I’ll Be Seeing You- actually from a 1938 musical, but became a huge hit during WW2 because the lyrics took on new meaning (and newer still a decade later as the themesong of America’s Most Eligible Bachelor)
I’ll Be Home for Christmas- seeing this sung while images of troops and the women at home are played brings a lump to my throat- don’t know why.
Of all the ones mentioned on this thread my absolute faves are White Cliffs of Dover (oy, Vera Lynn… ) and Bei Mir Bist du Schön (so ironic a song with German lyrics was such an all American hit)
Bette Midler’s movie For the Boys had its moments, but most of them were dreadful after WW2. However, the soundtrack has some great WW2 numbers, from the standard P.S. I Love You to the super-catchy and underplayed Billy-a-Dick and Stuff Like That There.
The college where I used to work did one of the greatest fundraisers ever a couple of years ago. Bob Hope and a variety of local and road-show talents played the campus (which was then reequipped as a training facility for WACS and other women in the war effort) during a whistle-stop Bond Tour during the war, and the school’s award winning jazz band and the theater department restaged the entire evening from transcripts and playlists. Brilliantly successful.
There are also several CDs of FDR’s fireside chats (though of course he was a bit dead 60 years ago this summer), Eisenhower’s speeches and various radio broadcasts and comedy teams from the era available that would make great filler. (I think there’s a Truth or Consequences CD out, but Amazon doesn’t have it.)
Strictly instrumental, but I’d include the music of Richard Rodgers from the TV series Victory at Sea. My Dad had an LP that I listened to as a kid-my CD is a special edition of the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Russell Bennett. I think it’s digitally remastered from original work.
Rock Hudson said that when he was shipping out in the navy during WWII, that that was the last song he heard. It was being played over a loud speaker from a bridge.
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do about Dame Vera?
Her success didn’t stop with the end of WWII. She was the first British artist ever to top the US charts (in 1952) with Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart and used to appear regularly on Tallulah Bankhead’s US radio programme The Big Show. Her last public performance was 10 years ago, when she sang We’ll Meet Again outside Buckingham Palce in a concert commemerating the 50[sup]th[/sup] anniversary of VE day.
And if you’re able to track down a copy of the CD for the TV miniseries The Singing Detective, you’ll have more music than you can shake a stick at. A lot of it pre-war, but it’s still great.
