The Song that Crossed Party Lines
Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2016
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This election season, our country seems more politically divided than ever. The race has been so ugly that it’s hard to even imagine a time when Republicans and Democrats could agree on anything at all.
In this podcast episode, we’re going back more than 75 years, to another hard-fought election. In 1940, FDR squared off against Wendell Willkie. And during the campaign, the Republicans, the Democrats, and even the Communist Party managed to agree on one thing:
A song.
It was an unlikely hit. The song was a kind of folk opera, sung by a Black man, that ran 10 minutes. But whether you were on the left or the right, the song’s populist message had something for everyone. It debuted on a national radio broadcast, on November 5, 1939. Producer Ben Shapiro brings us the story of “Ballad for Americans.”
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Additional music in this episode comes from the band Broke for Free.
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Harry’s Razors is offering a special deal to our listeners. Receive a free “shave balm” when you enter the code DIARIES at www.Harrys.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Radio Diaries. This is Joe. |
| 0:03.0 | And this is Elisa. |
| 0:05.0 | And we want to thank everybody who has donated to Radiotopia's annual fundraiser so far. |
| 0:09.0 | We are coming to the end of the road, but we still have yet to reach our goal of a thousand donors. |
| 0:15.3 | So we want to let you know some of the things that your donation supports here at Radio Diaries. |
| 0:21.5 | We just finished our big series, The Unmarched Graveyard, and there's some expenses that you might expect, you know, paying for our producers, paying for research, paying for some gear, and there's some unexpected things. |
| 0:34.0 | Elisa, is there anything that was kind of unexpected? |
| 0:37.0 | For sure, like with the first story that I worked on, I interviewed a woman named Susan |
| 0:41.2 | Harlebert, whose son had died and was buried on Hard Island. |
| 0:45.4 | And after I interviewed her, I realized that she had actually never visited her son's grave. |
| 0:50.1 | So we decided to set that up. |
| 0:52.0 | You know, I went to pick her up a couple hours north of the city that cost us some gas money. |
| 0:56.4 | We put her up in a hotel and I bought a bunch of pizza and bagels to power us through the weekend. |
| 1:01.7 | And it was a really beautiful and |
| 1:04.0 | carb-filled couple days. |
| 1:07.0 | We hope that gives you a glimpse at some of the things that your donation helps |
| 1:10.0 | to support here at Radio Diaries |
| 1:12.0 | and we hope that you'll support us and the rest of the shows in the Radio Topia family. |
| 1:17.0 | You can donate today at radiotopia.F.M. slash donate. That's Radiotopia. F.M. slash donate. |
| 1:24.0 | And thank you so much for your support. Radio Topia. From PRX is Radio Topia, this is Radio Diaries. I'm Joe Richmond. |
| 1:40.5 | We're starting off today with my favorite political ad ever. It was 2008, back |
| 1:46.3 | when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were fighting for the Democratic nomination. |
... |
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