Lately I have been listening to the Randy Newman album Land of Dreams, which my parents used to play constantly during my childhood, but which I have only now ever listened to with any kind of critical ear (as a kid, I could never really decipher Newman’s accent anyway, so the songs were at least 50% gibberish, but I did like the music.)
The second song on this autobiographical album is called “New Orleans Wins The War,” and contains a verse with the following lyrics:
I have been struggling to understand the meaning of this cryptic verse. In the first song, “Dixie Flyer,” Newman informs us that “my dad was a captain in the Army, fighting the Germans in Sicily.” And so I would understand it if the line was about 1945, i.e. his father coming home from the war. But the year he mentions is 1948. I don’t understand this. What happened in 1948 that Newman’s daddy might have “come to the city” and “told the people” about?
Then the end of the verse: “'Cause New Orleans had won the war.” What is that supposed to mean? The song seems to have a sort of dual meaning, referencing America’s victory in World War II, and the victory of the city of New Orleans over…what? “The Yankees” is clearly a joke, but if there is some reference behind this, I’m not getting it.
Does anyone who knows more about the history of New Orleans have any idea what this song is actually about?
It’s about how the people of New Orleans were provincial, cut off of the outside world, and not all that reality-oriented. When his father said “we” won WW21(news that hadn’t filtered down to them yet), they thought that “we” meant New Orleans, even though they weren’t exectly sure what the war had been about.
“New Orleans as a different universe” is a recurring theme of the album.
I wonder if he is referring to the Higgins boat, which was designed and built in Louisiana and was pretty important in WWII. Here’s a quote from Eisenhower from that link:
I’m thinking this is a reference to the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, which Andy Jackson (get it?) won. So what if it was the British and not the Yankees? Beating the Yankees is probably more appealing to the yokels. Basically daddy is just mushing historical tidbits together and coming up with feel good bullshit stories about New Orleans glory.
I THINK what Randy Newman is saying is that the people of New Orleans have always lived in a bubble, in a kind of time warp. When his father came back from World War 2 and said, “We won the war,” people thought he was talking about the American Civil War -hence, their reaction was “We done whipped the Yankees!”
According to the song, the people of New Orleans didn’t know that World War 2 had ever started or that the Civil War had ever ended!
Is that literally true? Obviously not- but the point is that Randy Newman’s father looked at New Orleans and thought, “This is a town of frivolous people who just spend their time drinking and having fun, and don’t take any real interest in what’s going on in the world. It’s sort of charming in small doses, but it’s not a place I want to live in, and it sure isn’t a place I want my son to grow up in.”
So, he took the boy to L.A. Because in L.A., of course, there are NO shallow or hedonistic people who are wholly ignorant of what’s going on in The Real World outside