To Stick In Your Tea

The great Al Jolson recorded a song called There's A Lump Of Sugar Down In Dixie. In it he refers to how sweet his Southern girlfriend is. What commentators often fail to realise is that the song was recorded just after the First World War. Sugar was a very scarce commodity in America then and particularly in the South. His girlfriend is therefore not simply sweet but very precious and hard to find anywhere.

Like a lot of Al Jolson songs this one has dated. It refers to a social situation which no longer exists. If he were alive today and still top of the entertainment tree he would be singing the same songs adapted to the world of now. A contemporary Jolson song would extol the virtues of a new target depending on the audience.

If Jolson lived in London it is obvious what he would describe his girlfriend as. She would be a plumber. Skilled tradesmen of any sort are hard to find and affordable ones even rarer. Furthermore there is a considerable drive to get women into non-traditional professions such as this. The chorus of the song would run "There's a lady plumber down in Dalston/Who I call my own - She's the cheapest little pipe restorer/I have ever known". Most singers would not create the response they would like with these words but as Jolson demonstrated many times during his lifetime he could pull it off.

If Jolson were back in America he would also not have to search too far for an object of his affections the audience could relate to. The rise of the religious right in that country has had the twin effect of creating a deep reverence for Scripture and creating an absurdly inflated sense of America's purpose in relation to it. The conflation of the Bible with the American Way has produced a nation of people who think they are put on this earth to take possession of Scripture and interpret it to the rest of us who were here thousands of years before and in some cases actually know what it means. It is no coincidence that the ludicrous Mormonism has thrived in this climate. In contemporary America Jolson would be singing "There's a secret scripture south of Erie/That we call our own - That declares we are the only nation /God has ever known". Jolson was of course Jewish and was brought up with such notions. An American audience would be so proud of itself that it would never consider the contradiction of a Jewish man acknowledging what the Fundamentalist Christian right regard as their private though unimpeachable truth.

But of course there is now a state of Israel. As the World's Greatest Entertainer Jolson would have been welcomed in his homeland with open arms even though he was actualy born in Russian Lithuania. He would be invited to sing in the most prestigious venues and be almost a personal pet of the President. What would he sing about in Israel? Lumps of sugar in Dixie would have no meaning there. The way to convey the same notion would be to invoke territory Israel claims or occupies which others dispute. Admittedly this applies to the whole country. Jolson however would sing "There's a group of mountains call the Golan/That I'm glad to own - There the sweetest little clumps of homeland security/We have ever known". The lack of scansion would surely be forgiven as long as extreme patriotism raised its head. If accused of being polemical Jolson would simply point to his lack of synagogue attendance and his support of Christian causes as well as Jewish ones. Not that he would care anyway as he could probably buy any country he chose and say Raca to all those who made comments about him.

All of these scenarios are feasible if Jolson rose from the dead as all his true fans know he will. This would however leave us with the Early Music problem. There are musicians who will play early music using all the instruments, techniques and styles of the period it was written so you hear what was actually intended. All that is missing is an audience from that time whose interpretation of what they hear would likewise reflect the period. In order to convey these concepts in a modern way to a modern audience you would also need a modern singer whose style everyone could relate to as a development from what they knew before. Who could hope to emulate Jolson? As always this column has the answer. Only the Crazy Frog who has topped the charts with non-music could deliver these new songs in the correct cultural context. This would of course have an added benefit. It would kill off rock and roll overnight and send everyone rushing back to the far superior Jolson as soon as possible. If the Crazy Frog is what we have come to it might just begin to cross people's minds that there might be something wrong with the assumption of eternal progress.