Randy Newman: Sail Away

      If I told you there was a guy who is in the Song Writers Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had won 2 Academy Awards, 5 Grammy's, & 3 Emmy's as well as a host of other prestigious awards you'd think his name would just roll off of your tongue right?  You'd probably be surprised if I told you this guy only had two songs in his whole career that he performed enter into the US top ten and only one song that made it all the way to #1 and it was recorded by someone else.  What if I told you he had scored or contributed to the scoring of nearly 30 films would you be able to name him then?  My guess is probably not.
      Randy Newman is just one of those guys that seems to make gold every time he writes or records music.  Yet somehow he's managed to remain mostly out of the spotlight.  It really is superbly ironic that someone can be so successful in the Hollywood music industry and yet so obscure at the same time.  Ironic is also the exact word I'd choose to describe his astounding 1972 song Sail Away.
      Sail Away is a story about the evils of slavery and the nature of freedom in the US and the nature of freedom in general.  It even touches on the ideas of manifest destiny and the assumption of the inevitable spread of American style of democracy, which one would assume, lacking cooperation,  means by force.  Considering that is exactly what was happening in Viet Nam in 1972 only serves to amplify the poignancy of Newman's song.

Climb aboard little wog,
sail away with me

       The lyrics create the image of a ships captain, perhaps in the year 1800, on the dock of a West African coastal town perched on a cask trying to convince his audience to voluntarily board his ship to come to America, specifically Charleston Bay in South Carolina.  The joke is that we know that the white Captain is an evil snake oil salesman playing upon the naivety of his black audience who's real intent is to sell them at the slave auction in the American antebellum South.
     Knowing nobody would willingly place themselves into slavery the Captain promises the "little wog's" there's plenty of food and no dangerous animals.  If you'll just come with me you'll get to "sing about Jesus and drink wine all day" and eat "sweet watermelon and buckwheat cake".  He promises what sounds like unlimited freedom but, as the listener knows, the freedom he's offering is limited to people other than his audience.  The unlimited freedom false promise kind of sounds like my cell phone and cable provider but I digress.
       When you start pulling apart the lyrics, under the irony, you discover all of America's dirty little secrets.  In the first verse he promises them that if they "Sail Away" they'll get food to eat.  To a starving & exploited people competing for scant resources that is an almost impossible offer to resist.  On the other hand standard slave fair wasn't exactly like an evening at Delmonico's and the food offered to the unwilling passengers of a slave ship wasn't even fit for human consumption.  In 1972, as today, there are hungry & politically weak people who have no chance against the aligned conservative forces against them that believe they should not be helped for their own good.  Newman's protagonist uses the enticement of full bellies the same way Herbert Hoover did in 1928 to become President.  He promised "A chicken in every pot" and one year later America learned the truth when the Great Depression started.
      The second verse cleverly plays on the insulting stereotypes of African-Americans by tempting the audience with watermelon and buckwheat cake.  Inviting a people to participate in the exact behavior that is then used by the majority to insult and laugh derisively at the minority is perhaps one of the most cleverly ironic lyrics ever.  Newman subtly inserts the word "wog" as a stand-in for the N word thereby ingeniously allowing the captain to insult his audience without being gauche.  Newman isn't just pointing out that the Captain thinks his audience is inferior, he is pointing out that many people in our modern version of America speak in code that belies their real feelings about people they believe are inferior by nature.  Mitt Romney's 47% comment is exactly what Newman was describing 40 years earlier.
       The chorus promises a great adventure and implores the crowd on the dock to join the captain and sail away with him to cross the mighty ocean. Charleston Bay is made to sound exotic, modern, and wonderful and it is implied that everyone that boards will arrive in this land of milk and honey where the streets are paved in gold (or at least yellow brick) and find unlimited freedom, security, and nourishment for both their stomach & soul.  Newman's narrator could be describing the feeling that Ponce De Leon must have felt on the eve of embarking on his search for the fountain of youth.  How'd that work out for Ponce? In reality it is estimated that nearly 30% of the people forced into the hold of a slave ship died in transport and Charleston Bay is the site of Fort Sumter where the first battle of the civil war was fought.
       In the third verse Newman plays on the fallacy that in America every man is free and equal with a promise that they'll be as "happy as a monkey in a monkey tree".  That isn't even true today let alone for the people being enticed to volunteer for slavery.  Nobody can be truly happy without freedom yet Newman's narrator falsely promises it the same way politicians are still prone to do.  In the first verse the Captain explicitly says there is the assumption that everyone wants to sing about Jesus.  While it's impossible to believe that the African's being stolen for the slave trade could have even know about Jesus, Newman is also commenting on the overbearing nature of puritanical America.  Still today there is a segment of the population that would impose their religious values by peer pressure & law even while admitting they can't Constitutionally create a state religion.
      Underneath the understated yet fiery poem is wonderfully composed orchestration that helps Newman say more with a lot less words that it has taken me to explain the lyrics.  The song opens with melancholy strings that somehow have a hint of hopefulness.  The simple piano is a whispering heartbeat promising patriotic happiness followed by the rising brass imploring you to join the adventure.  Throughout the music paints a hypnotic picture of a beautiful America replete with amber waves of grain rippling in a gentle summer breeze.  Yet it somehow manages to never lose the underlying sadness and hypocrisy's laying just under the surface as long as you are willing to look.  Please treat yourself to

Randy Newman's Sail Away