The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind-A Female Take

The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind-A Female Take

By Leslie Dumont

[You never know how things will turn around in the media business. One day you can’t get a thing published for love or money and the next you have more offers than you can shake a stick at. I originally was a stringer, a free-lancer, on this site a number of years ago when Allan Jackson was running the show but never got past that status despite submitting a number of articles that would later be published in places like Progressive Nation (both hard copy and on-line) and Women’s Weekly. Never got past a few short reviews of folk music when Allan decided to go all out and feature the folk revival of the 1960s, long dead except for devoted aficionados like myself. That fate for my major work despite the fact that at the time I had a relationship with Josh Breslin who Allan had known ever since they met out in California in 1967 during their Summer of Love adventures. I wasn’t expecting to be given a by-line gratis but did feel my work was good enough to see the light of day as it did later. 

Recently with the changeover in management after Allan retired (there have been other rumors of a coup and such but knowing guys like Josh and Sam Lowell, who knew Allan from back in high school, involved that is boys will be boys stuff from their youthful political intrigue when every move had some such ramification) the new manager Greg Green contacted me, contacted from what I heard a number of women writers to give this site a better-rounded and more inclusive look. Finally (and maybe while he is at how about some black writers, women ones too). That contact started an avalanche of offers from some other on-line sites asking for articles mostly on folk music and books, maybe an occasional film. Some I have taken or will do so soon but I committed myself to a series of articles for Greg. Recently Sam Lowell mentioned above wrote a nostalgia article about his folk music experiences-The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind where he talked about the almost universal phenomena among college women folkies of emulating the leading straight long-haired women folk singers of the day Joan Baez, her sister Mimi, and Judy Collins. Greg when he contacted me asked as my first piece to give the women’s side of the story since he had heard from Sam who had heard it from Josh that I had a story to tell. Tell from what he quaintly called the distaff side like this was about 1960.  So here goes. Leslie Dumont]     

*******

Sam Lowell was as much a folk music junkie as I was back in the 1960s which he or somebody called the “folk minute” and strangely that seems about right since it got swamped by the British invasion and later acid-laced rock. I am a couple of years younger than him so I missed the very start when guys like Bob Dylan was working his way east to sit at Woody Guthrie’s feet (literally I think if some documentary I saw at the Orson Welles Theater out of Harvard Square on a college date about Woody and Arlo is right), Dave Von Ronk was switching from jazz combos and creaky-voiced folk song poetry session clear-outs and Joan Baez and her younger sister were walking around Harvard Square trying to get somebody, anybody to listen to their traditional folk song gigs featuring old-time Child ballads. My baptism came in 1964 but was nevertheless a big deal for me in breaking out, like a lot of us of whatever was happening at the time to make us jump out of our skins. 

I grew up in Ardsley-on-Hudson (we just called it Ardsley but that was, and is, its official name) about thirty miles from New York City and when I was in high school there, a senior, I had a boyfriend, Lenny, from town who went to NYU not far from what turned out to be one of the serious folk meccas, the Village. He would, for the eternal college boy cheap date which every guy who was into folk music blessed to high heaven and which I will give my view on soon, take me to the arch in Washington Square where every weekend budding folk singers would strut their stuff. Some good, some frankly bad who maybe knew a couple of chords and tried to work that into something mainly I think as a way to meet girls since if you looked at the obligatory guitar case “basket” it would be empty of donations. That was the cheapest of cheap dates which I didn’t care that much about because I was just thrilled to be in New York City away from stuffy Ardsley. When Lenny had some money we would move up a step he would take me to a coffeehouse for a cup of coffee, a lingering cup of coffee, and a sandwich or pastry. Occasionally when I had some money, allowance money, I would take pity on him and we would go “dutch treat” but I will go further into that social custom so more later.

