Markin comment:
This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.
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'Kunstler On Your Side" lyrics
Current mood: nostalgic
(chorus)
He was known as a People's Lawyer
Although he got on TV
And when William Kunstler argued
The judge said: "Not guilty!"
(verses)
If you like to sing some folk songs
And you're bothered by the F.B.I.
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side.
If you're trapped in Alabama
Where a sheriff took you for a ride
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side. (chorus)
If you're fighting against the War Machine
And you're jailed for exposing lies
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side.
If you've led a protest march
Where the police beat you 'till you cried
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side. (chorus)
If you're charged with "conspiracy"
And "illegally crossing state lines"
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side.
If you're revolting in a prison
Against guards that brutalized
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side. (chorus)
The public domain "Kunstler On Your Side" biographical protest folk about the now-deceased civil rights attorney was written in the 1980s.
In a 1999 biography of William Kunstler, William M. Kunstler: The Most Hated Lawyer In America, a law school professor named David Langum indicated which kind of private practice clients Kunstler would not represent in the 1980s and 1990s:
"Like all lawyers in private practice, Kunstler also took cases for no more exalted reason than to earn a fee. Political selectivity continued, although a more realistic statement of Kunstler's later position was that given to a reporter in 1994:...He would not have taken on O.J. Simpson..."because it's a wife killing case." Nor would he have represented the hotel mogul Leona Helmsley, who..."although she has the same civil rights as anyone, is a rather detestable character with few redeeming qualities.""
For more information about William Kunstler's life, you might want to check out the new documentary film, "William Kunstler: Disturbing The Universe," or the www.disturbingtheuniverse.com web site.
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'Let The Big Banks Fail' protest folk song lyrics
Category: Music
Let The Big Banks Fail
(chorus)
Let the Big Banks fail
And put the bankers in jail
It’s time to right the wrong
And not save those who committed fraud
(verse)
Wall Street ripped off investors
And made billions from sub-prime loans
Yet when their housing boom turned to bust
To Washington, the bankers did go.
The big bankers they purchased
The Congress and the White House
So Democrats and Republicans
Are eager to bail them out.
(bridge)
They say they have no money to give welfare for the poor
Yet "Lehman-Goldman Sachs" get $700 billion more
They say they have no money to provide jobs and free health care
Yet AIG and Merrill Lynch are given Corporate Welfare. (chorus)
(additional verses)
If a tenant can’t pay his rent
A landlord will evict
But if a Big Bank can’t pay its debt
Its government will give it cash.
If a worker can’t do her job
She’ll get fired for incompetence
But if a banker wrecks his bank
His government gives him a blank check.(chorus)
If a homeowner can’t pay his mortgage
He’ll lose his home and get foreclosed
But if Wall Street can’t pay off its creditors
It gets another big government loan.
If a store loses its customers
It will soon be forced to close
But if Big Banks steal from consumers
They’re given billions in loans. (bridge) (chorus)
They’re all for a free market
When their profits are rolling in
But once they start losing money
The free market ain’t for them.
If you can’t pay your student debts
You’ll get harassed by their government
Yet when Wall Street banks owe people money
The government lets them off the hook. (chorus)
So if you don’t think it’s democratic
For Wall Street’s government to rule over you
Then just take over CNN
With the help of your labor union.
The bankers’ names might be Pritzker
Or Rubin or J.P. Morgan
Yet they all don’t want Revolution
So they can rip off the people again. (chorus)
The public domain Let The Big Banks protest folk song was written in the Fall of 2008 when Wall Street firms like AIG, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup were getting bailed out by the U.S. government--on the pretext that giving corporate welfare grants (and more executive bonuses) to Wall Street would prevent mass layoffs of U.S. workers and another economic depression in 2009. A few days ago I finally got around to recording the Let The Big Banks protest folk song on my cheap cassette tape recorder, but I haven't yet been able to get it converted to mp3 so I can post it onto the internet with its original public domain melody.
