LBJ Suits Up, Chats Up, and Rips Up
Thursday Is LBJ Day
Here at H-O-A-G on your internet dial, it’s Day Two of Sounds of the 60s.
From yesterday’s Folksong Fling spotlighting Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, we segue into Presidential Recordings, a genre known for its Lo-Fi stylings1 and high quantity production.
Today’s featured artist is Lyndon Baines Johnson, AKA POTUS, AKA the thirty-seventh President of the United States (1963–1969).
But before that blast from the past, let’s find out how this category evolved.
Technical Specifications
Beginning in 1940, American presidents from both political parties secretly recorded many of their telephone conversations. Over the years, more and more of these recordings have become available. The Miller Center Presidential Recordings is, according to its blurb, designed as a service to the research community by making freely available all of the presidential recordings, along with relevant research materials, so that scholars, teachers, students, and the public can hear and use these remarkable tapes for themselves.
Lyndon Johnson was a major contributor to this repository of talk, routinely making 40 calls a day, sometimes handling three calls simultaneously. One of his first acts as president, after only one day in office, in fact, Johnson overhauled Kennedy’s phone system. One result was phones installed everywhere in the White House. According to an aide, phones were placed “under dinner tables, coffee tables, end tables, in bathrooms, and on windowsills.” Johnson similarly equipped his Texas ranch, including - long before wireless phones became commonplace - phones in his cars and boats.
He also aggressively taped his calls, beginning within Johnson within hours of becoming president. During his presidency, Johnson recorded more than 9,000 of his conversations. Johnson had his secretaries transcribe many of these calls and used the transcripts to keep track of daily work and decisions.
Lyndon Johnson intended that his surreptitiously recorded conversations would not be disclosed until 50 years after his death. Legislation passed in 1992, however, required the release of most information dealing with President Kennedy’s assassination, including President Johnson’s phone conversations on this topic. Shortly thereafter, the Johnson Library, having determined that the ban on release of the tapes had, in effect, began opening the remaining materials.
Playlist Selection
The presidential recordings include memorializations of history-altering events. Johnson alone recorded hundreds of conversations revealing his thoughts, concerns, and decision-making processes on such topics as Viet Nam, civil rights, the War on Poverty, and the establishment of Medicare as well as exchanges with heads of state, Supreme Court justices, congressmen, Civil Rights leaders, and the usual cast of movers and shakers.
So, if you are interested in this kind of epoch-marking conversations - well, you have come to the wrong place. Perhaps you were looking for the afore-mentioned Miller Center Presidential Recordings, which highlights many such historic recordings and has an adequate catalog and search system.
If, on the other hand, you are more intrigued by the idea of eavesdropping on phone calls to check out how the President talks when no cameras or crowds are watching, then HOAG is playing your song - three of your songs, in fact.
Gangster Rap
Johnson, like all great politicians, had a large repertoire of interactive skills; he could wheedle, negotiate, beg, empathize, befriend, or behave in a dozen other ways as required to get his way. Often, however, he resorted to direct, personal, and overwhelming intimidation, a tactic admirably displayed in this conversation with Adam Clayton Powell.
Click to hear LBJ and Adam Clayton Powell
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Creepy Love Song
For a full appreciation of the creepy aspect, keep in mind that (1) this phone conversation with Jackie Kennedy took place Dec. 2, 1963 - ten days after President Kennedy’s assassination, and (2) Johnson was the only one who knew the call was being recorded. Come to think of it, I’m not sure one can avoid the creepiness, considering LBJ’s cloying attempts to insinuate himself into the personal life of the his predecessor’s widow and children and Jacqueline Kennedy’s overdone southern belle-Betty Boop mannerisms. Nor was this an isolated incident. The recordings and transcripts of several other calls between LBJ and Jackie Kennedy can be found at American Radioworks. A transcript of this conversation is printed in the footnotes.2
Click to hear LBJ and Jackie Kennedy
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Punk
Certain coarse, intrusive behavioral traits have been attributed to Johnson, some sufficiently socially noxious to cause one to suspect that the story could be apocalyptic. One that often comes to mind is the claim that he would coerce staff and visitors with whom he was speaking to continue that conversation while he went to the bathroom and defecated, leaving the door open to facilitate the communication. While I cannot offer a LBJ phone call with a toilet flushing in the background, I can provide my favorite of the Johnson tapes, which features, in the course of his ordering pants from Joe Haggar (the Haggar of Haggar Men’s Casual & Dress Clothes) some unadorned colloquial anatomical descriptions so casually uttered that th listener can easily believe this is a guy who might hold conversations while also executing necessary bodily functions. This tape has been edited to eliminate a two minute period in the middle during which the call was put on hold and perhaps the last 90 seconds, which falls into the “more of the same” category. Otherwise, it is unchanged. A transcript of the complete call, including the deleted portions, is printed in the footnotes.3
Click to hear LBJ and Joe Haggar
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Signing Off
Footnotes
- While the clicks, static, and extraneous noises, including heartbeats, on the presidential tapes have a certain charm and induces a sense of reality, they do grate after the first few hours and, after a week or so, ones mind wanders to speculations about sonic enhancements. I have, for example, come to believe that Nixon’s paranoid diatribes would be much improved if backed by Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound.↩
- Transcript: LBJ and Jacqueline Kennedy; December 2, 1963, 2:42 PM
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy: Mr. President?
President Johnson: I just wanted you to know you were loved and by so many and so much and-
JBK: Oh, Mr. President!
LBJ: -I’m one of them.
JBK: I tried. I didn’t dare bother you again, but I got Kenny O’Donnell over here to give you a message if he ever saw you. Did he give it to you yet?
LBJ: No.
