Rapture Records

Song: Remember Pearl Harbor / Dear Mom

Artist: Sammy Kaye and his Orchestra

Record Label: Victor Records 27738

Recorded: December 17, 1941

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy…”

This song was written and recorded barely a week after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered those words, officially drawing the United States into the conflict in Europe and bringing the name of an obscure island harbor in the Pacific territory of Hawaii to every American’s lips.

World War II would reshape the future of the United States and change the cultural landscape as it entered this clash of countries.

Today, let us remember Pearl Harbor.

Unusual for his repertoire of sweet music, Sammy Kaye quickly wrote this tune, borrowing his beloved Ohio University’s “Alma Mater, Ohio” and bumping up the tempo to a march. Don Reid supplied new lyrics.

It so happened that his Sunday Serenade radio show was interrupted that fateful day with annoucer Ben Grauer bringing breaking news of the attack. Prophetically, one of the songs played during the broadcast was “This is No Laughing Matter”.

Kaye’s tune was one of the first songs written for the war effort, becoming an instant rallying cry for the American public. Notably, it was used in 1987 Woody Allen film Radio Days, among the many musical set pieces, as the boys sally forth through the neighborhood collecting scrap metal for the war effort

Listen to the flip side “Dear Mom” here.