Yesterday's Memories and Other Useless Thoughts: We Didn't Start The Fire ~ 1949 ~ Doris Day

Sunday, January 5, 2014

We Didn't Start The Fire ~ 1949 ~ Doris Day

We Didn't Start The Fire

sung by: Billy Joel

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye,"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen,

Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye!

Chorus:

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc,
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team,
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev,
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez.

Chorus

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide, Oh-oh-oh.

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia,
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go,
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy,
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo.

Chorus

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion,
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Chorus

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock,
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline,
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,
"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shore,

China's under martial law, Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire...

1949

Doris Day

1949 image of Doris Day
Source: http://www.buycelebrityposters.com/posters.php?item=5100088

Doris Day was very talented up and coming singer and then actress in that time period. She was born in April 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio as Doris Kappelhoff. She enjoyed dancing. She even won a dancing contest which paved her way from Ohio to Hollywood. Fate took hand in her life and she was in a car accident which shattered her leg bone. Her career as a dancer was forever over.

Her mother helped her get a job at the local radio station. Local band leader, Barney Rapp, heard her on the radio and feel in love with her voice. She sang at his club for $25 a week. He heard her sing "Day After Day" and suggested that she change her last name to Day to help her name sound catchy.

Her first hit was in 1945 with the song, "Sentimental Journey". In 1947 she signed on with Columbia Records and stayed with them until 1972. At a Hollywood party Doris Day was asked to sing a song. People in the movie industry heard her singing and begged for her to do a screen test for a movie. The camera fell in love with her. She got a role in the movie, "Romance on the High Seas" which helped kick start her movie career. She made 38 films in addition to hosting a few television shows. She still didn't stop making music. Even in 2011 Doris Day released her newest album "My Heart" in the United Kingdom. That album was ranked number 12 in Amazon's best seller list.

She became an animal rights activist. In the late 1970's she started up the Doris Day Pet Foundation. Her goal was to find good homes to animals so they wouldn't be put down. She was known for carrying pictures of animals around and trying to match them up with good caretakers. President George W. Bush even gave her the Medal of Freedom award for her hard work and accomplishment with animal rights.

Doris has been married 4 different times. Her first husband she met and married in 1941 when she was working for Barney Rapp. They had one son together and that would be her only child. He became abusive and they divorced in 1943. She married her second husband in 1946. Her rise in fame was unpleasing to her husband and he didn't want to be known as Mr. Doris Day so while she was out touring she got a note saying he was leaving her. That was in 1949. In 1951 she married her third husband who was assumed to be a real nice guy. He even adopted her son as his own. After his death in 1968 did she learn that he swindled her money away and left her with a bunch of debts. She married her fourth husband in 1976. That marriage ended in 1981.

She has received a multitude of awards ranging from 1948 to 2012 from her work as a singer, an actress, and as an animal rights activist. As of this post she resides in California and owns a hotel which she co-owned with her son before his death in 2004. She is currently 89 years old.