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Post Book-Banning Today: "Ya Got Trouble"
Created by John Eipper on 05/01/23 3:42 AM

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Book-Banning Today: "Ya Got Trouble" (Patrick Mears, -Germany, 05/01/23 3:42 am)

Reading about all of this nonsense concerning what books are being banned from public school libraries and what topics cannot be taught or even discussed in school (viz., the current Ottawa County experience in West Michigan), I was reminded of the song, "Ya Got Trouble, Right Here in River City," composed by Meredith Wilson for his 1950s Broadway musical, The Music Man.

A subplot of the musical involves the local town library and the "scarlet woman" librarian, Marian, and her immoral view of what books should remain in the library and available to citizens and even the children of the fictional town of River City, Iowa.

Here is the link to "Ya Got Trouble" from the film, The Music Man, performed by Robert Preston:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI&t=10s

And if that song wasn't enough, this one ("Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little") focuses on the "evil" and scandalous books in the town library, which are the property not of the town but of the female librarian, who in the eyes of the influential townies is a "scarlet woman."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvhFs2bdRpE

Like Meredith Wilson in the 1950s, we are in times reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin, who in 1950 announced to the world from Wheeling, West Virginia that the US Government was intentionally harboring 205 card-carrying Communists in the State Department. A lot of good that did him in the long run!

https://pages.uoregon.edu/eherman/teaching/texts/McCarthy_Wheeling_Speech.pdf

"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!"

JE comments: I told Pat Mears off-Forum that my high school thespian career included a stint as Marcellus Washburn (grifter Harold Hill's sidekick) in Music Man. (See Buddy Hackett in the first clip above.) I have the MM songs coursing through my brain as I type. The opening number, "Rock Island," has a rap vibe a generation before its time. I always wondered what the influence might have been on Grandmaster Flash and his contemporaries.