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=10#ixzz0zMRCCraT
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Saturday, November 01, 2008
Woody Guthrie Revisited (Part 1)
Category: Music
In a July 15, 1946 letter, Woody Guthrie wrote the following:
"I think that I have proved that a folk singer, to sing best what the people have thought and are thinking, is forced to turn his back on the bids of Broadway and Hollywood to buy him and his talents out. I feel like my work in this field will someday be seen as the most radical, the most militant, and the most topical of them all…
"Every folk song that I know tells how to fix some things in this world to make it better, tells what is wrong with it, and what we've got to do to fix it better. If the song does not do this, then, it is no more of a folk song than I am a movie scout…
"When you ask yourself which of the so-called folk singers live up to the real name, you can cross lots of their names entirely off of your list…Ask yourself, does the singer, (artist or poet), take part in the fight to win a better world for the worker? There is only one big fight with a million and one legs to it, the fight of the worker to win his fair share from his owner (boss, etc.). The more the owners allow a singer to be heard around, the less he can sing the tale of the worker's fight. Before your voice can be heard or your face fotographed, you must actually turn into a weapon of the owner against the workers. I know from a hundred cases of my own experience that any work of protest, fight, militance or plan for the worker, was blue penciled, and censored a dozen times. Any word that was too true, too strong, or too loud in criticizing the world owned by the big boss was scratched out by several hands under a thousand reasons."
Coincidentally, among the pages contained in Woody Guthrie's declassified post-1950s FBI file (100-29988) is an April 10, 1951 memorandum from the FBI's New York City office to the FBI Director on the subject "Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, Security Matter," which states that "It is recommended that a Security Index Card be prepared on the above captioned individual." This April 1951 document also categorizes Woody as "Communist," indicates that "49 Murdock Court, Brooklyn, NY" is now Woody's residence address and lists Woody's "business address" as "Free Lance Folk Singer."
For more information about Woody Guthrie's historical contribution to U.S. musical history, you can check out the official Woody Guthrie site at www.woodyguthrie.org.
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=11#ixzz0zMSAI3zs
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Saturday, November 08, 2008
Woody Guthrie Revisited (Part 2)
Category: Music
In a July 15, 1946 letter, Woody Guthrie wrote the following:
"It is not just a question of you, as an artist, selling out, and becoming harmless to the owning side. No, you are never actually bought nor bribed till they have decided that they can use you in one way or another to rob, to deceive, to blind, confuse, to misrepresent, or just to harass, worry, bedevil, and becloud the path of the militant worker on his long hard fight from slavery to freedom. Your art helps to preserve, to prolong, to keep alive, and to glorify the essences and the principles of the owning, ruling side. If your art did not add new life to their side, kid not yourself, they would certainly never shake your hand and drop their bloody money down into your lap. And it is the highest form of your owner's joy when he buys you out from the union side (where you) have spent several years of your life getting people to follow, to hear, or to stand for a while and listen to what you have to say, or to live their lives in spirit and in action in the way that you lived your own. This makes you worth lots more to your owner…
"This is the bad part of a capitalist system, this dog eat dog, this spying, tracing, tracking and trailing after one another always under the covers of night and the shades and shadows of day…This is the system which the owners would like to prolong, to keep alive, to prolong as long as they possibly can, because in the wild blindness of it all, they get all of us to fighting against one another, and rob us coming in the fields of production, and going, in the realm of distribution. This is the system I would like to see die out. It killed several members of my family, it gassed several and shell shocked several more in the last world war, and in this world war just past, it scattered lots more. It drove families of my relatives and friends by the hundreds of thousands to wander more homeless than dogs and to live less welcome than hogs, sheep, or cattle. This is the system I started out to expose by every conceivable way that I could think of with songs and with ballads, and even with poems, stories, newspaper articles, even by humor, by fun, by nonsense, ridicule and by any other way that I could lay hold on."
Coincidentally, among the pages contained in Woody Guthrie's declassified post-1950s FBI file (100-29988-5,6,7,8) is a June 2, 1950 memorandum sent to the FBI Director by the FBI's Los Angeles office on the subject "Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, Security Matter," which states:
"Re: El Paso letter to New York dated 2-15-50 in captioned matter, report of Special Agent [censored] dated 4-30-50 at Los Angeles entitled ..Factionalists Sabotage Group,' Internal Security-C:
"On April 18, 1950 CNDI [censored] identified a photograph of GUTHRIE as being the individual to whom he had previously referred to as (WOODY), and who was a member of the Factionalist Sabotage Group. According to CNDI [censored] GUTHRIE from approximately April 15, 1950 to May 15, 1950 resided at the home of [censored] Los Angeles, California, and an individual who has also been identified as a member of the above group.
"On May 15, 1950 CNDI [censored] ascertained that GUTHRIE left Los Angeles on that date and on May 18, 1950 CNDI [censored] was advised by [censored] that GUTHRIE was in El Paso, Texas where he would contact his children and former wife. Reference telbu reflects that GUTHRIE's children resided at 4002 Bliss Street, El Paso, Texas.
