I’ve been to California only twice, in 1978 and 2006, for no more than a few days each time.
Often it occurs to me that if things had broken a bit differently, and Europe not become my chosen motif for life, California might have sufficed. We all know that California is big and diverse in terms of people, landscapes, ideas and beverages for daddy to drink.
What’s more, California in the context of the American experiment is like an enormous storehouse of mythology, second only to the “American dream” itself: gold, Hollywood, wine country, surfing, the Bakersfield sound, national parks ― did I mention Hollywood?
My high school friend Mike moved to Los Angeles to work in the film industry. Sadly he is gone, and our friendship didn’t survive into adulthood, so I never had the chance to ask him what it was like to spend the first part of one’s early life in Indiana, then migrate to LA.
I’m sure it was the same there, and equally sure that it couldn’t possibly be. But what do I know? I never migrated. Maybe I was a closet Californian, given my socialist proclivities (with bonus points for time spent in Warsaw Pact nations).
As so often is the case, these ruminations are occasioned by a song from the repertoire of my father’s Swing Era long-playing album collection, which comprised the bulk of my listening up to the time I trundled off to grade school. Sometimes it feels like I live through the 1960s and the 1930s.
San Fernando Valley was written by Gordon Jenkins for a Roy Rogers cowboy film, and Bing Crosby’s version was best known (it was a time when multiple versions of the same song might chart one after the other).
Oh, I’m packing my grip
And I’m leaving today,
‘Cause I’m taking a trip
California way
I’m gonna settle down and never more roam
And make the San Fernando Valley my home.
The 1944 version by the King Sisters is performed a cappella; there’d surely have been the customary instrumental backing of the day, except the record was cut during the period of the American Federation of Musicians strike (1942-44), when union musicians were banned from recording.
(To my ears, someone is playing standup bass on this recording. Internet sources insist that it is the sound of a bass, as fashioned by one of a group of male vocalists retained to make precisely such sound effects during this period.)
It’s hard to imagine a pop ditty more prescient at the time.
Thanks to wartime industrial growth, California was about to explode in every imaginable way, and the San Fernando Valley epitomized the paradise of the suburb. As one wag observed, “San Fernando Valley” might as well have been commissioned by the chamber of commerce to accompany overworked realtors.
Coming to California a just a quarter-century later: the Beach Boys and Grateful Dead, Charles Manson and Altamont, and in the weirdest twist of all, a former actor elected governor. These days in California, a Republican can’t get arrested (although they try mighty hard, eh?)
The story of the King Sisters is interesting, too. Luise married the bandleader Alvino Rey, real name Alvin McBurney, who was an unheralded pioneer of the electric guitar (see: “Alvino Rey’s Musical Legacy.”) Two of their grandchildren are Win and Will Butler of the indie rock group Arcade Fire.
The songwriter Jenkins disliked “San Fernando Valley,” but willingly cashed the checks generated by his creation. It isn’t known what James F. Hanley and Ballard MacDonald felt about their song, “Back Home Again in Indiana,” famously sung by Jim Nabors at the Indy 500; Nabors was an Alabaman discovered by Andy Griffith in Santa Monica, hired to play Gomer Pyle, and the rest was annual repetition at the Speedway.
Obviously, Indiana just doesn’t have the cachet of the coast. All we Hoosiers get are supermajority Republican Falangists.
And, of course, “San Fernando Valley” did have a sequel.
“Valley Girl,” by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa.
