Mixtape

Audio / Video files of songs mentioned in this story

The sky behind him began to go blood red. 

 "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" began to play, 

and the sky resolved itself into an American flag, and he sat down.

Someone with children (or a reputation for taking the Global View) might request the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, where there were hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of tiny dolls singing "It's a Small World," in many, many languages all at once, like ployglot peepers.

Actors and actresses put on a show that honored various duPont products.  One product was Corfam.  There was a song about Corfam.  In 1964, the song began, "We're going to have shoes like we never had shoes before."  In 1965, the song was a different song.  Corfam failed.

The Pointer Sisters were four black women - Ruth, Anita, Bonnie, and June - who wanted not to be poor, not to be unknown, not to live in Oakland, California.  For a while,  they were back-up singers.  Then, under the influence of their manager, David Rubinson, they began to sing songs 

in the style of the forties, in clothes in the style of the forties, 

in a manner that was Negro rather than black.

One night, they went out by car to San Francisco to a suburban place to see a performance by Josephine Baker, a black woman from St. Louis who wanted not to live in St. Louis, and who in the twenties learned how to 

embody one aspect of glamour and coquetry, and who, 

after that had a sustained vogue in France.