"For the information of the El Paso office CNDIS [censored] have furnished this office since [censored] with information concerning a group of approximately thirty men and women, some veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and expelled Communist Party members who are regularly meeting in Los Angeles. According to [censored] this group has a headquarters in Mexico City, Mexico, and one of the group [censored], known to your office, left Los Angeles in December 1949 to work in this headquarters; her residence has been verified in Cuernevaca, Mexico.
"The [censored] of this group, [censored] has advised CNDI [censored] that the ultimate purpose of this group is sabotage against the United States during war with Russia and has outlined to him group policy in recruitment, method of operation, publications, finances, and has advised the informant that his group has a direct contact with the ..Comintern.'
"By letter dated May 15, 1950 in the referenced matter the Bureau requested that individual investigations be opened concerning members of this group and security index cards be considered.
"El Paso is requested to verify the residence of the subject in El Paso through [censored], El Paso County Court House, El Paso, Texas, it being noted that [censored] has previously furnished your office with information regarding GUTHRIE.
"Upon receipt of this verification, Los Angeles will submit a RUC report covering GUTHRIE's activities known to this office."
And a July 21, 1950 memorandum to the FBI Director from the FBI's Los Angeles office on the same subject states:
"Rebutel dated July 14, 1950, entitled ..FACTIONALIST SABOTAGE GROUP, INTERNAL SECURITY C 'Bufile 100-369268'…
"CNDI [censored] on July 4, 1950, advised he had ascertained from [censored], also a member of the referenced group, that the subject was presently residing at 3520 Mermaid Avenue, Brooklyn 24, New York.
"A pending report setting out leads to verify the subject's residence in New York is presently being transcribed and will be forwarded to the New York and El Paso Offices at an early date."
Also included in Woody Guthrie's declassified post-1950's FBI file is an August 3, 1950 document summarizing the articles that appeared in the left-wing Daily People's World in 1948 and 1949 that either mentioned Woody or were written by Woody; and which states that "T-1 advised that he specifically recalls Guthrie having attended" six political meetings between March 26, 1950 and May 6, 1950 that were held at 932 or 932 ½ North Lucile Ave. in Los Angeles. Yet this August 3, 1950 document admits that "[censored] Guthrie [censored] advised that he personally has never, [censored] made any statement relative to sabotage…"
For more information about Woody Guthrie's life and work, you can check out the official Woody Guthrie site at www.woodyguthrie.org .
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Saturday, November 15, 2008
Woody Guthrie Revisited (Part 3)
Category: Music
In a July 15, 1946 letter, Woody Guthrie wrote the following:
"I have decided, long ago, that my songs and ballads would not get the hugs and kisses of the capitalistic ..experts,' simply because I believe that the real folk history of this country finds its center and its hub in the fight of the union members against the hired gun thugs of the big owners. It is for this reason I have never really, sincerely, expected nor dimly prayed, nor hoped for a single solitary minute for a penny's worth of help from the hand of our landlord and ruler….
"To the big owners, an artist of any note or fame, that can be said to work or fight over on the union side, is classed by the big boys as a soldier, a technical, or an artistic captain or a general. The money paid to clip off working class artists may start at a measley Ten or Fifteen Thousand, and run up very quick to the sum of, A Hundred, Two Hundred Thousand, or a Half Million long greens. (This is no money at all to the big handlers that toss bales of money back and forth across their tables to the tune of a Million, a Billion, or more, Dollars)….
"It is not only a question of buying you and your art out of circulation, to keep you from stirring up your people against their blind owners; it is, lots of times a question of blocking your hand on every side, or causing you to get all lost and tangled up in a thousand traps of their psychological, emotional, economical, legal and illegal sorts of personal warfare. This will take the form of bribery, social disgrace, exposes', running down your work, discouraging your talents, and insulting you on every turn."
