Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 66

Popular Culture Review

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Chorus
Verse 4
Now tonight there are lights in our country so bright.
In the farms and the cities they are telling of this fight.
Now our mighty battleships will steam the bounding main
And remember the name of the good Reuben James.

Chorus
A fourth verse was added by Fred Hellerman of the Weavers (Digital
Tradition Mirror)
Well, many years have passed since those brave men are gone.
And those cold icy waters are still and they’re calm.
Many years have passed and still I wonder why,
The worst of men must fight and the best of men must die.
“Reuben James” did more than simply put Guthrie, Seeger, and the oth
ers on the popular charts. It was also something of a rehabilitation, and word began
to circulate that perhaps they were patriots after all. On Saturday. Feb. 14, 1942,
the group performed on “This Is War,” Norman Corwin’s patriotic extravaganza
broadcast on all four radio networks simultaneously. An estimated 30 million lis
teners (Dunaway, 101) heard the group sing an old square dance tune Seeger had
reworked into a war song, “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave.”
The exposure, however, proved to be the group’s undoing; Said the New
York World-Telegram, "The program's [“This is War”] backers were much upset
today to learn that the Almanac s[sic]ingers have long been the favorite balladeers
of the Communists” (quoted in Klein, 219). The New York Post ran stories about
the group’s Communist leanings, and one newspaper headline said, “Commie
Folksingers Try To Infiltrate Radio” (quoted in Pike). The publicist for “This is
War,” Allen Meltzer, was quoted as saying he was “very upset” (Klein, 219) about
the group, and that they would not be appearing on any more of the programs. Said
Seeger, “[W]e were red-baited in one of the New York papers, and the agent [Wil
liam Morris Agency] quit trying to get us any work” (Seeger, 18) Despite these
troubles, the song was released on the “Dear Mr. President” album (Keynote Al
bum 111) in 1942. Soon, however, J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I were hot on their
trail, and within a year the group officially disbanded when most members joined
the military.
The song has endured, and has been recorded by a number of other groups
and individuals, including the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, the Gateway
Singers and Cisco Houston. Ironically, most members of the Reuben James crew