TIME
June 16, 1941
June Records
Honest U.S. isolationists last week got some help from recorded music that they would rather not have received. Released by the "Almanac Singers," a carefully anonymous Manhattan Communist ensemble, was an album of seven Songs for John Doe.
Professionally performed with new words to old folk tunes, John Doe's singing scrupulously echoed the mendacious Moscow tune: Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war. The ballad of Billy Boy observes that:
It wouldn't be much thrill
To die for Du Pont in Brazil.
Chorus of The Ballad of October 16 (draft registration date):
Oh, Franklin Roosevelt told
the people how he felt;
We damned near believed what he said.
He said, I hate war, and so does Eleanor,
But we won't be safe 'till everybody's dead.