This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Interloper’s
Interlude-William Powell’s “My Man Godfrey” (1936)-A Film Review, Of Sorts
DVD Review
By Special Guest
Reviewer Frank Jackman
My Man Godfrey, starring
William Powell, Carol Lombard, 1936
You know they don’t make
bums, tramps, hoboes like they used to at least back in the day, back in the
Great Depression, the world-wide 1930s one, if one is to believe the plotline
of the film under review My Man Godfrey. I
have been handed. asked for, this assignment since I know, or knew for a
relatively short time, the sociology of the outcasts of society, when I myself
was on the bum for a while after hitting the skids as a result of military
service in Vietnam back in the 1970s. (Although I had my fair share of run-ins
and run-downs during that period the real deal expert from that time was my old
friend from high school the late Pete Markin, always called “Scribe” in our
circles who had his own fair share of problems adjusting to the “real” world
after his military service but who wrote an award-winning series of articles
for the East Bay Other, I think it
was that now long gone publication on the West Coast although it could have been another
alternative newspaper now also long gone The
Eye, about a bunch of ex-military guys who couldn’t adjust to the real
world and wound up forming some kind of travelling nation community along the
railroad tracks and bridges of Southern California.)
In my experience, unlike
in the comedic effort in the film under review, the guys, and it was mostly
guys since ragamuffin women would be is serious danger in the camps and flop houses
I ran into, were not anywhere near nature’s noblemen as portrayed here,
especially in the person of Godfrey, maybe better particularly in the person of Godfrey. They were as likely to
steal everything you owned as share anything even shaking DTs booze when a guy
was on the hammer (I lost several personal items including cash before I
figured out how to store my goods). As likely to con you as speak truth and as
likely to sell you out to the nearest copper to save their own necks as not.
There is nevertheless a hierarchy among the varieties of outcasts which mainly
reflect their relationship to the work ethic from no work on principle to
enough day work to keep going.
I learned a lot of this lore
running into a guy named Dragon Rocky who was a hobo, the highest rank among
the outcasts and recognized as such by one and all along the tracks and under
the bridges, who was also, or had also been, it was never clear where he stood
on this, a folk song writer and when he was sober a performer at clubs and
small concerts on those infrequent days when he wasn’t on the bum. He was some kind of high figure among the
brethren and knew more about how to handle himself in that cutthroat world than
any man I met then, or have met now. So philosopher-king
kind heart Godfrey would have gotten no play, would have been skinned alive in
real hobo, tramp, bum society.
Fair enough, although
hobos, tramps and bums, real ones have little enough room to breathe on the
outer edges of society to rightly and righteously resent a guy on a flyer. Grabbing
up precious resources better used by real brethren. Not to worry though our man
will land on his feet once he gets a job as butler to a screwball bunch of
Riverside swells, Mayfair swells, if you want to know who have the social
consciousness of amoebas until Godfrey puts them straight, settles their affairs
and along the way falls for the family’s younger screwball airhead daughter.
Not only that but outduel one Karl Marx in the capitalist-communist battle by
saying screw you to the class struggle and on the sly opening up swanky
nightclub for those Mayfair swells and providing honorable work for the
denizens of the dump which had been their (and Godfrey’s) abode before this act
of urban renewal. Hell, talk about paeans to trickle-down economics that one
guy much later called “voodoo” economics.
A funny film in spots but don’t take any social message seriously.
In Boston –The Latest
From RefuseFascism-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18th
on Boston Common
Frank Jackman comment:
I have mentioned on more
than one occasion that we have been for a while in a state of cold civil war in
America that has only had fuel to the fire added to it, make it tend toward a
hot civil war, by the massive frauds, midnight rip-off actions, and general
ignorance promoted by the Trump Administration. This rightly, and I think most
thankfully, has gotten the previously moribund left, the bewildered and the
oppressed up in arms enough to slowly begin a counter-attack against the
night-takers from corrupt and venal right-wing bourgeois politicians like Trump
and his ilk to the more dangerous extra-parliamentary forces-call them
alt-right, fascist, KKK, etc. that have been unleashed-have been given fresh
wind in their sails.
Not everything the left
and its allies argue for in counter-attack either makes senses or provides a
road forward in the anti-fascist struggle for example this call by RefuseFascism
to identify the Trump-Pence regime as fascist and to call for a parliamentary
impeachment process to get rid of the bums. But for now as we sort things out,
or as they get sorted for us which is as likely and has actually been the case
over the past several months, let’s keep to the united front idea going until
further notice. In short Saturday November 18th in Boston be on the
Boston Common to stop the Nazis, fascists and their ilk in their tracks
whatever anti-fascist ideas you march under.
