When we were kids in the 1960’s, we’d run next door from our grandmother Mary’s home in Beford, Ohio at 20 Harrison Street (Mary was my dad’s mom) to Mary’s sister’s home, to visit our great aunt Luella who lived catacorner to her sister Mary on Broadway . Aunt Luella was a widow but always had a kind word and a cookie for us kids. Her husband, Ray, had experienced a long aviation career from military service during both WWI and in WWII with the Air Transport Command, flying in the 1932 National Air Races in Cleveland, and managing a general aviation airport in Willoughby, Ohio.
Perhaps my greatest memories of great aunt Luella, though, is swinging on her creaky front porch bench swing with her on sweet summer evenings and listening to her sing, Come Josephine in my Flying Machine composed by Alfred Bryan and Fred Fischer and sung by Ada Jones & Billy Murray (1911). You can listen to the song here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFZDB6DqAnA&list=RDeFZDB6DqAnA&start_radio=1. (You can skip the ubiquitous advertisement as soon as the “Skip” icon pops up and before the Come Josephine song and slide show will play.)
In fact, I credit my great aunt Luella to sparking an interest in aviation in me through her own love of aviation through her husband’s career and her singing on that old front porch swing.
As early as 1911—and probably earlier—only eight years after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk, flying had taken America, really the world, by a storm and songs like Come Josephine were being played on the radio.
And there have been plenty of other aviation-related songs, including more recent hits like Leavin’ on a Jet Plane by Peter, Paul, and Mary; Rocket Man by Elton John; Come Fly with Me by Frank Sinatra; and one of the best in my opinion, Mr. Airplane Man by Howlin’ Wolf. You can listen to Howlin’ by opening the URL here: https://youtu.be/7xAGe7RO3F8. Again, skip the advertisement as soon as you can!
Today according to History.com and downloaded from: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-2/gonna-fly-now-theme-from-rocky-is-the-1-song-on-the-u-s-pop-charts, another song with flying in its title (although it’s not specifically about actual aviating but, instead, is about “flying high” from a success in boxing viewpoint), Gonna Fly Now (Theme From ‘Rocky’) was the #1 song on the U.S. pop charts.
According History.com, “On July 2, 1977, Hollywood composer Bill Conti scored a #1 pop hit with the single Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky).
“Bill Conti was a relative unknown in Hollywood when he began work on Rocky, but so was Sylvester Stallone. Conti had gained some attention internationally with his work on several early 1970s Italian films, including Vittorio de Sica’s Academy Award-winning Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, and Stallone had starred in a small film called Lords of Flatbush and played various minor roles in movies and on TV. It was Rocky that would truly launch both men’s careers, though. The film was Stallone’s from start to finish, but it's difficult to overstate the importance of his collaboration with Conti. Though Conti took his inspiration from Stallone’s footage, Stallone had the film’s critical training and fight sequences edited to fit Conti’s music, and the interaction between picture and music in Rocky made an enormous contribution to the movie’s success.
“The single Gonna Fly Now takes its name from the almost-superfluous 30 words of lyrics written by Ayn Robbins and former Teddy Bear Carol Connors. Though it lost the competition for Best Original Song at the 49th Annual Academy Awards to Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams’ Evergreen (Love Theme from a Star Is Born), it has remained an instantly recognizable piece of American pop culture. In the years since the release of Rocky, Sylvester Stallone has continued to churn out action flicks, and Bill Conti has built a hugely successful career as a composer for film and television—a career that eventually included an Academy Award for Best Original Score for the 1983 film The Right Stuff.”
Let us know if you have any of your own favorite songs with flying in their titles or themes about flying. If you’re a flower child of the 60’s and your favorite flying “high” song is the Moody Blues’ Fly me High, you don’t have to admit it 😊.
Talk about the right stuff? Happy Birthday America!
Onward and upward!
Kind Regards,
Barry R. Fetzer
ECAHF Historian