Like I said what did I know about what in those days a guy was supposed to do for dating purposes since Lenny was my first serious boyfriend. I thought it was great that a college guy was interested in me, would take me to New York City (usually without telling my parents where I was going since they would have had a fit if they thought I was going  to “sin city” especially at night), and buy me a meal. I know a few of my girlfriends were jealous that I had a boyfriend in college when all they had were stupid high school guys whose idea of a date was to go down to the river and try to “feel them up.” I heard a few guys who wouldn’t give me the time of day suddenly let it be known that they were interested in me. (Probably figuring if I was with a college guy I was “easy” knowing the guys although it did not turn out like that with Lenny whom I still talk and meet occasionally when I am in Boston for a conference or some event.) It wasn’t until I was in college that I found out that guys in those days who were interested in me would spring for a real dinner in a nice place. Were supposed to do that. But that had nothing to do with folk music which I did seriously get into with Lenny and would continue to like to hear until this very day.              

Of course knowing Sam, although we hadn’t been in contact for a number of years since when I was a stringer, he had to go on and on in his article about every trend that led a certain small section of our generation to grab onto folk music as a way of showing our rebellion and, here I agree with Sam, a revulsion of what was passing for our youthful rock and roll which seemed to have run out of steam. Had to do all of that just to get to the point about how in a short while, particularly after the mainstream media of the time, Time magazine for one, dubbed Bob Dylan the king of the folk scene and long straight raven-haired Joan Baez the queen, his queen the silly bastard, young women, women who included me as well, were wearing their hair longer-and straighter. He seemed to think this was something from out of space or something when it was merely us keeping up with a fashion which women have been doing one way or another and not just for men don’t’ forget since  Eve.                

What had gotten Sam in a tizzy was an old photograph of Joan Baez, Mimi Farina (her married named then being married to hell-bent songwriter-poet Richard) and Judy Collins at Newport in I believe 1963 where he noticed the long-haired effect. The photograph graced one of the months in a New England Folk Song Society calendar. That got him wondering once again about how they were able to keep it that long or get it that straight. That is when he thought back to the whole hair-ironing experience and a story about one of his dates at the time.  

Sam also made an outlandish comment and I will quote here just to make sure I don’t fumble up what he said:        

“Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from North Adamsville High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.”

He stands in the dock condemned by his words. Stands condemned for his small part in “forcing” women into making a certain fashion statement if they wanted dates from folkie guys. Maybe it was too early although maybe it was more gentile Lenny but he never made a big issue about it, never insisted that I “do something with my hair.”  But standing in the docket with Sam is Stan Gower, a guy whom I was dating when I was in college in Boston at Boston University, and who had the same nasty attitude as Sam although he was slier about it. I had first met him at the Joy Street Café around Charles Street near Boston Common one night when they had their folk night (before every night was folk night at the place when Eric Von Schmidt put the place on the map by writing Joshua Gone Barbados which he sang and which Tom Rush went big with on the local folk radio programs) and then we had a coffee together, That night I had my hair kind of, oh I don’t remember what they called it then but something like beehive or flip or something which highlighted and enhanced my long face. I thought I looked fine. I was not then hip to the long straight hair thing and so I thought nothing of it while I noticed many of the young women, they were almost all young women in a place like that then unlike now when it is almost all older women in the occasional coffeehouse venues hiding out in church basements and a few remnant places in Harvard Square or Berkeley but I kind of let it pass without any comment.

Then one night many weeks later after we had had a couple of subsequent dates and I hadn’t seen him for a while wondering what had happened to him since I was very interested in “going out with him” he called and asked for a date saying some nonsense about being busy with school work. I startled him when he picked me up at my dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. I met Stan at the door with the mandatory long-stranded hair which frankly made my face even longer. He smiled that Stan smile that always got to me and said the real reason he didn’t call me up was because he was not sure that he liked my hair the way it was. Instead of showing him the door, I really was interested in him, I blushed like crazy. When Stan asked me a couple of minutes later why the change I did have a good comeback, did lie to him, when I declared that I could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing my idol Joan Baez (and later Mimi and Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish. He smiled that Stan smile again but I think he knew I had done it to please him.

