Soldiers' Song

Hit tunes, like grass fires, usually start in a small way. Somebody plays them. Somebody hums them. Suddenly they catch on and sweep the country. Glenn Miller introduced Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree last February. Two and a half months later, it led in sheet-music sales, radio performances and on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade. At New York University, music students voted it one of the two popular songs most likely to outlast the war (the other: Buckle Down, Buck Private). This week it was sweeping the Army camps. Its catchy chorus, which sounds like a swing version of Long, Long Ago, enabled soldiers to vocalize a theme that worries most of them more than the war. The song:

I told the gang, the whole shebang,

That you were sweet and true,

They ran right out and came right back

With a photograph of you.

So don't sit under the apple tree

With anyone else but me . . .

'Til I come marching home.*

* With permission of the copyright owners, Robbins Music Corp., 1942.

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