Coincidentally, among the 55 pages contained in Woody's de-classified FBI file (100-29988-5) is a July 15, 1943 Memorandum for E.A. Tamm, regarding "Department of Agriculture Nationwide Production ..It's Up To You'," from D. M. Ladd of the FBI which states:
"I am attaching a program of the production ..It's Up To You,' which was staged at the Department of Agriculture Auditorium in Washington, D.C. for a ten day period commencing on June 22, 1943. The production was attended by Special Agent [censored] and because of the tenor of the production Agent [censored] checked the Bureau file and ascertained that the following named individuals connected with the production of this show are either closely associated with the Communist Party or members thereof: Earl Robinson, Woody Guthrie…
"…In November, 1942 the Baltimore Field Office reported that through the medium of a confidential informant it was learned that a mass meeting was held at the negro Elk's Hall in Baltimore, on which occasion the speakers were James Ford, an official of the Communist Party, USA, and Woody Guthrie. Guthrie is identified as having associated with one John R. Forrest, a song writer…Forrest is the subject of a Bureau file and is closely associated with Communist and Communist infiltrated groups in and around Los Angeles, California. Guthrie has been a resident of both New York City and Los Angeles."
For more information about Woody Guthrie's life and his historical impact on U.S. cultural life, you can check out the official Woody Guthrie website at www.woodyguthrie.org
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Saturday, November 22, 2008
Woody Guthrie Revisited (Part 4)
In a July 15, 1946 letter, Woody Guthrie wrote the following:
"I have never sung nor made songs just to entertain the upper classes, but to curse their clawing, reckless racketeers, and to warn the nervous ones that live and die by greed....
"Not all of us folk and ballad makers and singers stand where I stand. Not all of them see the world as I see it. Some would rather be a ..character' and to be fotographed and filmed, broadcast and recorded, and paid big money by the big money side. They would rather occupy a certain social position, to be well known, to play the game of publicity gangsters and to enjoy the crowds that clap and yell when you tell them directly or indirectly that this old world is okie dokie, she is all right, she is a nice good place to live on, and if you kick or argue, or make too much noise with your mouth, then you are just a native barnkicker, and a griper, and you are kicked out by your own inability to ..cooperate' with the high moguls…
"If your work gets to be labeled as communist or even as communistic or even as radically leaning in the general direction of bolshevism, then, of course, you are black balled, black listed, chalked up as a revolutionary bomb thrower, and you invite the whole weight of the capitalist machine to be thrown against you…"
Coincidentally, among the 55 pages in Woody Guthrie's de-classified FBI file [100-29988] , is a July 18, 1941 "Memorandum to Mr. Matthew F. McGuire, The Assistant to the Attorney General" from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover which states:
"From a confidential source, information has been furnished this Bureau that one Woodrow W. Guthrie, who is employed by the Department of the Interior, is allegedly a member of the Communist Party. This individual is reported as being at the present time on the West Coast, engaged in the making of a motion picture for the Department of the Interior…"
Also contained in Woody Guthrie's de-classified FBI file is an October 17, 1941 letter to the "Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco, California" from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, "Re: Woodrow W. Guthrie, Internal Security", which states:
"…Guthrie is no longer an employee of another Governmental agency and in the event the files of your field division reflect the desirability of conducting an investigation into his activities and sympathies in order to determine whether they are inimical to the best interests of this Government you are at liberty to do so."
For more information about the historical role that Woody played in U.S. musical history, you can check out the http://www.woodyguthrie.org/ site.
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Paul Robeson’s 110th Birthday Anniversary
Category: Music
April 9, 2008 marked the 110th anniversary of Paul Robeson's birth in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1953 Robeson was denied a passport to perform in Europe by the Corporatist Male Establishment's State Department. On July 4, 1952 Paul had given a speech at the Progressive Party's national convention in Chicago in which he said:
"The Negro people are not fooled by the myth of "tremendous progress"--the progress of a few bigshot jobs and appointments, while the great masses of our folk in the South--yes, in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York and the West Coast--struggle for every little gain in living wages...Both old parties want to retreat on civil rights...The Democratic dilemma will not be solved by any stepped-up double-talking...The Democrats will discover that the old dodge that "it's Congress..." won't work...In 1952 our campaign is challenging the two old parties..."
And, as a chronology contained in the Paul Robeson Speaks book noted, "with recording companies refusing to issue his records or record new ones and all concert halls, theaters etc. closed to him, Robeson" saw "his income dwindle from a high of over $100,000 in 1947 to about $6,000 in 1952."
In 1972 a New York City-based folksinger/songwriter/activist named Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick recorded on a Folkways record his "Ballad of Paul Robeson," which contained the following verses:
"They tried to stop you from singing
At Peekskill's hallowed Hall
But a hundred thousand people
Demanded your message be told
They took all of your records
From their racist's record racks
But you stood tall and fought
And never did turn back."
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=12#ixzz0zMSNIhbV
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Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=10#ixzz0zMRCCraT
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