"BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?"

The popular song "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?," which became an anthem of the Great Depression, was written in 1932 by composer Jay Gorney and lyricist E. Y. "Yip" Harburg as part of a musical score for the satirical revue Americana. The revue took its theme from Roosevelt's "Forgotten Man" speech that launched his first presidential campaign by reminding Americans of the men who had fought our wars and worked in our factories but now were out of work. "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was written for a scene in which men in soldiers' uniforms form a breadline.

Gorney's melody starts out in a plaintive minor key—an unusual beginning for a Broadway theater song—and Harburg's lyric portrays a man who is not a pitiful panhandler, but a strong man bewildered to find himself in a breadline. In the past, he says, he has built a railroad and fought bravely in war, but now he is outraged to find that he must beg for a dime. In the opening verse, he expresses his bitterness, "They used to tell me I was building a dream," and in the chorus, the main body of the song, he recalls how jauntily he and other men went off to war, only to find themselves later "slogging through hell."

By the end of the song, as the music soars upward in a crescendo, the singer's request becomes ominously threatening as he confronts his listener and repeats his request for money, but this time, instead of addressing him as "brother," he uses the more military ("buddy" is a military term for a fellow-soldier) and militant, "Buddy, can you spare a dime?" The clear implication is that this powerful, embittered man—and "half a million" like him—could easily rise up against the political system that betrayed them with its "Yankee-Doodle-de-dum."

After Americana opened on Broadway on October 5, 1932, a month before the presidential election, reviewers singled out "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" for praise, and recordings by Bing Crosby and other singers made it a hit despite the fact that some radio stations downplayed or even banned the song.

See Also: BREADLINES; MUSIC.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Furia, Philip. The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists. 1990.

Meyerson, Harold, and Ernie Harburg. Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz? Yip Harburg, Lyricist. 1993.

Wilk, Max. They're Playing Our Song. 1973.

Philip Furia