Talk, personality

In posts previous to today's, was contemplating two songs:
Lloyd Price's "Personality"
and "High Hopes," performed by Frank Sinatra, and covered by others, including Doris Day.

Both songs came out in 1959.
(What is it with 1959?)

Both are songs which I heard little, short pieces of, at times, during my life on the planet -- and when hearing only a few lines, or measures, at a time, I would want more -- I'd be like, "What is that song?" 
"Where is that song?"
"Where can I find it?"
Where can I listen to it?
It sounds really good, and happy....

And -- I would not be able to find it, or have it, or hear it, with the resources then available to me.

Now, with the internet, I type in the title, or a line from the song, and it emerges, before my eyes.  A list of various references, or versions, of the same thing.  It goes on and on....

Last week, when I thought of those songs, was letting the threads of their lines run through my head, and for a short bit, thought maybe they were one song -- the same song.

"Cause you've got -- personality, something - personality, High hopes, he's got hi-i-igh hopes, he's got...personality..."

"Personality," it seems, would have been a sort of bona fide, substantive R & B work -- "High Hopes" would be more in a category of the light-hearted pop tune.

And a thing I find startling and surprising is...
Well, when I imagine if any people look at Blue Collar Lit sometimes, the thought occurs to me that some might say, "That blog writes about politics all the damn time, especially Kennedy, for the love-of-Pete, it's all-Kennedy-all-the-time....!"
And any critics thinking along these sorts of lines would read the song lyrics I shared this week and say to themselves, Well thank goodness, at least it's not about Kennedy this time -- or -- for this blog's usual "change-of-pace," Nixon, for God's sake....!
But -- (sorry), but politics wanders back in because, believe it or not -- and I found it startling and surprising -- the "High Hopes" song was actually used in Senator John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign...! 

Sung by Frank Sinatra.

(And, why -- not - ? - ?...?)

That type of song in a campaign today would seem impossibly "corny" -- too "lightweight," or something....they'd never get away with it!  Their opponents would make fun of the "pie-in-the-sky" hopes....No politician would want to be associated with it.  Although some of the ideas and phrases with which they do associate themselves are, to my perspective, disgusting, awful, and mean.  But we're living in an era where some people confuse meanness and pettiness with strength.

For the 1960 campaign, they re-wrote the lyrics of "High Hopes" --

Everyone is voting for Jack
'Cause he's got what all the rest lack.
Everyone wants to back Jack;
Jack is on the right track.

'Cause he's got -- high hopes,
high hopes,
1960's the year for his high hopes.

So come on and vote for Kennedy,
vote for Kennedy,
and we'll come out on top --
Whoops there goes the opposition ker-
Whoops there goes the opposition ker-
Whoops there goes the opposition, ker-plop.

-----------------
Ker.
Plop.

==================  {July 1960}  "Today our concern must be with the future.  For the world is changing.  The old era is ending.  The old ways will not do.  Abroad, the balance of power is shifting.  There are new and more terrible weapons -- new and uncertain nations -- new pressures of population and deprivation....

Too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose.  It is a time, in short, for a new generation of leadership -- new men to cope with new problems and new opportunities....I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier.  From the lands that stretch three thousand miles behind me, the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build a new world here in the West. 

They were not the captives of their own doubts, the prisoners of their own price tags.  Their motto was not 'every man for himself' -- but 'all for the common cause.'...We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier -- the frontier of the 1960s -- a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils....

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges.  It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them....Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure?  That is the real question. 

Have we the nerve and the will?...

Are we up to the task -- are we equal to the challenge?...That is the question of the New Frontier.  That is the choice our nation must make -- a choice...between the public interest and the private comfort -- between national greatness and national decline....All mankind waits upon our decision.  A whole world looks to see what we will do.  We cannot fail their trust, we cannot fail to try."

{excerpts, JFK speech, Dem. Convention, L.A. 1960}

..."Everyone wants to back Jack --
Jack is on the right track,
'Cause he's got -- high hopes...."

-30-