A history of singing the Big Blues

So you need a few cocktails before you'll risk singing the ol' college fight song? Be thankful you didn't work for IBM in a bygone era that saw Big Blue make an art form of corporate "fellowship songs." Sing for their supper they did - with feeling.

Times were bad when the songs were sung - the U.S. was embroiled in an economic depression and one-quarter of the U.S. workforce was unemployed. IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr., in order to keep employees motivated, collected songs employees had written about IBM into a book dubbed Songs of the IBM, which the company first published in 1927.

Watson felt that song singing was a way to build character and instill company loyalty. Songs of the IBM started with the "Star Spangled Banner" and followed with more than 80 IBM-specific ditties, including the rollicking rally song "Ever Onward," written in 1931 by IBM'er Frederick Tappe:

"There's a thrill in store for all

For we're about to toast

The corporation that we represent.

We're here to cheer each pioneer

And also proudly boast,

Of that man of men

Our friend and guiding hand

The name of T.J. Watson means

A courage none can stem

And we feel honored to be

Here to toast the IBM."

"Company employees embraced [song singing] because they didn't have that kind of job security anywhere else in America," says Bob Djurdjevic, president of Annex Research. He joined IBM in 1970, a decade after the last rousing lilt of grace notes left the company's buildings.

"IBM was unique in that respect - Watson was the quintessential salesman and knew how to rally the salesmen to his side," Djurdjevic says. "Watson treated his employees as if they were family and so he wanted them happy, well fed and content so they would stay with IBM forever."

In 1966, Pepper Martin was one of the fledgling sales representatives who sang "Ever Onward."

"We sang it the whole first year of training at sales school," recounts Martin, who retired six years ago.

Even Watson's son T.J. Watson Jr. remembers the success of IBM's song singing. In his book Father Son & Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond, Watson relates:

"Everything about the school was meant to inspire loyalty, enthusiasm and high ideals, which IBM held out as the way to achieve success. In class the first thing we did each morning was to stand up and sing IBM songs. . . . There were dozens of songs in praise of Dad or other executives, set to tunes everybody knew."

The songs weren't solely focused on Watson or other top executives either. Take these lyrics from "To Our I.B.M. Girls":

"The office girls surely are always in style

They greet you with smiles, their welcome's worthwhile,

The best in the world are our girls, rank and file,

They're style all the while - all the while.

They've made our I.B.M. complete and worthwhile,

They work and they smile - so sweetly they smile;

Tall, short, thin and stout girls - they win by a mile

With heavenly styles all the while."

Silencing the music

But just as Watson Sr. was a catalyst for activities such as as song singing, company bands and even an IBM symphony, his son proved to stifle such activities.