Of course Stan then compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of asking me if I had it done at the beauty parlor or something and I looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go. Still silly schoolgirl me let that go. Little did he know then or later that just before our dates I would get the iron board out and either I or one of my roommates, proably best friend Anna, and try to starighten out as best I could my hair that would turn kinky every time I washed it. So I joined the crowd, Stan always when we were together said he loved it and after a while I did begin to look like a folkie girl (and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses that Sam mentioned his girlfriend started wearing instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched shirt things I used to wear under strict orders from my mother to essentially show no signs of having shape to tempt errant boys with).    

That recollection by Sam got me thinking about other funny ideas we had back then.  About the occasions when Lenny and  had to go “dutch treat” which I never told my high school girlfriends about or they might not have thought it was not so cool to be dating a college guy, a poor college guy. That “dutch treat” thing was thus not very popular then unlike now when it is no big deal although there were slight changes and essentially has gone the way of one breadwinner fathers in the household economy. As much as I liked Stan that “dutch treat” is what happened when we went to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue thing. Stan and I were thus by definition not on a heavy date, by definition neither supposedly had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after those first few dates and so no social stigma attached to this understanding although I was hurt having let my hair grow long with certain expectations. Folk music was our bold.  Despite my persistent BU dorm roommate rumors what with Stan hanging around all the time listening to my albums on the record player we had had never got to the serious lovers stage. A few years later I mentioned that Club Blue night to Stan, who after all that dorm hanging around and rumor stuff actually was hanging around to see my best friend roommate Anna Jacobs who was by his side that night, as we waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my companion, Jim Lawrence, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while he thought he remembered he was not sure.

He asked me, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” I had replied yes and that I too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.

As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph which jogged Sam memory their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk times (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother I was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yes, ladies, the photo is still around.           

*****Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind

*****Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Zack James (Zack short for Zachary not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Zack and be done with it) is an amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, that she would entice the English class stuck with him with through college where although he majored in Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he snuck in to his schedule. Snuck in although Zack knew practically speaking he had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he thought,  of making a career out of the literary life as a profession, would more likely wind driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town  occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work. That Political Science major winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life though. Stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard it “Saigon, long gone…."  Stuck with him after he recovered and started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child support.  And was still sticking with him now that he had time to stretch out and write longer pieces, and beat away on the word processor a few million words on this and that.  

Amateur writer meaning nothing more than that he liked to write and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the pen for his livelihood(or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American revolutionary battles to give the correct own and state) where he now lived. Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.

This “open mic” business was a familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" although they probably called them talent searches then, worked was each performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been noticed by the owner during a pervious "open mic" and asked to do a set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played, unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also ran through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.

Jack was not surprised then when Zack told him he would like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town over from Lexington. Zack told Jack that that night he was going to perform something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.

Jack knew almost automatically what Zack was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Zack ( a Vietnam veteran who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems) had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Zack were working as volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well.

Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Zack anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base (including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went inside the gates at Fort Devens.

Jack knew Zack was going to tell Frank’s story so he told Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover Zack wanted Jack there for moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared paper.  

That night Zack was already in the hall talking to the organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks, soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to Zack to let him know he was in the audience. Zack told him he was number seven on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.

This is the way Zack told the story and why Jack knew there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that night:

Hi everybody my name is Zack James and I am glad that you all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little avail.  I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some sense.   

You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came back to me recently is a story in itself.

You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about his story and how that song relates to it.   

Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy didn’t talk much about his military service but he made the anti-war soldiers who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods agreement.]

And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting. Once basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came to a head.

After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support, mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in his beliefs. That point becomes important later.

Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was determined to not got to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown friends’, some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took up  which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot then.  

Frank checked with the lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And did it in fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!”

That sign was simply but his life got a lot more complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City might be pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw him into solitary in the stockade.

For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.

Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second sex month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and some lower court decisions had by then had expanded who could be considered a C.O. beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veteran’s benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military bases in any case.                                       

So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record. So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?      

Here is what had those bloated military officers on Frank’s court-martial board seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest gallow, yeah, swing him high.

