LoveSong1950s

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 7 ▶ The player starts right at this track (21:50). Let it keep playing for the full album. The traffic light turns green like a curtain going up. He is walking to the corner where they agreed to meet, skyscrapers pressing their shoulders against an endless blue, and the whole downtown seems freshly rinsed for the occasion. City of Dreams is the album at its most wide-angle — the couple small against the skyline, and somehow larger than it. With her hand in his, the chorus says, the world feels wide instead of intimidating; the spirit of youth is listed, quite correctly, as a side they have got. It is an anthem for anyone who has ever loved a person and a city at the same time and stopped being able to tell the difference. Oh, in this city of dreams, everything shines Like a melody written between the lines With your hand in mine, the world feels so wide We’ve got the spirit of youth on our side It’s a brand new day, and ...

Today in 1950 · Tuesday, August 22, 1950 Marathon swimmer Greta Andersen at Atlantic City in a 1958 press photo — the 1948 Olympic champion became the outstanding woman of the Daily Mail's cross-Channel race series that launched this day in 1950 · UPI press photo, 1958, published without copyright notice, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this day in 1950, Egyptian marathon swimmer Hassan Abdel Rehim climbed out of the surf on the English coast having crossed the Channel from France in about ten hours and fifty minutes — winning the first Daily Mail Cross-Channel Race at the age of 41 and breaking the crossing record. It was no beginner's triumph. Abdel Rehim had crossed the Channel in 1948 in 17 hours 38 minutes and again in 1949 in 15 hours 58 minutes; on his third crossing he cut nearly five hours off his own best. The Daily Mail's newly organized international race — with swimmers from several nations plunging in together off the French coast — turned Chan...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 6 ▶ The player starts right at this track (18:23). Let it keep playing for the full album. Some love songs are about the person; this one is about the walking-to-meet-them part. The sun plays peek-a-boo between awnings, every shop window hands back a little more light, and a spring gets into the step of a man who knows someone is waiting at the end of the block. The chorus turns two heartbeats into a rhythm section — a clap of the hands, a skip in the stride, sunshine officially on their side. It is the most openly joyful cut on the album, doo-wop as a weather system. Play it on a morning commute and it will quietly argue that you, too, are on your way to meet somebody wonderful, even if it is only the day itself. Oh, it’s the rhythm of our hearts, beating like a work of art Building up a melody, just for you and just for me With a clap of our hands and a skip in our stride We’ve got the sunshine on our side Yeah, it’s t...

Today in 1950 · Monday, August 21, 1950 Tennis champion Althea Gibson, 1956 · Fred Palumbo, New York World-Telegram & Sun collection, Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this day in 1950, the United States Lawn Tennis Association accepted Althea Gibson's entry into the US National Championships at Forest Hills — making the 23-year-old from Harlem the first African-American player ever admitted to the tournament. The door had been pushed open a month earlier by an unlikely ally. Alice Marble, a white four-time national champion, had published a blistering letter in American Lawn Tennis magazine attacking the sport's exclusion of Gibson: 'it's only fair,' she wrote, 'that they meet this challenge on the courts.' After Marble's editorial, Gibson was invited to a New Jersey qualifying event, earned her results, and the USLTA accepted her entry. A week later she would win her first-round match at Forest Hills 6-2, 6-2, th...

Story Behind the Song · Postcard Heart , Track 5 ▶ The player starts right at this track (13:55). Let it keep playing for the full album. The final bell rings, and the whole year compresses into one hallway moment: sunlight in her hair by the lockers, magic loose in the air, a heart trying to act casual and failing on every beat. Summer School Crush is pure first-crush physics — the happy flutter when someone walks by, the melody of sunshine that follows them out the school doors and into June. The vocal keeps tripping over its own steadiness, which is exactly right; nobody is steady at seventeen in the first hour of summer. It is written in the sky, the chorus says, and the whole arrangement believes it: handclaps like sneakers on gym floors, harmonies like friends egging you on to just go say hello. Oh, you’re my summer crush, written in the sky With a little happy flutter whenever you walk by Like a melody of sunshine, a sweet and simple tune I’m dreaming of the da...

Today in 1950 · Sunday, August 20, 1950 Republic of Korea soldiers march toward the front during the Pusan Perimeter fighting, August 1950 · U.S. Army photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons On this day in 1950, two weeks of desperate fighting on the Pusan Perimeter reached a turning point: the battles of P'ohang-dong and Taegu ended in United Nations victories. In the mountainous eastern corridor, South Korean forces advanced two miles north of Kigye and re-entered the port town of P'ohang-dong, driving the North Korean 5th Division north. The official US Army history records how close-run it had been — and why the attackers finally broke. The North Korean 12th Division, which had ordered its units to withdraw north through Kigye on the night of August 17, was reduced to roughly 5,000 men and reorganized short of artillery and food. As historian Roy Appleman put it, 'the North Korean system of logistics simply could not supply these troops in the Kigye-P'oh...