Friday, June 6, 2008

G.I. Jive, D-Day Dodgers

Today is the anniversary of the Normandy invasions. Rather than put up something predictably patriotic, I thought I would put up a piece that the boys listened to in '44. Sorry Mike, it's more swing. One of the popular tunes of the day was the G.I. Jive in a version performed by Louis Jordan. I couldn't find that version, so here's one by Johnny Mercer.



Lest we forget, there was another European front in WW II, in Italy which had been active since 1943. Many of those troops, especially the British, felt that the Italian front was ignored by the public after the Normandy landings. "The D-Day Dodgers", set to the tune of Lili Marlene was their theme song. The Italian campaign was fiercely fought, and this song is bitterly ironic in a way that Gen-X, the ironic generation, can never hope to approach.

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