Music Album Review: 'Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War – The War: A Ken Burns Film'

(C) 2007 Sony BMG Music Entertainment/Sony Legacy Records and Florentine Films

On September 26, 2007, 300 or so Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member stations in the United States aired A Necessary War, the first episode of Ken Burns’ seven-part  documentary series about the American experience in World War II. A bottom-up story told mainly by the residents – civilians and military veterans – of four quintessentially American towns (Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Luverne, MN, and Sacramento, CA), The War: A Ken Burns Film – unlike British ITV’s The World at War – focuses primarily on personal experiences, with more intimate reminisces about the human experience of war instead of discussions about tactics, grand strategy, and Big Power politics.

The War was originally scheduled to air on September 15, 2007, but protests by Latino and Native American advocates about Burns’ emphasis on stories told by white and African American interviewees at the expense of their narrative caused a delay while Florentine Films shot and edited additional material to correct this sin of omission.   

The highly-publicized controversy may have delayed the premiere broadcast of the series, but The War’s ancillary products – a companion book co-written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns and four separate recordings of music from the original soundtrack – were released two weeks earlier.

The musical soundtrack, which was supervised by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein, and the series’ music director Wynton Marsalis, was divided among four separate recordings: They are:

1.      The War: A Ken Burns Film – Original Soundtrack

2.      I’m Beginning to See the Light: Dance Hits from the Second World War – The War: A Ken Burns Film

3.      Songs Without Words - Classical Music from The War: A Ken Burns Film

4.      Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War – The War: A Ken Burns Film

The four recordings were released by Sony Legacy (three albums) and Sony Classical (one) as individual albums or in a deluxe 4-disc box set which included a collectible booklet. Now out of print, The War’s soundtracks are still available at Amazon (mostly through third-party sellers) and other online stores. 

Although The War and Songs Without Words feature a mix of musical pieces from various genres and eras – American Anthem, the song presented in the first album by singer Norah Jones, was written for The War: A Ken Burns Film – I’m Beginning to See the Light and Sentimental Journey consist of re-released tracks from recordings made in the late 1930s and early 1940s. There are no covers, no musical anachronisms to be found in the albums with Hits from the Second World War in their titles.

As they lived through the cataclysmic events of World War II, Americans both in the service and on the home front found a safe harbor, emotionally, in the buoyant sounds of popular music. Classic titles from The Great American Songbook served, with the highest distinction, as an indispensable part of the war effort, lightening the burden of sacrifice as well as giving voice to the deepest feelings of loneliness, sorrow and anxious hope. From the breezy bounce of Little Brown Jug to the aching romance of I'll Be Seeing You, these are the songs in these unforgettable recordings that built the confidence of a nation in its darkest days. - Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War

Track Listing for Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War:

1. We'll Meet Again- Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman & His Orchestra
2. Dancing in The Dark- Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
3. Little Brown Jug- Glenn Miller & His Orchestra
4. I'll Be Seeing You- Frank Sinatra; Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra
5. Moonglow- Artie Shaw & His Orchestra
6. Memories of You- Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra
7. I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You)- Harry James & His Orchestra
8. On the Alamo- Benny Goodman; Charlie Christian; Benny Goodman Sextet
9. Pennies from Heaven- Teddy Wilson & His Orchestra; Billie Holiday
10. Body and Soul- Coleman Hawkins & His Orchestra
11. Let's Get Lost- Frank Sinatra
12. Blues in The Night (My Mama Done Tol' Me)- Cab Calloway & His Orchestra
13. There Shall Be No Night- Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra
14. Echoes of Harlem (78rpm Version)-Cootie Williams & His Rug Cutters
15. Skylark- Earl Hines & His Orchestra; Billy Eckstine
16. Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of The Week)- Frank Sinatra
17. Paper Doll- The Mills Brothers
18. Long Ago and Far Away- Frank Sinatra
19. Sentimental Journey- Doris Day with Les Brown & His Orchestra
20. Waiting for The Train to Come In- Harry James & His Orchestra

My Take

As a child born at nearly the tail-end of the Baby Boom (1945-1965), I don’t have any first-hand memories of the Second World War. My parents were both immigrants from Colombia, a nation that cut diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy, and Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and joined the Allied side on November 26, 1943. As far as I know, Dad had a commission in the Colombian Air Force but probably did not see combat; Mom was a teenager at the time and was affected by rationing of a few staple items. They didn’t lose any loved ones in World War II – Colombia did not send large armies overseas, and whatever fighting was done by her armed forces was done by the navy in the Caribbean. 

