Many thanks to a Cleveland fan by the name of “Jim” who forwarded to me a copy of an old song known as “Cleveland: The Best Location in the Nation” performed by Les Adair with the Vic Stuart Combo.
The slogan “The Best Location in the Nation” goes back to sometime in the 1940s but has not been used for many years. Still, many long time Cleveland area residents believe that Cleveland is a wonderful place to live and work and is still the best.
Here’s a video I created showing some of Cleveland’s sights, set to the backdrop of the song as it was played on a local radio show (Bob and Ray) many years back. (The video features recent pictures; I just made it look old to fit the music.)
Enjoy!
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7 comments:
Thank goodness for this site! I am relatively new to Cleveland and have never seen a city so negative about itself! Last week a couple were visiting here and asked SEVERAL people what good things there were to do and see here, and they were told that was NOTHING good to see or do! So thankfully this pair took themselves on a tour of our city and were pleasantly surprised! We need more pride here Clevelanders! BTW, is everyone talking about (and eating) our Award Winning Pizza? Congrats Romeo's Pizza! You are one more thing for us to be proud of!
I was very curious if the song you were forwarded was also a video. I know the song very well considering that Vic Stuart is my great great grandfather. His son who also played in the Vic Stuart orchestra is my grandfather, whom is still alive. If you can please respond that would be great or if anyone else out there has any video's pictures or basically anything else about the Vic Stuart Orchestra please leave a comment. Thank You!
I haven't seen or heard about a video for this - hopefully someone else may know something!
OK thank you so much!
I'm fascinated by the existence of a song with the famed Cleveland slogan and would like to know more about its origin. My understanding, however, is that "The Best Location in the Nation" originated as an official slogan in 1944, when CEI created it to market its service area and get a head start on postwar development. I would assume that the song postdates the CEI slogan, but I could be wrong. Any thoughts? Nice video, by the way.
I finally found something that had a time frame on the slogan, from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History which said: "In the early 1940s, CEI began promoting Cleveland as "the best location in the nation" in hopes of attracting new industries to the area." (link: http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=CEIC )
I think when I originally typed 1930s it was a typo that I did not catch so I fixed it now. I also assume the song came afterwards (but I have no firm date on when the song was first performed or written).
Bob and Ray used to play this song all the time on WOR in NYC back in the mid-70's. It's the only song with the word "industry".
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