{"id":437132,"date":"2018-08-04T00:17:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T00:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essaypaper.org\/writing-a-second-verse-of-you-are-my-sunshine\/"},"modified":"2018-10-24T08:57:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T08:57:44","slug":"writing-a-second-verse-of-you-are-my-sunshine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/writing-a-second-verse-of-you-are-my-sunshine\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing a second verse of you are my sunshine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t \"Order\n\t\t<\/div>\n
\"Writing<\/div>\n

At 2:15 p.m. on Monday, when tornado sirens rang out in Moore, Okla. teachers at the AgapeLand Learning Center rushed their 15 students into the bathrooms \u2014 the safest place in their brick building. To protect their charges, the adults draped them in a protective covering; to keep them from panicking, they sang songs through the storm. As reported by the New York Times, they led the children in a round of \u201cYou Are My Sunshine,\u201d which might seem gently ironic \u2014 or perhaps even subtly defiant \u2014 given the dangerous weather all around them. \u201cYou are my sunshine, my only sunshine,\u201d they sang. \u201cYou make me happy when skies are gray.\u201d<\/p>\n

That story has become one of the main talking points in the news coverage of the Oklahoma tornadoes. It shows a bit of everyday heroism in the face of great destruction, reminiscent of similar lifesaving actions at Sandy Hook six months ago. Still, what makes the story so powerful is not simply the teachers\u2019 common-sense decision to move the students into the bathrooms. Instead, it\u2019s the image of everybody singing \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d in the eye of the storm. It\u2019s hard to imagine the fear and uncertainty they faced, or even how the youngest of their charges would have responded, but certainly the situation lent new gravity to that final line of the chorus: \u201cPlease don\u2019t take my sunshine away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everybody knows the song. You know it. I know it. The kids in Oklahoma know it. So does everyone who reads about the Oklahoma tornadoes. \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d is so deeply embedded in the popular culture that most people can\u2019t even remember when they first heard it. They\u2019ve simply lived with it from the time they developed a memory.\n<\/p>\n

\"Writing<\/div>\n

I can fondly recall my Grandmother Love singing it to me when I was 3 or 4 and I would fall asleep in her giant four-poster bed. I sang along with her, so it can\u2019t have been my first exposure to the tune. Or perhaps I simply picked up the words and the melody as she sang them to me. It\u2019s a remarkably simple tune, especially when you excise the verses and focus exclusively on the chorus \u2014 as almost everybody does.<\/p>\n

\"Low<\/div>\n

\u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d may in fact be the most ubiquitous piece of music of the 20th century, second only to \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d and \u201cShave and a Haircut.\u201d Its popularity never wanes with passing generations. Instead, it continually reappears in various contexts: as a campfire singalong, as a sweet lullaby from a parent to a child, in commercials for French\u2019s mustard or children\u2019s Tylenol. Seventy-five years after its debut, children\u2019s performers still record the song. It\u2019s the centerpiece of Elizabeth Mitchell\u2019s 2002 album \u201cYou Are My Sunshine,\u201d and former 98\u00b0 singer Nick Lachey included a solemn cover on his new children\u2019s album \u201cA Father\u2019s Lullaby.\u201d It\u2019s been punkified (Stine J), polkafied (Frank Yankovic), disco\u2019ed (Domino Dancing), diva\u2019ed (Aretha Franklin), and even slow-jammed (Mtume). Ike Tina Turner recorded a particularly badass version; Brian Wilson peppered the Beach Boys\u2019 long-lost \u201cSMiLE!\u201d with a few bars; and later in his life, Johnny Cash gave it a distinctively melancholy interpretation.\n<\/p>\n

