Catching up on Music Mondays: Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

May 16
"Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition," music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, sung by the Merry Macs (1942)

I know I’ve fallen off the wagon posting my Music Mondays, but I am going to attempt to get back on. :) (Interestingly, last year when I attempted to do Music Mondays, I also fell off around mid-May. I guess life just gets busy at that time of year for me.) Anyway, I am going to catch up the rest of May and June for several days in a row and then get into July and hopefully keep mostly on track with it at that point. So we’re still in the 1940s for 2 more posts, then we will be move into the 1950s.

For May 16's Music Monday, I wanted to highlight a song that became popular as a direct result of the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941. I think it is a good bet that songs about war and ammunition would not have made the top 40 in the United States without that attack that prompted our entrance to World War II. The song is “Pass the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,” and it has an interesting backstory. In fact, the origin of the phrase sort of became a legend for a while, with stories of a chaplain hopping into a cockpit to join the fight and uttering the phrase. In fact, the true story is that the chaplain LTJG Howell M. Forgy was on board the USS New Orleans, stationed in Pearl Harbor, during the attack and helped direct what was basically a “bucket brigade” to get ammunition from the storage to the guns. The story is that he walked up and down the line of men, encouraging them with the phrase that then became a famous song.

I chose the version by The Merry Macs because the version that reached number 1 was performed by a group I already featured this month (Kay Kyser and his Orchestra). This version by The Merry Macs reached #8 on the American charts. The group was from Minneapolis, MN, and originally started as a prom group, going around to various high school proms in the area and singing for those. Apparently, their close style of singing harmony was a revolution for its time, as previous quartet groups had exclusively sung barber shop quartet style.

Now, take a listen to “Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition,” sung by The Merry Macs:

Resources
About the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise_the_Lord_and_Pass_the_Ammunition
About the group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merry_Macs

https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/2253056