Manire, Aaron D (amanire@indiana.edu)
Sat, 15 Jan 2000 15:24:24 -0500
Intrigued by the thought of Paul Robeson the football star, actor, writer,
civil and human rights activist, a truly great human being if there ever was
one, being also a singer, I got on the web and did some research.
Absolutely astounding.
Found this blurb at
http://www.breakthrough.org/blackside/PublishingNewMedia/Depressionmusic2.ht
ml
also see:
http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/1999/06/dolente.htm
"Gloomy Sunday"
Billie Holiday, 8/7/41
Popular folklore of the Depression has Wall Street pedestrians dodging a
hailstorm of failed financiers jumping from skyscrapers. Nothing like that
ever happened, but America's suicide rate increased (and its birth rate
declined) during the Depression. Edmund Wilson wrote movingly in The
American Earthquake of the unemployed man whose last desperate act was
rationalized in a coroner's report as due to "ill health, family troubles
and no work." Given that background, it may be understandable that Holiday's
recording of "Gloomy Sunday" was reportedly banned from radio. This suicidal
reverie was written in Hungary in 1933 and first recorded in English by Paul
Robeson in 1940. Legend has it that "Gloomy Sunday" (or "Szomoru Vasarnap,"
as it was known in Hungary) inspired suicides wherever it was heard, hence
its nickname, 'the suicide song.'
Paz,
A Dario
-----Original Message-----
From: Art Vandelay [mailto:markeg@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2000 1:08 PM
To: acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
Subject: Hungarian suicide song
dear list; I dont know if this post took or not so im trying again. There
was a song done in the 30's by paul Robeson. It was called or nicknamed"The
Hungarian suicide ong" . It was "banned" after people used it as a
soundtrack to "checking out" . Do anyof you knpw of this tune? Any versions
not just Robesons.
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