural that the car, which changed American life forever, would be immortalized in song and it did.

At first the car was only for the rich and this was reflected in the early scores. Although there were no lyrics, ‘The Swagger’ and ‘Up Broadway’ featured fashionably dressed urban couples with a car. Then came the song ‘The Auto Man’ whose lyrics implied that car ownership indicated wealth and prestige. But then along came Henry Ford, who vowed to build a car that the man in the street could afford, and he kept his promise. In October 1908, the first Model T, priced at $850, rolled off the assembly line. After nineteen years of production, its price would drop to $260. The Model T was dubbed Tin Lizzie and the Flivver and became the subject of many songs. Lizzie is a nickname for Elizabeth and was a popular name for horses at the time.

Then they bleed:

Old Zeke Perkins sold his pigs the other day,

The bloody fool immediately threw his money away;

He rode into town, sitting on a board,

I came home in a new Ford!

However, the roads were still designed for horses and did not easily accommodate the speed of the new tin horse, so in 1912 the song “Bump, Bump, Bump in Your Automobile” appeared. While the song’s lyrics emphasized poor road conditions, one line inferred that women were attracted to male car owners with the words “Molly May said she loved Willie Green. Best of all she loved Willie’s Machine”. This theme was repeated in many early car songs.

And poor road conditions often resulted in mechanical failures that popularized the tune, “Get Out and Get Under,” the cover of which depicts a well-dressed man beneath a convertible with his legs outstretched, a wrench in hand and her fashionably dressed friend in the passenger seat looking down anxiously. The freedom provided by this new invention carried over into courtship customs as well, allowing for more opportunities for intimacy and privacy, leading to some social anxiety about relationships between unmarried couples. This along with the release of single women in Roaring 20-inspired tunes like ‘Up and Down the Eight Mile Road’, 1926.

There were also songs about particular models like ‘Cole 30 Flyer’ with the lyric ‘You will win me Bill, heart and soul, if you buy a Cole’. These may well have been the first attempts at product placement advertising. Since Ford produced most of the cars of the time, they were the subject of popular songs. In 1928, when the Model A was introduced, Walter O’Keefe wrote ‘Henry’s Made a Lady out of Lizzie’. Abner Silver and Jack Meskell followed with ‘Poor Lizzie, what will become of you now that your sister is here’.