\"Writing<\/div>\n

And then there\u2019s Ray Charles, who had a hit with \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d back in 1962. Appearing on his groundbreaking album \u201cModern Sounds in Country Western Music,\u201d his may be the most exciting adult version of the song, with a recklessly syncopated chorus, the Raelettes on backing vocals, and flashy brass punctuating Charles\u2019 every plea. More recently, there was a version included on the massively popular soundtrack to the Coen brothers\u2019 2000 film \u201cO Brother Where Art Thou?\u201d which has proved foundational for a new generation of folk revivalists from Mumford Sons to the Lone Bellow. And yet, the most significant recording of the song belongs to a man most people have never heard of, but who happens to be one of the most intriguing figures in country music and American political history.<\/p>\n

The song\u2019s provenance is muddied. There were two or three versions recorded in 1939, including one by the Rice Brothers Gang. Many historians believe Paul Rice actually penned the tune, but sold the rights to Jimmie Davis, a Louisiana college-professor-turned-criminal-court-clerk who moonlighted as a hillbilly singer at his local radio station. Other historians give writing credit to Davis and his steel guitar player, Charles Mitchell. Either way, Davis\u2019 version, released in 1940 by the fledgling Decca Records, was an enormous hit. By today\u2019s standards, it hardly sounds \u201ccountry.\u201d Instead, it\u2019s a sophisticated amalgam of hillbilly swing and Dixieland jazz. The clarinet, piano and trumpet sound like they\u2019re about to burst right out of the song, and Mitchell\u2019s stately steel guitar solo can\u2019t escape the instrument\u2019s Hawaiian associations or its relative newness in country music.<\/p>\n

It was not Davis\u2019 first hit. In fact, he had been fairly prolific throughout the 1930s, recording numerous sides for Victor before migrating over to Decca. Among them were, according to Nick Tosches\u2019 indispensable \u201cCountry: The Twisted Roots of Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll,\u201d \u201cfrail and wispy\u201d sentimental tunes as well as songs \u201cthat dealt with sex plainly or in crypto-lubricities, but never without an extremely raunchy sense of humor.\u201d The lasciviousness of Davis\u2019 material did not distinguish him from his hillbilly contemporaries; in fact, double entendres were the coin of the pre-war country realm. He toned down his act upon signing with Decca, and Tosches calls him, somewhat derisively, a \u201ccrooner.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1941, \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d was covered by Gene Autry, Lawrence Welk and Bing Crosby, yet Davis\u2019 version dominated the public imagination. When he ran for governor of Louisiana in 1944, he used that hit as his campaign theme, singing it during stump speeches and at fundraisers, often while riding a horse he had named \u201cSunshine.\u201d In advertisements and editorials across the state, his opponents tried to draw attention to his older, lewder songs, but none were as catchy or as identifiable as \u201cYou Are My Sunshine.\u201d Davis won the governorship and served a single term in the 1940s. When he ran again 20 years later (now on a strictly segregationist platform), the song continued to play a role in his campaign.<\/p>\n

Despite his career in politics and a handful of film appearances, \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d endures as Davis\u2019 lasting legacy, much more so than any particular piece of legislation or celluloid. Out of office, according to Tosches, Davis recorded a new, explicitly religious version called \u201cChrist Is My Sunshine,\u201d which in retrospect seems a little redundant. The original song had rooted itself deep in the Louisiana soil, publicly intuited as implicitly religious. Nearly three decades after Davis left office, it was named the second official song of Louisiana (the first being \u201cGive Me Louisiana,\u201d by Doralice Fontane and John Croom).<\/p>\n