Masters Of War-Bob Dylan 

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

As We Enter The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

As We Enter The 100^th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

My name is Francis Tolliver. I come from Liverpool
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away
I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear
"He's singin' bloddy well you know", my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent. The gas cloud rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent
'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht". "Tis 'Silent Night'" says I
And in two toungues one song filled up that sky
"There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night
Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for ever more
My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same

-- John McCutcheon "Christmas in the trenches

By Alex Radley

  

Jim Anderson’s great-grandfather whom Jim just barely knew before he passed away was very proud of his military service in World War I with what he always called Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force. And for a long time, certainly as long as he lived Jim was on his knee proud too. Jim’s grandfather in his turn was proud, quietly proud not speaking much about his experiences in the Pacific war part of World War II as was common among that generation according to Jim’s father who told him very little when he questioned his father about the medals that were tucked in a family chest covered in a heavy clothe jacket. Jim’s father in his turn, also quiet about the specific of his service in Vietnam, would say that overall whatever the “damn,” his word when he mentioned that war, purpose of fighting that war was which still eluded him that he was proud of his service. But Jim remembered distinctly nights when he would hear his father being consoled by his mother when he woke up screaming with what must have been nightmares although like Jim said not much was spoken about the matter. And Jim for a long time, having no reason to doubt it, held all of this family pride in his person. As much as a person who did not serve could. Then his generation’s war, the Iraq war of 2003 came and although Jim had no inclination to join up to fight what his grandfather called “the heathens” he did have to think, or better rethink some stuff about war, and guts and glory, and about the horrible waste.              

All of this was aided by his then girlfriend, Susan, whom he called Susan of the Flowers since she had that retro-something out of the 1960s hippie look, and who was now his wife who was fervently against the Iraq war build-up and dragged him  along with her when they were students at Michigan. Peace, really pacifism, came easily to Susan since she had been brought up a Friend, a Quaker, although she was “lapsed” if you can be in such a society unlike Jim’s own Catholicism where he would make people laugh (not his parents though) by saying being lapsed was almost a sign of grace. Jim remembered the first time that she gave him a copy of Christmas in the Trenches he was shocked, great-grandfather- derived shocked that enemy soldiers, close quarter combatants  would call their own short haul “truce” in that World War I that he had been so proud of. That got Jim looking into the matter more closely especially when after all the protesting they had done (along with millions of others throughout the world) in the build-up to the Iraq War Bush II went ahead and blew the place apart for what turned out to be no reason at all. “Fake information” in today’s fevered newsprint world.        

World War I was an important watershed in the history of war because with the strategy of trench warfare on the ground killing would be done for the first time on an industrial scale (although for its day, especially at Cold Harbor, the American Civil War would give a gruesome preview of what was to come when things got out of hand. What had started out as something of a “jolly little show” quickly over by Christmas 1914 assumed by all sides including organizations like the international social democracy which had clamored for a decade or more before the guns started firing but who bowed to the nationalist fervor of their respective countries when the first shots rang out. And so Christmas in the trenches, several Christmases as it turned out. So that little soldierly truce story which  Susan would keep bringing to his attention each year when he needed an example of a small break from the madness down at the base, down where the guys fought the “damn” thing (this “damn” Jim’s).

After having completely failed to stop the Iraq war in 2003 Jim started what has now become a long if sporadic investigation of what could have made a difference, what could have stopped the madness in its tracks and that would always bring him back to those soldiers down at the base, down there in the killing fields of France. Not at the base of the Iraq war since there was very little dissension at the time in the ranks of the all-volunteer army and National Guard units sent to do the dirty work, the “walk-over.” Not the small action of the truce in in Christmas in the trenches but a little later, toward 1917 when all hell broke loose in Russia. A Russia whose armies were melting away on the Eastern Front. Melting away, and who knows to what extent before the February Revolution exposed the house of cards, with agitation from the Bolsheviks who Jim had believed in good family anti-communist from believed were the source of all evil in the world to hear his grandfather speak on the subject.   

