Caesar for Safety

In Manhattan last week the songwriting team which gave the world Is It True What They Say About Dixie?, Composer Gerald Marks & Lyricist Irving Caesar, journeyed from Tin Pan Alley northward to Teachers College at Columbia University to address a summer class in "Safety Care." The class--students, health educators and playground supervisors from all over the U. S.--soon were beating time to fox trots and waltzes with such words as:

Don't do tricks you think you know,

'Cause you saw them at the show;

Keep cool as an icicle

When you ride a bicycle.

Because he believes that listening to the radio has given U. S. children sophisticated musical tastes, Songwriter Caesar last winter set out to provide modern words and music for classroom songs. Irving Caesar has no dependents except his mother and a dog (see cut), but he was brought into the world on Manhattan's lower East Side with the help of a nurse from the Henry Street Settlement, and knows the hazards city life presents to the young. Deploring the fact that for generations musicians have been writing down to the young, he wrote 21 songs, for which Composer Marks did 21 tunes, which are mature, rhythmic yet easily singable, easily playable by teacher or parent. The collection is to be published as Sing a Song of Safety, with illustrations by Rose ("Kew-pies") O'Neill.

Besides their warnings against the dangers of traffic, the Caesar-Marks songs are calculated to inculcate in children respect for law & order (The Policeman, The Fireman and the Postman, Too), practicality (Remember Your Name and Address), fortitude (Never Be Afraid of Anything). Observes Sticks and Stones and Bones:

Throwing stones and sticks and bones,

At poor defenceless animals,

Is not much fun, it's only done

By Savages and Cannibals.

Pop Guns and Rifles, whose caustic harmonies aid in describing the appalling results of the "dangerous joys" of firearms, has already earned the approbation of the American Society for the Prevention of Blindness.

To the Teachers College pedagogs, who showed instant enthusiasm for his songs and will no doubt plug them tirelessly this winter, Mr. Caesar said: "Maybe these songs of safety will get me to Heaven when my hi-de-ho songs would be sure to send me to a hotter region."

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