Your Feet's Too Big

Go ahead, click on that link up there. I couldn't link to the iTunes site because it won't let you access the songs unless you have the program on your computer, so I linked to the lyrics of the song instead.
I have XM radio. It came with the car I bought earlier this year. An extravagence? Sure. But where else am I going tobe introduced to the Fats Waller gem "Your Feet's Too Big"? Not unless I have some eclectic friend with the record. Because I am the eclectic friend (mostly) it's up to ME to come up with this stuff.
Back to XM. The have an all '40s station where you can hear the likes of a young Frankie, Tommy Dorsey, Bing, and a host of other artists who wouldn't catch the attention of your average person. I don't listen to it all the time because, just like any other radio station, their playlist starts to repeat after awhile. Not as often as listening to a top forty station, but often enough that you have to give these things a week or more to start playing some new tunes. After spending a week turning my brain to mush with the comedy channel I switched over to the '40s station again only to be rewarded with "Your Feet's Too Big".
1940s, people think WWII, coming out of the Great Depression, before the starched skirts of the '50s when a dress didn't have to stand at A line attention. Not necessarily a time of innocence, but a time of crooners. Voice orchestras and swing. But somewhere, someone was listening to Fats Waller talk about a woman who couldn't make him happy because her feet was too big. It's amazing how a certain type of music can conjure an image in your mind that goes against the mass interpretation of an era. Or how the music can help define an era. There was just so much going on that to relegate memory to one set image is impossible for me.
The other day my mother and I were watching Ray. (I'm sure most of you are aware that's the Ray Charles biography starring Jamie Foxx.) There is a scene where Ray Charles is going to play at a venue in Georgia and there is a protest outside of the theater because the show is segregated. Blacks in the balcony and whites on the floor. I've forgotten what the date was, but my mother had a bit of a start. She would have been in her teens then, and it shocked her to think that racism was still so alive back then.
She, and my grandmother, grew up in a small town in Western Massachusetts. They were sheltered by the location. Even my grandmother doesn't remember the Great Depression as being particularly bad. I'm not sure how much youth has to play into this. The invulnerable sense that the young have because they don't necessarily know any better. The first time you're able to recognize a situation as wrong or less than adequate is always earth shattering. When suddenly your whole perspective shifts and you look back and think "My god, I was a part of that?"
What always gives me perspective is being able to associate events on a time line. You know, thinking about the fact that when my mother was born they were dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. When people were thriving in America, Irish were dying in the potato famine. When the people of China rose up in the Boxer revolution, Kodak was releasing the Brownie camera.
The world is a constant mix of progress. There are things happening right now that I will probably never know about. Or ten years down the road I'll be shocked to find out that they happened during my life. I wonder what people who were listening to Fats Waller sing "Your Feet's Too Big" were doing?