\u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d proved pivotal not just for Davis\u2019 music or political career, but for hillbilly music in general. Arriving at a time when the U.S. was only just emerging from the Great Depression but had not yet become embroiled in World War II, the song would prove instrumental in popularizing the rural genre beyond the barn dances and hayrides of the South and Midwest. As Bill C. Malone and Jocelyn R. Neal write in \u201cCountry Music, U.S.A.\u201d: \u201cSome songs became so widely popular, and were performed in such an extensive variety of stylistic formats, that they virtually lost their country identities \u2026 [\u2018You Are My Sunshine\u2019] became one of the most commercially programmed numbers in American popular music. Sung to death at innumerable parties, hayrides, fraternity bashes, and assorted social functions, it became one of the few country songs that every body knows. \u2018You Are My Sunshine\u2019 represented both the national flowering of country music and its eventual absorption into the mainstream of American popular culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song is the ultimate crossover hit \u2014 so broadly popular that many people may not be aware of its hillbilly origins. But what makes it endure? Why has \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d survived when other songs of the era have fallen by the wayside, largely forgotten except for a few country historians and enthusiasts? Perhaps the song\u2019s most obvious quality is its simplicity. It\u2019s not a hard song to sing, especially if you omit the verses. All the notes are clustered in the mid-range, so it doesn\u2019t take a Dolly Parton to hit the high notes or a Johnny Cash to hit the low ones. Even those people who couldn\u2019t carry a tune in a bucket can sing \u201cYou Are My Sunshine.\u201d And given how the melody ascends and descends so fluidly, it\u2019s actually fun to sing. The beat falls predictably and faithfully, so it\u2019s almost impossible not to nod your head or tap your toe. It\u2019s compact and easy: one of the most insistent earworms of the last century.<\/p>\n

Despite its sunshiny lyrics, however, there is a melancholy, maudlin element to \u201cYou Are My Sunshine,\u201d a vague pathos that underscores the central metaphor. That last line of the chorus implies some danger that the singer\u2019s sunshine will be taken away \u2014 it will disappear behind a gray cloud or set on the horizon. The verses \u2014 so often deleted from performances, especially those intended for underage audiences \u2014reinforce that desperation. The first verse opens with the narrator dreaming of his true love, then waking to find her gone: \u201cI hung my head and cried.\u201d She had told him she would love him always, but \u201cnow you\u2019ve left me and love another \/ You have shattered all my dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some listeners have detected a vague menace in the second verse. In \u201cHeartaches By the Number: Country Music\u2019s 500 Greatest Singles,\u201d David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren describe the situation and ponder the implications: \u201cAfter pleading with his sweetheart not to forsake him for another, Davis slips in what sounds like a threat: \u2018If you leave me to love another \/ You\u2019ll regret it all someday.\u2019 He could just be trying to get his woman to think twice about breaking up with him, but when, on the third verse, he reminds her of how she promised to be true, it\u2019s as if he\u2019s holding that pledge over her head. With those sauntering rhythms steeling his resolve, it\u2019s as if Davis is determined to make her love him, even against her will.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d is actually two very different songs: In its entirety, it recounts a troubled love affair beleaguered by recrimination and mistrust, but reduced to just its chorus, it is a sweet\/bittersweet declaration of pure and simple love, with a simple yet powerful metaphor at its core. For that reason, \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d \u2014 in addition to being a lament, a lullaby, and a sing-along \u2014 has also become something of a secular hymn. The love it professes isn\u2019t necessarily earthly or romantic; it could be spiritual or heavenly. So it\u2019s no surprise that the song has been ascribed life-giving powers in recent years. As one story has it, a baby girl in ICU was serenaded back to full health by her 5-year-old brother\u2019s bedside performance of the song. The infant was not expected to live, but was allowed to leave the hospital the next day.<\/p>\n

Urban legend watchdogs are divided about the story\u2019s grounding in fact. Snopes.com categorizes the rumor as \u201cundetermined,\u201d but does list a town and a hospital where the story originates. On the other hand, Truthorfiction.com proclaims it as \u201ctruth.\u201d Most likely, it is a story of hope and recovery that was transformed through telling and retelling, but it\u2019s no accident that \u201cYou Are My Sunshine\u201d remains at its center. The song\u2019s pleading structure renders it a form of prayer: \u201cPlease don\u2019t take my sunshine away from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This spiritualized understanding of the song has been renewed in the wake of the Oklahoma tornadoes. Already the account of its performance at AgapeLand Learning Center has gone viral, with a happy ending that seems to reinforce the song\u2019s sentiments: The building itself was destroyed, but not one of those singing children was hurt.<\/p>\n