Barbara Streisand isn’t here for Whip-poor-wills.
On her 1963 debut album, The Barbara Streisand Album, Streisand performs “I’ll Tell the Man on the Street.” The song was originally written for the 1938 musical, I Married an Angel. (The music was made into a film in 1942. Wiki it here.)
The song counters the nostalgia of the cowboy songs of the 1930s. Instead of pining for the open plains, coyotes, and Whip-poor-wills, the song offers us something else. Here’s a singer who rejects the natural for the urban world. Streisand sings…
I won’t tell of my love
To every little star
Or the whippoorwill
On the hill above
Instead, she’ll tell, as the title of the song makes clear, “the man on the street.” (She’ll also “give the papers proof” and “use the radio.”)
The song swerves past the Whip-poor-will, leaving it behind for more contemporary symbols of human life. Perhaps it stands as a record of when the bird would be lost — lost to the country and folk singers who got nostalgic for it, and lost to the urbanites who might never have heard it.
Featured Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash
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