Films To Class Struggle By-"Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story"- Leonard Peltier Must Not Die In Jail
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin
DVD Review Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story, Leonard Peltier, various leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses and by-standers, directed by Michael Apted, 1991
Let’s start this review of this documentary of the incidents surrounding the case of Leonard Peltier at the end. Or at least the end of this documentary, 1991. Leonard Peltier, a well-known leader of the Native American movement, convicted of the 1975 murder, execution-style, of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota after he had been extradited from Canada in the wake of the acquittal of two other Pine Ridge residents. In an interview from federal prison in that period the then still relatively young Peltier related that after receiving his life sentences and being told by prison officials that that meant his release date would be in 2035 he stated that he hoped not, for he would then be an old, old man. Here is what should make everyone interested in the case, and everyone interested in the least sense of justice, even just bourgeois justice, blood boil, he is now an old sick man and he is still in jail for a crime that he did not commit, and certainly one that was not proven beyond that cherished “reasonable doubt”
This documentary, narrated by Robert Redford in his younger days as well, goes step by step through the case from the pre-murder period when Native Americans, catching the political consciousness crest begun in the 1960s by the black civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, started organizing, mainly through the American Indian Movement (AIM), on the Indian reservations of the West, some of the most impoverished areas in all the Americas. The focal point of this militant organizing effort came in the war zone-showdown, the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. The tension that hovered in the air in the aftermath of that war between the American government and its Indian agent supporters on one side, and the AIM-led “warrior nation” on the other is the setting for this incident at Ogala.
Through reenactment of the crime scene; eye witnesses, interested and disinterested, voluntary or coerced; defense strategies at both trials from self-defense to lack of physical evidence, and on appeal; the prosecution's case, its insufficient evidence, and it various maneuvers to inflame white juries against unpopular or misunderstood Native Americans in order to get someone convicted for the murders of one of their own; the devastating, but expected effect of the trials on the political organizing by AIM; and the stalwart and defiant demeanor of one Leonard Peltier all come though in this presentation. As a long time supporter of organizations that defend class-war prisoners, like Leonard Peltier, this film only makes that commitment even firmer. With that in mind- Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Jail!
The following October 28 leaflet, issued by the New York Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth Club, was distributed to a hundreds-strong protest against right-wing provocateur Mike Cernovich at Columbia University on October 30.
On October 10, over 250 students, activists and Harlem residents, including supporters of the Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth Club, came out to protest Tommy Robinson, a British fascist leader. Robinson had been invited by the Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR) to speak via Skype as part of their “Free Speech Month.” Protesters who managed to get inside the event chanted and held up signs. The next day, Executive Vice President of University Life Suzanne Goldberg, claiming that they had violated the Rules of University Conduct, banned at least 18 students from attending future CUCR events and is threatening them with further disciplinary action, including expulsion. We say: Defend the Columbia anti-fascist protesters! No reprisals! No bans!
Emboldened by Trump’s election, fascists are increasingly rearing their heads, including on college campuses across the country. When these vermin make public appearances, their purpose is to organize for deadly violence. This program was written in the blood of Heather Heyer, murdered on the streets of Charlottesville in August. When would-be führer Richard Spencer held a rally at the University of Florida on October 19, three Nazis shot at anti-fascist protesters after the event.
Proposals to have “dialogue” with these vicious scum are suicidal. Fascism is not about “speech;” it’s about racist terror. The fascists are paramilitary shock troops that are held in reserve by the capitalist rulers and unleashed at times of social crisis against any prospect of revolutionary struggle by the working class. Their purpose is nothing less than the destruction of the workers movement, including unions and the left, and racial genocide. In the U.S., the fascists, from the Ku Klux Klan to “alt-right” thugs, especially have black people in their sights; they wave the Confederate flag of slavery and speak with the lynch rope. Across the Atlantic, the English Defence League, which Robinson founded, is known for marching into minority neighborhoods to terrorize the population and commit violence against Muslims and immigrants. Sweeping such scum off the streets is an elementary act of self-defense for black people, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, trade unionists, leftists and all the fascists’ intended victims.
Unlike Robinson, the CUCR guest speaker on October 30, Mike Cernovich, is not a fascist—he does not organize for race terror on the streets. Rather, he is an all-purpose pig, an anti-black, right-wing provocateur with repugnant views on women and immigrants. Cernovich should be protested, exposed and refuted. But stopping right-wing ideologues like Cernovich, Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter from speaking only plays into their trap, handing them the flag of “free speech” to wave like a bloody shirt. To equate such racists with fascists only serves to disarm people in the face of the Nazis and other race-terrorists, who must be crushed in the egg.
