Campaign song

Campaign songs are partisan ditties used in American political canvasses and more especially in presidential contests. The words were commonly set to established melodies like "Yankee Doodle," "Hail, Columbia," "Rosin the Bow," "Hail to the Chief" "John Brown's Body," "Dixie" and "O Tannenbaum" ("Maryland, My Maryland"); or to tunes widely popular at the time, such as "Few Days," "Champagne Charlie," "The Wearing of the Green" or "Down in a Coal Mine," which served for "Up in the White House." Perhaps the best known of them was "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," (in which words by Alexander C. Ross were adapted to the folk tune, "Little Pigs"). First heard at Zanesville, Ohio, this spread rapidly over the country, furnishing a party slogan. It has been said: "What the Marseilles Hymn was to Frenchmen, 'Tippecanoe and Tyler Too' was to the Whigs of 1840." In 1872 an attempt was made to revive the air for "Greeley Is the Real True Blue." The words, sometimes with music, of campaign songs were distributed in paper-covered song books or "songsters." Among these were the Log Cabin Song Book of 1840 and Hutchinson's Republican Songster for the Presidential campaign of 1860, compiled by J. W. Hutchinson. For many years national campaigns included itinerant stumpspeakers, live animals, fife-and-drum corps, red fire, floats, transparencies and rousing mass meetings in courthouses and town halls. Glee clubs were organized to introduce campaign songs and to lead audiences and matchers in singing them. The songs were real factors in holding the interest of crowds, emphasizing issues, developing enthusiasm and satirizing opponents. With changes in the methods of campaigning, the campaign song declined as a popular expression.

Source: Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940

Presidential campaign songs

• 1860: Abraham Lincoln: "Lincoln and Liberty" (Jesse Hutchinson of the Hutchinson Family Singers)
• 1864: Abraham Lincoln: "Battle Cry of Freedom" (George F. Root)
• 1928: Al Smith: "Sidewalks of New York"
• 1932: Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Happy Days Are Here Again"
• 1960: John F. Kennedy: "High Hopes"
• 1964: Lyndon B. Johnson: "Hello Lyndon" (Jerry Herman), Barry Goldwater: "Go with Goldwater" (Tom McDonnell and Otis Clements)
• 1968: Richard Nixon: "Nixon's the One" (Moose Charlap and Alvin Cooperman)
• 1972: George McGovern: "Bridge over Troubled Water" (Paul Simon)
• 1976: Jimmy Carter: "Ode to The Georgia Farmer" (K.E. and Julia Marsh), Gerald Ford: "I'm Feeling Good about America" (Robert K. Gardner)
• 1980: Ronald Reagan "California Here We Come"
• 1984: Ronald Reagan "Born in the U.S.A." (Bruce Springsteen, who later asked Reagan to stop using the song), Walter Mondale "Gonna Fly Now"
• 1988: George H. W. Bush: "This Land Is Your Land" (Woody Guthrie), Michael Dukakis: "America" (Neil Diamond)
• 1992: Bill Clinton: Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac), Ross Perot: Crazy (Patsy Cline)
• 1996: Bob Dole: "Dole Man" (Sam and Dave)
• 2000: George W. Bush: "I Won't Back Down" (Tom Petty) (Who threatened to sue Bush if he did not stop using the song. Petty then performed the song at Al Gore's home minutes after he conceded the election.), "We the People" (Billy Ray Cyrus), "Right Now" (Van Halen)
  Al Gore: "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" (Bachman-Turner Overdrive),"Let the Day Begin" (The Call)
• 2004: George W. Bush: "Only in America" (Brooks & Dunn), "Wave on Wave" by Pat Green
  John Kerry: "No Surrender" (Bruce Springsteen) [1], "Fortunate Son" by John Fogerty
• 2008: John McCain: "Take A Chance On Me" (ABBA), "Our Country" (John Mellencamp) (who asked McCain to stop using the song)
  Barack Obama: "Yes We Can" (will.i.am featuring various artists), "Better Way" (Ben Harper), "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" (Stevie Wonder), "City of Blinding Lights" (U2), "Higher and Higher" (Jackie Wilson), "Think" (Aretha Franklin), "The Rising" (Bruce Springsteen), "Only in America" (Brooks & Dunn)

Primary candidates: Hillary Clinton: "You and I" (Celine Dion), "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton and "American Girl" by Tom Petty, Chris Dodd: "Get Ready" and "Reach Out I'll Be There" by The Temptations, John Edwards: "Our Country" by John Mellencamp, Rudy Giuliani: Take Us Out by Jerry Goldsmith (theme from "Rudy") and "Rudie Can't Fail" by The Clash, Mike Huckabee: "More Than A Feeling" by Boston (Tom Scholz of Boston asked Huckabee to stop using the song)

External links

• 'Music Minefield'- a humorous AP interactive with animations. Examines certain candidates Campaign Songs intended and unintended meanings.
• The Republican campaign songster, for 1860 by William Henry Burleigh. Digitized from the collection of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library.
• Sing a Song of Howard Dean
• Campaign Jukebox, 2004 model
• Gone are the days of 'Happy Days Are Here Again.'
• Singing to the Oval Office
• Songs in the Key of Presidency
• Candidate's Tunes Hit A Few Sour Notes
• 'Only in America' could Obama borrow the GOP's favorite Brooks and Dunn song