The existential agony of The Statler Brothers
When I was a child, my father gave me radio. It was a drab grey affair with a case of thin steel and black plastic dials. A regiment of cooling slits marched across the top of it. On the front there was a tuning window with the names of cities from around the world: London, Berlin, Tokyo - places I’d barely heard of, and never imagined I’d visit. Occasionally, late at night, you could catch something coming in through the static that clearly was not English. But I could never relate those sounds to the markings on the dial. So I just turned the tuner - slowly - to find those wisps of voices and music from who-knows-where.
During the day it was a different story. Anchorage, Alaska had a lot of radio, some of it quite good. My station of choice in those pre-adolescent years was KYAK 650, which played an eclectic mix of country music. Charlie Rich and Tom T. Hall were mainstays. Donna Fargo had just burst onto the scene with hits like “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” and “Happiest Girl in the Whole USA”. KYAK played those at least once a shift. A lot of older tunes were featured, things an Anchorage audience might have heard in the military a few years prior, like Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” or Leroy Van Dyke’s “The Auctioneer Song”. They always played it straight down the middle: country music with minimal complications, nothing confusing or foreign. The world was alive and changing in 1972, full of dynamism and new ideas, and KYAK wanted no part of it.
That was the year that The Statler Brothers broke through. There were no Statlers, and only two brothers, but they’d paid their dues as Johnny Cash’s opening act. They had a hit with a song called “The Class of ‘57” :
My dad had been in the Class of ‘56, and seemed to be doing ok. But the song - a bit of catalogue verse sung/chanted in front of a conventional musical arrangement - describes what befell a group of people in the 15 years after their graduation, most of it disappointing or worse.
Some work normal jobs, and one apparently doesn’t:
Tommy's selling used cars, Nancy's fixing hair
Harvey runs a grocery store, and Margaret doesn't care
My dad’s nickname was Jerry, and he’d driven trucks for a while, so the next line got my attention. Then, more jobs:
Jerry drives a truck for Sears, and Charlotte's on the make
And Paul sells life insurance, and part-time real estate
Helen is a hostess, Frank works at the mill
Janet teaches grade school, and prob'ly always will
Bob works for the city, and Jack's in lab research
And Peggy plays organ at the Presbyterian Church
A nice contrast of science and religion in that last couplet. It hints at a tension that was quite apparent in deeply-religious Anchorage, but…so far, this seems pretty normal. Where’s this going, I wondered. Well, the Statlers tell us, all of these people are falling short:
And the class of '57 had its dreams
We all thought we'd change the world
With our great works and deeds
Or maybe we just thought the world
Would change to fit our needs
The class of '57 had its dreams
After the chorus, the catalogue takes a darker turn:
Betty runs a trailer park, Jan sells Tupperware
Randy's on an insane ward, and Mary's on welfare
Charlie took a job with Ford, and Joe took Freddie's wife
Charlotte took a millionaire, and Freddie took his life
Now we’re taking casualties. Some of those remaining are doing well, some terribly, some we don’t know:
John is big in cattle, Ray is deep in debt
Where Mavis finally wound up is anybody's bet
The last verse moves decisively away from the financial perspective and toward love, or at least mutual commitment. But the narrator reminds us of the insignificance of even this:
Linda married Sonny, and Brenda married me
And the class of all of us is just a part of history
And the class of '57 had its dreams
But living life, day-to-day
Is never like it seems
Things get complicated
When you get past eighteen
But the class of '57 had its dreams
Oh, the class of '57 had its dreams
Well that’s a bummer, thought young me. What stops them from pursuing their dreams now? And I reassured myself that I’d be different.
“The Class of ‘57” comes back to me periodically, I find myself humming it from time to time. It’s catchy and who can resist the harmonies of that big chorus? But for most of my adult life I’ve been dismissive of the song’s message. I’ve read it as a cold classist lecture: Don’t get above yourself, you’re not special. Take your place and get used to it. Don’t go pushing for more, you’ll just be disappointed.
But this is probably too harsh. According to a 1985 Washington Post story, Kurt Vonnegut thought highly of “The Class of ‘57” and suggested it should "become our national anthem for a little while." Maybe he appreciated the song’s existentialist perspective. Here is a list of existentialist premises (source) - the Statler Brothers were known for their gospel work, but “The Class of ‘57” checks every box:
That humans exist without any apparent cause or reason
That humans have freedom and with that freedom comes responsibility
That humans are isolated
That death is inevitable
Meaninglessness.
My mother was an existentialist in those days, and would say so to anyone who cared to hear. Later, though, she tired of this bleak outlook and recommitted to her Christian faith.
Taking stock 50 years on, I still resist the fatalism of “The Class of ‘57”. My sympathies are with Lubbock’s comment that “most of us can, as we choose, make of this world either a palace or a prison.” Yes, there are times it seems a crapsack world, and some lives - many Alaskan lives - can look to an outsider like a rotten cheat.
But I’ve been around a bit. It’s not all a cheat, you know. Most places, you can wander into a cafe and have a friendly talk with someone you’ve never met. You can smile at a girl on a train and she’ll maybe smile back. If you fall down, more often than not a stranger will turn to assist. These little kindnesses are in us, whether we have disappointed ourselves or not. Even an introverted lout like me is grateful for the company.
“Brothers in Song”, Washington Post, 7/28/85 - (link)