The 1040 Blues

The fellows over at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service were rubbing their hands in anticipation one day when somebody got a bright idea: here it was time for millions of Americans to begin thinking about their income-tax reports, and soon grumbling citizens would be chewing up forms, muttering oaths and worse as they sent out their tax checks. Why not, asked an IRS man, "add a light touch to the annual tax chore" by turning out a spine-tingling, patriotic Official Tax Song--just like a cigarette commercial?

No sooner was the idea uttered than it raced like a hungry cat down Tin Pan Alley, stopped at the door of a prodigious composer named Irving Caesar, creator of such pop tunes as Tea for Two and Is It True What They Say About Dixie? Composer Caesar is no stranger to tax songs. In 1946 he turned out a children's tune called Tommy Tax ("Who pays our smiling Postman/ For toting heavy sacks? Who--oo You--oo/ And little Tommy Tax"), and was eager to write another. In a flash Tunesmith Caesar shipped off to IRS a high-stepping, bugley march called The Red White and Blue Can't Live on Your I.O.U.: "When you pay your taxes, pay enough/ Uncle Sam is getting grey enough./ It pays for defense/ Expense is immense/ Let's use common sense, you and I."

The bureau was delighted, although Treasury Secretary George Humphrey's office declined to go so far as to make RWBCLYIOU an official song. Nevertheless, one TV station played the song, and soon hundreds of amateur poets peppered the IRS with lively comments and suggestions. Sample, from a Joplin (Mo.) chiropractor and amateur musician, who wrote a lament to Tax Form 1040 (The One-O-Four-0 Blues) : "I fear that I'll be tardy/ In completing Form Ten Forty."

At week's end, IRS music lovers called a halt. The cry was loud and clear: Nix on the tunes, sad or funny/ Just mail the returns--and don't forget the money.

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