In spite of this, I tend to feel that I’m more American than I am Colombian, and though I don’t deny my heritage, I know more about the land of my birth than I do about my ancestors’ homeland. American history fascinates me, and no other historical period interests me more than World War II.

So even though I did not live through the War or its immediate aftermath, I grew up in the U.S. at a weird sociocultural junction in its existence. World War II was still remarkably in the “recent past” rear mirror of our collective memory. When I was born, a World War II veteran – John F. Kennedy – was in the White House. Many other vets were still in their late 30s or early 40s, and most were still laboring hard in the workplace. My pediatrician, the late Dr. Irving Stemmerman, had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and even in the early years of the Vietnam War, the War was a popular setting for films, novels, dramatic TV shows (Combat!) and even silly sitcoms (McHale’s Navy, Hogan’s Heroes).

Furthermore, based on stories that my late mom told me, my father loved music. Mostly cumbia, Colombia’s version of salsa dance music, but as a member of the World War II generation, he was also fond of American pop music of the swing and the Big Band eras. I’m not sure how many albums he and Mom had before he died in a plane crash; our home burned down a few months after he passed, and the inferno claimed my dad’s record collection along with most of my family’s other possessions.  However, before any of that bad shit happened, it’s likely that my dad played some of his World War II-era music when he was home on his rare days off from flying. 

It goes without saying that most of my exposure to the hits from the Second World War comes from countless hours of watching war films such as The Longest Day, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Memphis Belle, and Saving Private Ryan, as well as documentaries – The World at War often uses Big Band tunes in episodes that feature major U.S. involvement in the war, as do other productions about the War.

The War: A Ken Burns Film is intended as a tribute to the Greatest Generation, most of whose members are in their late eighties and nineties. Indeed, Burns has said that he and his company would not do another military history documentary after 1990’s The Civil War, but the fact that the U.S. loses an estimated 2000 veterans a day – compounded by the sad state of history education in American schools today – caused everyone at Florentine Films to change course while there were still individuals that could tell their stories to interviewers and cameramen.

As a World War II buff and Ken Burns fan, I appreciate how the filmmakers use music to put the viewer in the middle of The War’s story of four American towns and how their citizens experienced history’s greatest cataclysm. Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War – The War: A Ken Burns Film features 20 songs – most with vocals, some with purely instrumental jazz performances – recorded at the time and by the original artists. Some of the songs – We’ll Meet Again, Little Brown Jug, I’ll Be Seeing You, the title track, and Paper Doll – were already favorites of mine from way back.

Others, including Moonglow, Memories of You, Skylark, and Let’s Get Lost entered my conscience either when I watched The War or heard Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War for the first time.

Many of the tracks were written as morale-boosting songs with swinging beats full of brass and percussion; others are, as the record blurb says, written and performed to give “voice to the deepest feelings of loneliness, sorrow, and anxious hope.” They were, as the cliché goes, the soundtrack of the lives of G.I. Joe, Rosie the Riveter, and even their young children, many of whom saw Daddy only as a framed picture of a young man in uniform until – if they were lucky, he came home to the States at war’s end, and watched their moms get ready to go to work at a defense-related factory job.

And to the generation that inherited the world without Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and militaristic Japan because of their sacrifices, this record is a treasure trove of songs that help us remember that our parents and grandparents – or their peers – saved us from tyranny and genocide. Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War – The War: A Ken Burns Film is not just a collection of music that is nothing like what came before or since – it’s a window that looks backward to a time when there was great evil on the march, and as part of the Grand Alliance, we faced it, challenged it, and eventually defeated it.