In a flyer for the October 10 event, protest organizers, including the Southern Poverty Law Center’s campus chapter and Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, stated: “Our goal is to not only protest this event, but also to pressure the university into cancelling future events (including Michael Cernovich) involving these kinds of hateful and racist views.”
We oppose calls on the campus administration or the capitalist state to ban “hate speech” or the fascists, who must be repulsed through mass protest. Such bans will only serve to strengthen the forces of repression. Campus authorities that are currently cracking down on anti-fascist protest will use “anti-hate” bans to stifle political dissent and silence leftists, anti-racists and minority activists. The campus administration runs Columbia University—a bastion of race and class privilege that drives black and Latino people out of Harlem—in the interest of the capitalist ruling class.
The filth spewed by Cernovich and like-minded provocateurs is fed by the reality of capitalist class rule, which is rooted in the vicious racial oppression of black people, as well as anti-immigrant racism and sexist bigotry. As communists, we understand that oppression stems from material conditions, like poverty, unemployment, dilapidated housing and brutal cop terror. The struggle against racial oppression must be based on a fight to get rid of the capitalist profit system itself.
This perspective is decidedly not that of the reformist International Socialist Organization (ISO). Echoing the liberal lie that fascism is a question of repellant views rather than violent action, the ISO’s campus chapter wrote in an op-ed in the Columbia Spectator (10 October): “We hope that Columbia’s community will show, come October 10, that it categorically rejects such discriminatory and hateful views, ones that should have no place in a society that truly values equality and tolerance.”
Capitalist America is not, has never been and will never be “a society that truly values equality and tolerance.” This is a country built upon the backs of black slaves and the vicious exploitation of the working class. It is a society that is all about inequality and intolerance. To change that requires socialist revolution. But for the ISO, the height of struggle is to build a movement to pressure the capitalist Democratic Party, which, no less than the Republicans, is committed to upholding this system of exploitation and oppression.
The outrage against the fascists needs an organized expression: a disciplined, militant and military mobilization of the social power of the multiracial working class, which lies in its numbers, collective organization and, above all, its ability to choke off profits through strikes and other actions. The working class has the power and objective interest not only to sweep the fascists off the streets but also to overturn the whole capitalist system that spawns these vermin. For labor/black mobilizations to stop the fascists!
We seek to forge a revolutionary workers party that fights for a workers government. Such a party would act as the tribune of the people, championing the fight for black freedom, for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, for women’s rights and for the liberation of all the oppressed. It is by joining the fight to build such a party that radical students, young workers and others will find their place in the struggle to put capitalism and its fascist thugs in the dustbin of history.
This just in---According to the French magazine, Le Figaro, the Israeli State has forbidden French officials to visit or see Salah Hamouri.
Just before this weekend's planned visit, Pierre Laurent, Clementine Autain, Patrick Le Hyaric and Pascal Durand were declared persona non grata.They were to begin a visit to Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories this weekend.
An Encore -When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Sometimes Sam Lowell and his “friend” (really “sweetie,” long time sweetie, paramour, significant other, consort or whatever passes for the socially acceptable or Census Bureau bureaucratic “speak” way to name somebody who is one’s soul-mate, his preferred term) Laura Perkins whose relationship to Sam was just described at the end of the parentheses, and righteously so, liked to go to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich to either cool off in the late summer heat or in the fall before the New England weather lowers its hammer and the place gets a bit inaccessible and too windswept to force the delicate Laura into the weathers. That later summer heat escape valve is a result, unfortunately for an otherwise Edenic environment of the hard fact that July, when they really would like to go there to catch a few fresh sea breezes, is not a time to show up at the bleach white sands beach due to nasty blood-sucking green flies swarming and dive-bombing like some berserk renegade Air Force squadron lost on a spree captained by someone with a depraved childhood who breed in the nearby swaying mephitic marshes (mephitic courtesy of multi-use by Norman Mailer who seemed to get it in every novel- if you don't what it means look it up but think nasty and smelly and you will close-okay). The only “safe haven” then is to drive up the hill to the nearby robber-baron days etched Crane Castle (they of the American indoor plumbing fortune way back) to get away from the buggers, although on a stagnant wind day you might have a few vagrant followers, as the well-to-do have been doing since there were the well-to-do and had the where-with-all to escape the summer heat and bugs at higher altitudes. By the way I assume that “castle” is capitalized when it part of a huge estate, the big ass estate of Crane, now a trust monument to the first Gilded Age, not today’s neo-Gilded Age, architectural proclivities of the rich, the guy whose company did, does all the plumbing fixture stuff on half the bathrooms in America including in the various incantations of the mansion.
