by Rutger Booij

Whenever the combination of cars and music comes up, the obvious is to think of the fifties and sixties: Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and later Bruce Springsteen all put their love of the automobile into songs. But of course the motorcar has influenced songwriters for a much longer time; the first songs even date from the last years of the nineteenth century. When the first automobiles appeared on the still unpaved roads, people soon realized their importance, what they could do with them, and of course, what could go wrong. And so songwriters tried to find the words and lyrics to express the emotion they felt when seeing, or perhaps even driving, a motorcar. A nice example of such a song is “He’d Have to Get Under - Get Out and Get Under (To Fix Up His Automobile)”, composed in 1913 by Maurice Abrahams (music) and Grant Clarke and Edgar Leslie (words). You can find this song and the lyrics by clicking here. Turn up your speakers! (Used by kind permission of Don Ferguson.) This song was recorded by many artists, the most famous of which was Al Jolson (www.Al Jolson.org)

Permission to publish the picture of the sheet music was given by the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music , Special Collections, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University.

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