Composers Datebook

In 1917, on the day the United States declared war in Germany, the American song-writer and former vaudeville showman George M. Cohan composed a song titled “Over There,” based on the first three notes of a military bugle-call. On today’s date the following year, the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso performed Cohan’s song for an audience of 10,000 at an open-air concert in Ocean Grove, N.J. Musical America reported that, “It was a great opportunity for the rocking-chair brigade, which had never in its whole life witnessed such an outpouring of humans. And the automobiles! The Ocean Grove police department had BOTH its hands busy directing the traffic, extricating Fords from Rolls-Royces and preventing them from parking on the pathways.” Caruso’s rendition of “Over There,” despite his heavily Italian-accented English, was the smash hit of the Ocean Grove concert. “The audience got up on its 20,000 feet and yelled with delight,” wrote Musical America, which noted on the same page as its review that Cohan had completed a brand new patriotic song, this one addressed to the troops overseas, and ending with the lines, “When you come back, and you will come back, There’s a whole world waiting for you.” 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented Cohan with the Congressional Gold Medal for his contributions to World War I morale, in particular for his songs "You're a Grand Old Flag” and "Over There."