In 1932 Leo Pevsner wrote a song about the Depression for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign. The song, “Next Year,” like other Depression-era tunes such as “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” took the perspective of a downtrodden man trying to find a glimmer of hope in a bleak economy (“Next year you’ll be able to eat again / Chances are you’ll find a job by then . . . “).
Pevsner follows the tradition of his favorites Hoagy Carmichael and Irving Berlin, penning simple love songs and whimsical political commentaries. The sounds of his tinny piano and brittle voice bring one back to the days when songwriters traveled the country with stacks of sheet music stuffed in a rucksack, looking to make a dime off of their latest song.
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When Pevsner was in his early teens, his family moved to Chicago and young Leo began attending high school at Marshall. He says he used to entertain fellow students there by making up songs, mostly parodies of popular tunes. He also entertained his family by making up songs to mock his siblings. One of his favorite parodies was a takeoff on Al Jolson’s “Sonny Boy.”
“Jolson was in town doing a show,” Pevsner recalls. “Jolson had this song ‘Sonny Boy’: ‘Climb upon my knee, Sonny Boy / Though you’re only three, Sonny Boy.’
“My brother had a jewelry store in Oklahoma, so one time I sang midnight shows in this little oil town called Seminole, Oklahoma,” Pevsner recalls. “This was during the oil boom and there were lots of businessmen who would come to see shows in these small towns. I had a good voice and I’d entertain sometimes. I got up there, and I sang my parodies and some of my original songs. They advertised me in the paper. One time I played there for a week, and after that I didn’t want to remain. I loved it. I loved the applause, but it didn’t mean anything after a few days. After a few days, I didn’t care about it anymore. The first day I was thrilled. The second day I was thrilled. But the thrill got smaller and smaller and smaller, and by the time the week was over I figured, ‘Ahh, this is not for me. I don’t want this crap.’”
In the 50s, Pevsner nabbed a side gig writing songs for the Don McNeill Breakfast Club, broadcast nationally on ABC radio. The first one that went over big with the ABC brass just happened to be about diamond rings.
This diamond ring will last and last
