Let's View History Through Music! Quiz

Answer: 20 months

"In May of 1941 the war had just begun..."

Ole Johnny was just a bit off with his timeframe for the beginning of WW2, since the war had actually begun with Germany attacking Poland in September 1939. To his credit, the U.S. didn't become involved until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941.
It is also a fact, however, that the German battleship Bismarck was sunk by the British in 1941.

Decades later, the wreckage of the ship was discovered on 8 June 1989 by the man who had also located the wreck of RMS Titanic in 1985, Dr. Robert Ballard.

Answer: a locomotive train

"The Wreck of the Old 97" told the story of a Southern Railways train derailment that occurred near Danville, Virginia. The engineer, Joseph Broady, was in a hurry to make his mail run because the "Fast Mail" as it was known, was running behind schedule. The train had a reputation for NEVER being late, and it was perhaps because of this that Brody was a bit careless. The train started off late on the day of September 27, 1903 when it left Washington D.C. on its way to Monroe, Virginia and thus arrived an hour late.

At Monroe, Broady had been instructed to arrive at his next destination, Spencer, North Carolina 166 miles distant, on time. The only way to make up for the time already lost was to speed the train along; accelerating from the usual required speed of 39 mph to a minimum of 51 mph. The rolling terrain and the faster speed caused the train to derail and sent it crashing over an embankment sending several people on the train to their deaths.

The wooden cars burst into flames after the train crashed, and while the railroad placed all the blame on Broady, claiming that no one had insisted that he deliver the mail on time, others have always felt that Broady was not solely to blame for the accident.

In 1924, country musician Vernon Dalhart's ballad about the Old 97 became a major commercial success.

Answer: True

"Alice's Restaurant" is also known by its longer title; "Alice's Restaurant Massacree".

The actual, albeit exaggerated, events of the song were based on a true-life experience of Arlo Guthrie that actually occurred on Thanksgiving Day in 1965. The "Alice" in the song referred to a Stockbridge, Massachusetts (near Great Barrington) restaurant owner named Alice Brock.

The story, (which comprised one whole side of the album) took up a grand total of eighteen and one-half minutes to record.

Answer: Marvin Rainwater

"Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)" was written by John D. Loudermilk and was first recorded by a 25% Cherokee Indian named Marvin Rainwater in 1959. He sang the original version under the title "The Pale Faced Indian".

The song tells of the forced removal of the Cherokee and the other so-called Five Civilized Tribes of the southeastern U.S. as they were force marched from their homelands to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma.

(Not one of the prouder moments in American history.)

Answer: SS Edmund Fitzgerald

The freighter, "Edmund Fitzgerald" was named for a civic leader and chairman for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company.

The line, "The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'..." begins the 1976 hit song by Gordon Lightfoot.

The cause of the sinking of the "Edmund Fitzgerald" has never been clear. Some believe that it was due to two massive storms playing out simultaneously, creating near-hurricane force winds, while others feel that it may have been as a result of three rogue waves that had been reported in the area just prior to the ship sinking. With the weather so capricious, both factors may have contributed to the ship breaking up on Lake Superior, not far from Michigan's shoreline.

All twenty nine crew members perished and none of their bodies were ever recovered. Gordon Lightfoot chose to write and sing this modern-day ballad as a tribute to them and their families.

Answer: Robert Kennedy

Written by Dick Holler and first popularized by Dion DiMucci, "Abraham, Martin and John" was written in order to honor the slain who had championed civil rights at various times in U.S. history.

Robert (Bobby) Kennedy was mentioned near the end of this song, with the line,
"Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John."

Answer: a massacre at Suvla Bay, Turkey during WW1

In 1915 during WW1, the British and their allies attempted to attack the Gallipoli Peninsula area of Turkey, in their aim to capture Constantinople.
The Gallipoli campaign proved to be a major victory for the Ottoman Empire and a severe blow to the British, Australian and New Zealand troops who were butchered in their attempt to wrest the peninsula from Ottoman control.

In 1971, Eric Bogle memorialized their efforts in song, while also warning of the entanglements of war. The Vietnam War was heightening in intensity, and part of his motivation in writing this tune may have been a warning to those who believed that war could solve the world's problems.

Near the end of this very poignant song one can hear the following words:

"And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory.
And I see the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore,
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war;
And the young people ask me,'What are they marching for?'
And I ask myself the same question.

And the band plays "Waltzing Matilda"
And the old men still answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all."

Answer: coal mining

The song "Sixteen Tons" made popular by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955 reflected the working conditions and the script payments made to employees of the coal mining industry.

While textile mills (and other types of labor) also had "company stores", this song was specifically addressing a type of debt bondage applicable to coal miners that was in practice in the U.S. until labor unions began addressing the plight of workers.

In an effort to promote a type of indentured servitude, often companies would provide the "convenience" of a company store within the community, whereby workers could make purchases on very easy credit terms, repayable with deductions made from their subsequent paychecks. Since they were often paid in company script instead of cash, they had very little chance of ever changing their plight.

Answer: Follow The Drinking Gourd

"Follow The Drinking Gourd", an American folk song, was supposedly created as a type of "hidden code" for slaves to communicate escape routes via the Underground Railroad during the time of the U.S. Civil War. The drinking gourd was the Big Dipper, and the implication was that if one followed the direction in which the handle of the dipper was pointing, they would be following the North Star, on their way to the land of freedom in the northern states.

There is actually no evidence that this song was ever sung during the time of U.S. slavery, and one compelling argument against it being sung at that time is the fact that it was not even published until 1928, long after the Civil War was over.

No one will probably ever know with any certainty whether the song was sung prior to being written down or not. A folklore character, who may or may not have existed himself, is "credited" with the origins of the song.

A man nicknamed Peg Leg Joe was supposedly a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and taught slaves to sing this song to each other. There is no evidence that such a person as Peg Leg ever existed, with some people believing that he was a composite character of the times.

In other words, while there is no evidence that the song originated during the Civil War era or that any such person as Peg Leg Joe ever existed, neither is there any evidence to the contrary either.

Answer: Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash's version of "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" was written by songwriter Peter Lafarge and was released by Cash in 1964 on his album entitled "Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian." It was the only song on the album to later be released as a single and it subsequently went to the number three position on the country music charts.

The storyline of the song focused on the heroics of Ira Hayes and four other men who assisted in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, a legendary iconic event in its own right. While the second flag-raising was an "orchestrated" one, done for the benefit of the cameraman present on Iwo Jima, it represented the indomitable spirit of success shown by the original flagmen.

Ira Hayes, a native of Sacaton, Arizona, was a rather shy man, who did not enjoy the notoriety that succeeded his participation on Iwo Jima. He was later involved in a war bond tour with two other survivors of the battle of Iwo Jima, men named Rene Gagnon and John Bradley. In the 1949 movie, "The Sands of Iwo Jima", starring John Wayne, all three men appeared as themselves.

Hayes attempts at a normal life after the war met with anything but success because of the racial prejudices of the times and his own problems with alcoholism. His life ended on January 24, 1955 when he was found dead lying near an old hut near his hometown in Sacaton, Arizona.