On the evening of November 5, 1939, a few weeks after Paul had returned to America from London, where he had been finishing a film when Hitler’s armies crossed into Poland and Britain declared war, he stood before a live microphone at the CBS studio in Manhattan and began to sing.

The piece was called “Ballad for Americans,” a cantata that told the story of the country as a chorus of ordinary voices, patriotic on one end, surfacing the complications and insisting that the country’s promises had not yet been kept to all its citizens on the other. It ran eleven minutes, far too long for the conventions of commercial radio, requiring the network to build an entire broadcast around it. Hundreds of people filled the studio seats to hear Paul perform it. What followed surprised even the network.

The audience rose when the final note ended, applause continuing at length. CBS reported a flood of phone calls that overwhelmed its switchboard, and letters continued arriving for weeks. The program was rebroadcast, and the recording quickly became one of the most popular in the country. The song was performed at the Republican National Convention, and also at the Communist Party convention — perhaps the only piece of music in American history to achieve that particular distinction. By 1940, magazines such as Collier’s were describing Paul as the most celebrated entertainer in America.

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