Along the way, along the hour way to get to Ipswich from Cambridge Sam and Laura had developed a habit of making the time more easy passing by listening to various CDs, inevitably not listened to for a long time folk CDs, not listened to for so long that the plastic containers needed to be dusted off before being brought along, on the car's improvised CD player. And as is their wont while listening to some CD to comment on this or that thing that some song brought to mind, or the significance of some song in their youth. One of the things that had brought them together early on several years back was their mutual interest in the old 1960s folk minute which Sam, a little older and having grown up within thirty miles of Harvard Square, one the big folk centers of that period along with the Village and North Beach out in Frisco town, had imbibed deeply. Laura, growing up “in the sticks,” in farm country in upstate New York had gotten the breeze at second-hand through records, records bought at Cheapo Records and the eternal Sandy's on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and a little the fading Cambridge folk scene through breathing in the coffeehouse atmosphere when she had moved to Boston in the early 1970s to go to graduate school.
One hot late August day they got into one such discussion about how they first developed an interest in folk music when Sam had said “sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe some a little younger too if some hip kids have browsed through their parents’ old vinyl record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late according a report I had heard on NPR." Some of that over 50 crowd and their young acolytes would also have known about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing Woody’s songs imitating Woody's style something fellow Woody acolytes like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over moved on, got all hung up on high symbolism and obscure references. Funny guys like Jack actually made a nice workman-like career out of Woody covers, so their complaints about the "great Dylan betrayal, about moving on, seen rather hollow now. That over 50s crowd would also know Dylan became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, their generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then he would settle for the master troubadour of the age.
Sam continued along that line after Laura had said she was not sure about the connection and he said he meant, “troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well if not decked in some officially approved garb like back in those olden days where they worked under a king’s license if lucky, by their wit otherwise but the 'new wave' post-beatnik flannel shirt, work boots, and dungarees which connected you with the roots, the American folk roots down in the Piedmont, down in Appalachia, down in Mister James Crow’s Delta, and out in the high plains, the dust bowl plains. So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.”
Laura said she knew all of that about the desperate search for roots although not that Ramblin’ Jack had been an acolyte of Woody’s but she wondered about others, some other folk performers whom she listened to on WUMB on Saturday morning when some weeping willow DJ put forth about fifty old time rock and folk rock things a lot of which she had never heard of back in Mechanicsville outside of Albany where she grew up. Sam then started in again, “Of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s. He had been washed by it when he came to the East from Hibbing, Minnesota for God’s sake (via Dink’s at the University there), came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, the next big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. For us. But also those in little oases like the Village where the disaffected could pick up on stuff they couldn’t get in places like Mechanicsville or Carver where I grew up. People who I guess, since even I was too young to know about that red scare stuff except you had to follow your teacher’s orders to put your head under your desk and hands neatly folded over your head if the nuclear holocaust was coming, were frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and began seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as our parents, definitely mine, yours were just weird about stuff like that, right, were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. How do you like that for pop sociology 101.”
“One of the talents who was already there when hick Dylan came a calling, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who as you know we had heard several times in person, although unfortunately when his health and well-being were declining not when he was a young politico and hell-raising folk aspirant. You know he also, deservedly, fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.”
“Here’s the funny thing, Laura, that former role is important because we all know that behind every 'king' is the 'fixer man,' the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. New York like I said, Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen times a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads from the red-baiters and others like advertisers who ran for cover to “protect” their precious soap, toothpaste, beer, deodorant or whatever they were mass producing to sell to a hungry pent-up market. "Boston and Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s when the Club 47 and other little places started up and the guys and gals who could sing, could write songs, could recite some be-bop deep from the blackened soul poetry even had a place to show their stuff instead of to the winos, rummies, grifters and con men who hung out at the Hayes-Bickford or out on the streets could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.”
Laura interrupted to ask if that “basket” was like the buskers put in front them these days and Sam said yes. And then asked Sam about a few of the dates he took to the coffeehouses in those days, just out of curiosity she said, meaning if she had been around would he have taken her there then. He answered that question but since it is an eternally complicated and internal one I having to do with where she stood in the long Sam girlfriend pecking order (very high and leave it at that unless she reads this and then the highest) have skipped it to let him go on with the other Von Ronk story. He continued with the other funny story like this-“The second story involved his [Von Ronk's] authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment in the abstract and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the 'skinny.' Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and even more eager students complete with the appropriate footnotes. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, right.”
Laura did not answer but laughed, laughed harder as she thought about it having come from that unformed academic background and having read plenty of sterile themes turned inside out.
