G.I. Jane Joins the Band: WAC and the Andrews Sisters

Abstract

Before World War II, male instrumental bands (led by Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, etc.) and male crooners (Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole) dominated the pop charts. While female musicians achieved success on the vaudeville circuit or in the race music industry (such as Bessie and Mamie Smith), there was little room for female artists in the mainstream. It wasn’t until the 1940s, that the public embraced female singing groups. Plunged into war, Americans suddenly wanted to hear motherly, soothing voices associated with the security of home. While record labels were initially reluctant to sign female acts, companies soon recognized the appeal of the Andrews Sisters and similar groups. At the same time, the armed forces recruited WAC (Women’s Army Corps) members to entertain the troops, promote war bonds, and staff veterans’ hospitals. To motivate WAC and national acts to make inspiring music, the government stressed patriotism and new opportunities arising from wartime service. However, the government qualified its appeal to women by invoking idealized motherhood to exclude certain singers from WAC, censure female artists, and to disband female bands after the war. The rise and fall of WAC bands and the Andrews Sisters in the 1940s suggests that Americans tolerated women singers when they promoted patriotic values, but not when they violated gender boundaries. Before examining the role of female musicians in the 1940s, it is important to establish the cultural context which allowed women to leave the household and perform publicly. The OWI (Office of Wartime Information) and ASF’s (Army Services Forces’) promotion of the Andrews Sisters and their WAC counterparts attests to a broader move to utilize all resources and citizens (including the untapped female workforce) to achieve victory. Due to this “total war” mindset, there were massive propaganda campaigns (featuring “Rosie the Riveter”) to encourage housewives to leave the home in order to serve in industry, community service, and civil defense. At the same time, the military encouraged female professionals such as nurses and musicians to rehabilitate troops and boost domestic morale. Whereas stigma1 had previously restricted the number of women working outside the home, new propaganda glorified the female worker.”2 To explain this new propaganda, author Maureen Honey suggests that “During World War II, economic, social, and political forces combined to produce a need for new images of women, those that showed wage work as a normal, vital part of female lives and that conveyed the message that women could and should occupy all types of jobs.”3 The propaganda campaign to normalize the female worker was so successful that some 19 million women joined