more whimsical than informative
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This is the eponymous showstopper for the McCarthy-era musical that I’ll never actually write, featuring the show’s meet-cute of Langston Hughes, Roy Cohn, and Wisconsin’s-favorite son, Joseph McCarthy. And, like all good songs, it comes with footnotes.

This reference recording is from a live August 2009 performance at Mike ‘N Molly’s in Champaign, Illinois. It includes a “Hee-Haw” sa-loot to Pekin, Illinois, the hometown of Senator Everett Dirksen, who you’ll hear referenced in the bridge section’s verbatim use of Congressional hearing dialogue from 1953.

FACT CHECK & CORRECTION: Because we here at TheViper.org are dedicated to the truth, however sharp its vinegar, we are compelled to note that the population of Pekin, Illinois, is nowhere near the 311 ventured by The Viper in this live recording. Indeed, as of the 2020 U.S. Census, Pekin has a population of 31,731. See Census.gov.

And now the footnotes. So on March 26, 1953, Langston Hughes testified publicly before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations — i.e., the McCarthy committee — after two days of closed-door testimony before the same. Look it up: State Department Information Program – Information Centers, Hearing Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 83d Congress, 1st Session, Pursuant to on S. Res. 40, a Resolution Authorizing the Committee on Government Operations to Employ Temporary Additional Personnel and Increasing the Amount of Expenditures.March 24, 25, and 26, 1953.

The dialogue we do in the bridge section of “Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, Blue” is done exactly according to the the transcript of that hearing. The “Chairman” is Appleton, Wisconsin’s own Joseph McCarthy.

You can now also read the closed-door testimony which was only made public in 2003 (The Maltese Falcon writer Dashiell Hammett testified on the same day), and you can find it here. Hughes’s testimony begins on page 973 of the published record (page 68 of the PDF).