As Laura laugh settled Sam continued “As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer, who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who was featured on that Tom Rush documentary No Regrets we got for being members of WUMB, when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. It turned out to be Von Ronk's version which you know I still play up in the third floor attic.After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.”
Laura laughed at Sam and the intensity with which his expressed his mentioning of the fact that he liked gravelly-voiced guys for some reason. Here is her answer, “You should became when you go up to the third floor to do your “third floor folk- singer” thing and you sing Fair and Tender Ladies I hear this gravelly-voiced guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, some Old Testament Jehovah prophet come to pass judgment come that end day time.”
They both laughed.
Laura then mentioned the various times that they had seen Dave Von Ronk before he passed away, not having seen him in his prime, when that voice did sound like some old time prophet, a title he would have probably secretly enjoyed for publicly he was an adamant atheist. Sam went on, “ I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high-shelf whiskey, Chavis Regal, or something like that not so good. Remember we had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 I think. He had died a few weeks before. Remember though before that when we had seen him for what turned out to be our last time and I told you he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and we agreed his performance was subpar. But that was at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music. Yeah like he always used to say-'when the tin can bended …..and the story ended.'
As they came to the admission booth at the entrance to Crane’s Beach Sam with Carolyn Hester’s song version of Walt Whitman’s On Captain, My Captain on the CD player said “I was on my soap box long enough on the way out here. You’re turn with Carolyn Hester on the way back who you know a lot about and I know zero, okay.” Laura retorted, “Yeah you were definitely on your soap-box but yes we can talk Carolyn Hester because I am going to cover one of her songs at my next “open mic.” And so it goes.
Those urban locales were
certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that
hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and
some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena
Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some
of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from
the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and
still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips
(although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing
about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels
who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of
83.
Yeah, came barreling
like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a
different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist
Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better
be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo
un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted
westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some
fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A
tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe
Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons
of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and
maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce
down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when
your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a
go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A
different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than
lost loves and longings.
Rosalie Sorrels could
write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the
social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and
gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw
Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic
Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was
billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel
road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the
memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great
civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at
collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am
aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me
at those moments)
Rosalie Sorrels as one
would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent
death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill
(and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the
blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always
remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old
Devil Time that night-yeah, give me one more chance, one
more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and
thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP
Rosalie Sorrels
Markin comment: How could, on a day when I am reviewing a book about the building of the American transcontinental railroad, such an entry be complete without a nod to one of the "knights of the rails", the late folksinger/storyteller Utah Phillips and his classic train song, "Daddy What's A Train?".
Daddy What's A Train
Most everybody who knows me knows that I'm a train nut. In Dayton, Ohio, when I was 12 years old during the Second World War, there was a railroad that went close by Greenmont Village. A bunch of the kids and I built a fort out of old railroad ties, half dug in the ground and half above the ground. We let a bum sleep in there one night - I think he was the first railroad bum I remember meeting - came back the next day and it had been burned down. He'd evidently set it on fire or started it accidentally.
Playing around in that fort we'd see the big steam engines run by. The engineers would wave, and the parlor shack back in the crummy - that's the brakeman who stays in the caboose - would wave, too. Put your ear down on the rail and you could hear the trains coming. We'd play games on the ties and swing ourselves on the rails. Also we'd pick up a lot of coal to take home. I understand that during the Depression a lot of families kept their homes warm by going out along the right of way and picking up coal that had fallen out of the coal tenders.
This song is written for my little boy Duncan. His grandfather, Raymond P. Jensen, was a railroad man for over 40 years on the Union Pacific, working as an inspector. There's a lot of railroading in Duncan's family, but he hasn't ridden trains very much.
Daddy, What's a Train?-Utah Phillips
(sung to chorus tune)
When I was just a boy living by the track
Us kids'd gather up the coal in a great big gunny sack,
And then we'd hear the warning sound as the train pulled into view
And the engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through;
(spoken)
She blew so loud and clear
That we covered up our ears
And counted cars as high as we could go.
I can almost hear the steam
And the big old drivers scream
With a sound my little boy will never know.
I guess the times have changed and kids are different now;
Some don't even seem to know that milk comes from a cow.
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
And I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars -
The Wabash and TP
Lackawanna and IC
Nickel Plate and the good old Santa Fe;
Names out of the past
And I know they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say.
Well, we climbed into the car and drove down into town
Right up to the depot house but no one was around.
We searched the yard together for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so.
All the things I did
When I was just a kid-
How far away the memories appear,
And it's plain enough to see
They mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer.
