

Tripping through IBM’s 1937 corporate songbook - zorked
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibms-astonishingly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/

======
leoc
> Have people changed so much in the last 70-80 years that these songs—which
> seem expressly designed to debase their singers and deify their
> subjects—would be joyfully sung in harmony without complaint at company
> meetings?

[...]

> Moreover, to answer one of the rhetorical questions above, _no_ —people have
> _not_ changed so much over the past 80-ish years that they could sing
> mawkishly pro-IBM songs with an irony-free straight face. At least, not
> without some additional context.

> There’s a decade-old writeup on NetworkWorld about the IBM corporate song
> phenomena
> [http://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/wireless/a-histo...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/wireless/a-history-
> of-singing-the-big-blues.html) that provides a lot of the glue necessary to
> build a complete mental picture of what was going on in both employees’ and
> leaderships’ heads. The key takeaway to deflate a lot of the looniness is
> that the majority of the songs came out of the Great Depression era, and
> employees lucky enough to be steadfastly employed by a company like IBM
> often were really that grateful.

The truth is probably closer to 'yes' than 'no', as best I know: I can't see
how the OP thinks that the Network World piece supports the opposite
conclusion. At any time in recent history before the '60s, people really did
tend to feel a greater sense of deference to big institutions. But more than
that, the '30s were something like the '60s in reverse: just as everyone over
35 discovered individualism and self-actualisation in the '60s, in the 1930s
very many people _really did_ feel a surging need to subsume their
individuality into a greater collective, marching forward together. That urge
wasn't limited to card-carrying fascists or communists at all. (Disclaimer:
not a historian.)

~~~
leoc
> everyone over 35

Should be 'everyone under 35' of course.

------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=166983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=166983)

I visited IBM's Almaden research facility years ago and a jolly old-timer sang
me one of these songs. It went to the tune of Jingle Bells, and ended on this
high note:

    
    
      I.B.M. – happy men
      Partners of T.J.
      In his service to mankind
      That's why we are so gay.
    

One doesn't forget such a thing.

The jolly old-timer also told me that the day he started work at I.B.M., a
doorman ordered him to pull up his pant leg and then sent him home because he
wasn't wearing garters to hold his socks up.

~~~
JeremyReimer
That entire sequence (the song snippet, and the garter story) sounds
familiar... I remember seeing it on Robert X. Cringely's "Triumph of the
Nerds" on PBS (great documentary series, btw)

~~~
spudlyo
A snippet of that song is on YouTube from that documentary.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afACnAMG9iM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afACnAMG9iM)

You can also hear 'Ever Onward' from the songbook here, which I am oddly drawn
to.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU)

~~~
MichaelMoser123
i work for them, but thanks goodness never had to hear them sing this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EqwvLzBWAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EqwvLzBWAs)

Here is the same song sang by an PC/XT speaker (the speaker that beeps when
BIOS fails); the singer is a program in GW-Basic

now this corporate song seems to be even newer

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV2oBZU7tGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV2oBZU7tGg)

and another one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGRjLdG71TE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGRjLdG71TE)

------
frik
Reminds me of the "Triumph of the Nerds" were Robert X. Cringely sings with
Sam Albert (former IBM executive):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afACnAMG9iM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afACnAMG9iM)

    
    
      74. OUR I. B. M. SALESMEN
                 Tune: "Jingle Bells"
    
      1. I. B. M., Happy men, smiling all the way.
         Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day.
         I. B. M., Watson men, partners of T. J.
         In his service to mankind-that’s why we are so gay.
    

(Sam Albert mentions: "Now gay didn't mean what it means today then, remember
that")

\-- [http://www.digibarn.com/collections/songs/ibm-
songs/index.ht...](http://www.digibarn.com/collections/songs/ibm-
songs/index.html)

And the following up TV movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley﻿" that features
the IBM song too:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YwJmb0N9GQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YwJmb0N9GQ)

------
ben1040
It seems mostly lost to the memory hole now, but I always thought one of the
most cringeworthy corporate anthems was the Sun song set to the Huey Lewis
tune.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzeu-
gqMy0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzeu-gqMy0A)

------
cafard
Long ago, I was a stockboy at a couple of Woolcos, which were suburban, one-
story Woolworths, both of them just opening. Once the store was open for
business, every morning the sound system would kick out a jingle that I still
remember most of: "With bargains excitingly wonderful/All the things you've
been looking for/???/At your Woolco department store!"

We were not expected to sing along with it, though.

~~~
rmason
I worked while I was in high school at one of the Meijer's superstores and
they had a company song book. All the younger employees thought it was stupid.
A case of billionaires making us sing odes to them.

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anabis
Many Japanese companies still have corporate songs, although they are not sung
that much anymore.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-
pacific/3725775.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3725775.stm)

------
EvanAnderson
Made me immediately think of:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXUhQnOYR54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXUhQnOYR54)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
It's funny to hear them sing of bringing sunshine to the world when IBM helped
the Nazis in the holocaust.