JBK: About my letter? That was waiting for me last night?
LBJ: Listen, sweetie. Now, first thing you’ve got to learn-you’ve got some things to learn, and one of them is that you don’t bother me. You give me strength.
JBK: But I wasn’t going to send you in one more letter. I was so scared you’d answer.
LBJ: Don’t send me anything, don’t send me anything! You just come on over and put your arm around me. That’s all you do. When you haven’t got anything else to do, let’s take a walk. Let’s walk around the back yard and just let me tell you how much you mean to all of us and how we can carry on if you give us a little strength!
JBK: But you know what I wanted to say to you about that letter? I know how rare a letter is in a President’s handwriting. Do you know that I’ve got more in your handwriting than I do in Jack’s now?
LBJ: Well-
JBK: And for you to write it at this time, and then to send me that thing today of, you know, your Cape announcement and everything-
LBJ: I want you to just know this, that I told my mama a long time ago, when everybody else gave up about my election in ‘48-
JBK: Yes?
LBJ: My mother and my wife and my sisters and you females got a lot of courage that we men don’t have. And so we have to rely on you and depend on you, and you’ve got something to do. You’ve got the President relying on you. And this is not the first one you’ve had! So there’re not many women, you know, running around with a good many Presidents. So you just bear that in mind. You’ve got the biggest job of your life!
JBK: [laughs] “She ran around with two Presidents.” That’s what they’ll say about me!
LBJ: [quietly chortles]
JBK: Okay! Anytime!
LBJ: Goodbye, darling.
JBK: Thank you for calling, Mr. President. Goodbye.
LBJ: Bye, sweetie. Do come by.
JBK: [warmly:] I will. ↩
- Transcript: LBJ and Joe Haggar; August 9, 1964
Operator: Go ahead sir
LBJ: Mr. Haggar?
JH: Yes this is Joe Haggar
LBJ: Joe, is your father the one that makes clothes?
JH: Yes sir - we’re all together
LBJ: Uh huh. You all made me some real lightweight slacks, uh, that he just made up on his own and sent to me 3 or 4 months ago. There’s a light brown and a light green, a rather soft green, a soft brown.
JH: Yes sir
LBJ: and they’re real lightweight now and I need about six pairs for summer wear.
JH: yes sir
LBJ: I want a couple, maybe three of the light brown kind of a almost powder color like a powder on a ladies face. Then they were some green and some light pair, if you had a blue in that or a black, then I’d have one blue and one black. I need about six pairs to wear around in the evening when I come in from work
JH: yes sir
LBJ: I need…they’re about a half a inch too tight in the waist.
JH: Do you recall sir the exact size, I just want to make sure we get them right for you
LBJ: No, I don’t know - you all just guessed at ‘em I think, some - wouldn’t you the measurement there?
JH: we can find it for you
LBJ: well I can send you a pair. I want them half a inch larger in the waist than they were before except I want two or three inches of stuff left back in there so I can take them up. I vary ten or 15 pounds a month.
JH: alright sir
LBJ: So leave me at least two and a half, three inches in the back where I can let them out or take them up. And make these a half an inch bigger in the waist. And make the pockets at least an inch longer, my money, my knife, everything falls out - wait just a minute.
Operator: Would you hold on a minute please?
[conversation on hold for two minutes]
LBJ: Now the pockets, when you sit down, everything falls out, your money, your knife, everything, so I need at least another inch in the pockets. And another thing - the crotch, down where your nuts hang - is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, uh because they cut me, it’s just like riding a wire fence. These are almost, these are the best I’ve had anywhere in the United States,
JH: Fine
LBJ: But, uh when I gain a little weight they cut me under there. So, leave me , you never do have much of margin there. See if you can’t leave me an inch from where the zipper (burps) ends, round, under my, back to my bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need to.
JH: Right
LBJ: Now be sure you have the best zippers in them. These are good that I have. If you get those to me I would sure be grateful
JH: Fine, Now where would you like them sent please?
LBJ: White House.
JH: Fine
LBJ: Now, uh, I don’t guess there is any chance of getting a very lightweight shirt, sport shirt to go with that slack, is there? That same color?
JH: We don’t make them, but we can have them made up for you.
LBJ: If you might look around, I wear about a 17, extra long.
JH: Would you like in the same fabric?
LBJ: Yeah I sure would, I don’t know whether that’s too heavy for a shirt.
JH: I think it’d be too heavy for a shirt.
LBJ: I sure want the lightest I can, in the same color or matching it. If you don’t mind, find me somebody up there who makes good shirts and make a shirt to match each one of them and if they’re good, we’ll order some more.
JH: Fine
LBJ: I just sure will appreciate this, I need it more than anything. And uh, now that’s a..about it. I guess I could get a jacket made outta that if I wanted to, couldn’t I?
JH: I think that - didn’t Sam Haggar have some jackets made?
LBJ: Yeah you sent me some jackets some earlier, but they were way too short. They hit me about halfway down my belly. I have a much longer waist. But I thought if they had material like that and somebody could make me a jacket, I’d sent them a sample to copy from.
JH: Well I tell you what, you send us this, we’ll find someone to make it
LBJ: - ok
JH: We’ll supply the material to match it
LBJ: Ok, I’ll do that. Uh now, how do I - can you give this boy the address because I’m running to a funeral and give this boy the address to where we can send the trousers - don’t worry, you’ll get the measurements out of them and add a half an inch to the back and an give us couple of an inch to the pockets and a inch underneath to we can let them out.
JH: What you ‘d like is a little more stride in the crotch
LBJ: Yeah that’s right. What I’d like is to give me a half a inch more then leave me some more. Ok here he is.
JH: Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed the others ↩
