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The first thing to know about Burma Shave is that, despite what the song’s lyrics indicate, Burma Shave isn’t a place. It is, or was, a shaving cream company.
Tom explained in 1985:
Burma Shave is an American shaving-cream company, like Colgate. They advertise on the side of the road and they have these limericks which are broken up into different signs like pieces of a fortune cookie. You drive for miles before you get the full message. "PLEASE DON'T"... five miles... "STICK YOUR ARM OUT SO FAR"... another five miles... "IT MIGHT GO HOME"... five more miles... "IN ANOTHER MAN'S CAR - BURMA SHAVE." They reel you in. So when I was a kid I'd see these signs on the side of the road - BURMA SHAVE, BURMA SHAVE - and I'm young and I think it's the name of a town and I ask my dad, "When we getting to Burma Shave?" So in the song I used Burma Shave as a dream, a mythical community, a place two people are trying to get to. They don't make it.
The billboards appeared in most states from 1925 to 1966, with a wide variety of messages. The last one always read “Burma Shave.” Given that the billboards mostly had nothing to do with shaving cream, you can see Tom’s confusion. I found photos of a few online:
A feature in Route Magazine goes into depth on the history of the company and the signs. Burma Shave was a struggling shaving cream company, its product basically the same as everyone else’s, until the founder’s son came up with the ingenious advertising model.
Every aspect of the Burma-Shave Company was a product of precise experimentation and calculation — even in terms of the ways in which the signs were placed along highways. The signs were arranged in sets of six, placed 100 feet apart, making it so that travelers had exactly three seconds to read each sign driving at a rate of 35 mph. The signs consistently rhymed and created interest in travelers to know what the punch line would be. They were composed of red painted boarding and white letters — a combination of colors that made the signs stand out from other roadside signage. At the peak of Burma-Shave’s successful run, there were over 7,000 signs erected along American highways in 45 states.
And not just 45 states. The signs were so familiar to so many back then, they appeared overseas in a few strategic spots:
During the 1960s, the U.S. Army had the idea to plant Burma-Shave signs in Korea and Burma for servicemen to get a glimpse of a heartwarming reminder of home. The signs even made their way into the frigid continent of Antarctica, where servicemen were stationed during a series of missions code named Operation Deep Freeze.
None of which has all that much to do with Tom’s song. The song “Barber Shop”, also from Foreign Affairs, ties in much more closely with the actual Burma-Shave. The only real connection between Burma-Shave the real shaving cream company and Burma-Shave the imaginary place is a general sense of small town America, and a desire to hit the road. As Tom explained before a 1996 performance, one of the last times he’s performed the tune to date:
When I was a kid we used to drive cross country. And for those of you who are old enough, you might remember the Burma-Shave signs on the side of the highway… My dad yelling at me to hold my horses. And thirty years later I yell at my kids to hold their horses. So this is about a small little town. One of those tiny little towns by the side of the road. And somebody thumbing a ride trying to get out of town...
In the late ‘70s, he used to tag “Burma Shave” with a bit of the Gershwin classic “Summertime” at the end. Here’s a video of one of those performances:
That '79 arrangement on the Sydney tape is one my favorite recordings of anything by anyone.
Dear Ray, I tend to disagree with you interpretation of Burma Shave. I an a 1953 model. The top of the baby boomer bell curve.
Berma Shave is every town in the Midwest and west that was pronounced to be the town of Burma Shave. Destined to dry up over the years they proudly proclaimed you were entering to the wide spot in the road. They were all the same back then!