Whenever the combination of cars and music comes up, the obvious is to think of the fifties and sixties: Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and later Bruce Springsteen put their love for the automobile into song. But of course the motorcar has influenced songwriters for a much longer time, the first songs even date from the last years of the nineteenth century. When the first automobiles appeared on the still unpaved roads, people soon realized their importance, what they could do with it and of course what could go wrong. And so songwriters tried to find the words and lyrics to express the emotion they felt when seeing or perhaps even driving a motorcar. A nice example of such a song is ‘He’d have to get under - get out and get under (to fix up his automobile)’, composed in 1913 by Maurice Abrahams (music) and Grant Glarke and Edgar Leslie (words). Turn up your speakers! (used by kind permission of Don Ferguson). This song was recorded by many artists of which the most famous was Al Jolson.

A special note for older Dutch readers: if you think you recognize this song, you’re right. In the thirties it was translated in Dutch by Louis Davids who used it in the musical ‘Rooie Sien’ titled ‘Eruit en eronder’. It was also recorded by ‘Willeke Alberti in 1975 for the movie of the same name.

Of course a lot more of this kind of songs have been written during the early years. For those of you who want too know more, there’s a marvelous website that has a search engine for all kinds of older music. Type in what you’re looking for, for instance ‘automobiles’, ‘airplanes’, or ‘motorcycles’ or whatever you like.

(Permission to publish the picture of the sheet music was given by the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Special Collections, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University)

October 11, 2002