"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" is one of the best-known American songs of the Great Depression. Written by lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Jay Gorney, it was part of the 1932 musical revue Americana; the melody is based on a Russian-Jewish lullaby. The song tells the story of the universal everyman, whose honest work towards achieving the American dream has been foiled by the economic collapse. Unusual for a Broadway song, it was composed largely in a minor key. The song became best known through recordings by Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallée that were released in late 1932. The song received positive reviews and was one of the most popular songs of 1932. As one of the few popular songs during the era to discuss the darker aspects of the collapse, it came to be viewed as an anthem of the Great Depression.

Background

thumb|Unemployed men outside a soup kitchen in Chicago, 1931.

The Great Depression in the United States, which started with the 1929 Wall Street crash, had a severe impact on the country. In 1932, 25 percent of American men were unemployed. Gorney recalled that the pair came up with the title "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" after walking in the Central Park where they heard unemployed men asking "Can you spare a dime?" Harburg recalled that he was working on a song for the musical Americana: "We had to have a title... Not to say, my wife is sick, I've got six children, the Crash put me out of business, hand me a dime. I hate songs of that kind." Harburg's worksheets show that he went through several drafts of the lyrics, which included a satirical version attacking John D. Rockefeller and other tycoons. However, over time Harburg moved towards more concrete imagery, resulting in the final version. Harburg said in an interview: "the man is really saying: I made an investment in this country. Where the hell are my dividends? ... [The song] doesn't reduce him to a beggar. It makes him a dignified human being, asking questions—and a bit outraged, too, as he should be." According to Harold Meyerson and Ernest Harburg, "[r]hythmically and melodically it sounds like a Jewish chant." including Judy Collins and Tom Waits. In 1948, a revival of the song by British vocalist Steve Conway was released on Columbia.

During the 1970s stagflation and in light of the Watergate scandal, Harburg wrote a parody version for The New York Times:

Reception and legacy

At the time, reviews of musicals rarely devoted much space to the songs' lyrics and melody. That was not true of the reviews of Americana. In The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson wrote that "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was "plaintive and thundering" and "the first song of the year that can be sung... Mr. Gorney has expressed the spirit of these times with more heart-breaking anguish than any of the prose bards of the day." Gilbert Gabriel in New York American wrote: "Gorney and Harburg have written something so stirring that it will run away with the whole show". Theater Arts Monthlys review stated that the song "deflates the rolling bombast of our political nightmare with greater effect than all the rest of Mr. McEvoy's satirical skits put together"; Variety said that "Brother" was the only part of the show worth praising. Harburg later wrote that the song earned him several thousand dollars and helped him get started in the music business. Business leaders tried to have it banned from the radio, viewing the song as "a dangerous attack on the American economic system". They were unsuccessful, due to the song's popularity. William Zinsser writes that "[t]he song so lacerated the national conscience that radio stations banned it" for being "sympathetic to the unemployed".

Few thematic Depression songs were popular, because Americans did not want music which reminded them of the economic situation, but "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was "the exception that proved the rule". In 2007, Clyde Haberman wrote that the song "endures as an anthem for the downtrodden and the forgotten". The song was the most prominent cultural representation of the Bonus Army.

References

  • Autograph score (1932) published by Paramount-Publix