Ideology aside, as hard as that is to dismiss in this kind of situation, the Bolsheviks had a hard and fast policy that their youth essentially would not volunteer to go in the Czar’s peasant-build Army but if drafted (dragooned really) they were to go and see what they could do in their units when and if a chance came up to break the stalemate. This was a very different policy from the individual acts of resistance, refusal to be drafted, that were epidemic during his father’s war which included many friends of Susan’s parents who were not Quakers but didn’t want to fight in an immoral war. Jim very carefully approached his father about what he thought of those draft resisters. His answer startled Jim when he said for a long time he held a very big grudge against the draft dodgers he called them but more recently he believed that they may have been right after all. Told Jim a story about a couple of guys in his unit in Pleiku who wanted the unit to refuse to go out on some half-baked mission. They quickly wound up in Long Binh Jail, LBJ, as it was called and the unit went out anyway and sustained heavy loses, got him wounded the first time. His father didn’t know what happened to those guys except he hoped they survived but even with them he said they probably were right. Maybe if a couple more guys had stuck with them something could have happened. Yes, Jim thought when he was thinking about it later, but that was music for some future. For now we have that little dust-up one Francis Tolliver Christmas.             

The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Show Support For Those Political Prisoners Inside The Walls-Give To The 32nd Holiday Appeal

The Latest From The Partisan  Defense Committee-Show Support For Those Political Prisoners Inside The Walls-Give To The 32nd Holiday Appeal   

Damn It- President Trump Pardon Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Prison!

Damn It- President Trump Pardon Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Prison! 

Statement by the Committee For International Labor Defense 


Now that the bid by Amnesty International and others nationally and internationally seeking to get former President Barack Obama to pardon Leonard Peltier have gone for nought we supporters are between a rockand a hard place. The denial notice was for very flimsy reasons despite the fact that even the prosecutor does not know who killed those two FBI agents in a firefight at Pine Ridge. Hell it could have been friendly forces who knows sometimes in a war zone, and that was exactly what that situation was, who knows. (For a current example of another war zone on Native lands check the story on what the various local,state, federal and mercenary forces brought in by the pipe line company at Standing Rock. One false move, provoked or not, would have ended in a bloodbath according to a well-respected Vietnam veteran who along with a few thousand other vets showed up to defend the lands and water and  thought he was in the Central Highlands again.) 

All we know is that Brother Peltier has spent forty some years behind bars and has a slew of medical problems which would have let Obama pardon just on compassionate grounds. He didn't. Don't expect, we almost have to laugh even saying such a thing, one Donald J.Trump, POTUS, and maybe off to jail himself to pardon Leonard Peltier before his term of office is up.         

Still Leonard Peltier along with Mumia Abu-Jamal and now Reality Leigh Winner are America's best known political prisoners and need to be supported and freed. To that end we in Boston have committed ourselves to as best we are able to continue ot keep the Peltier case in the public eye by holding  periodic vigils calling for his pardon and freedom. We call on all Leonard Peltier supporters to keep his name before the public. Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Prison     
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Latest Leaflet 

We demand freedom for Leonard Peltier!

Native American activist Leonard Peltier has spent over 40 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was one of the people convicted of killing 2 FBI agents in a shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Reservation on June 26, 1975.  The others who were convicted with him have long since been released.  Prosecutors and federal agents manufactured evidence against him (including the so-called “murder weapon”); hid proof of his innocence; presented false testimony obtained through torturous interrogation techniques; ignored court orders; and lied to the jury.

In spite of his unjust imprisonment and terrible personal situation, being old and sick and likely to die in jail, he writes every year to the participants at the National Day of Mourning, which is held by Natives in Plymouth, MA in place of Thanksgiving, offering wishes for the earth and all those present and gratitude for the support he receives.  To read some of his statements, go to UAINE.org (United American Indians of New England).  That is also a good site for info about the National Day of Mourning and the campaign against Columbus Day and in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day.

Sometimes people claim that the US does not have political prisoners, but Leonard Peltier has been in prison for a very long time and even the FBI admits that they do not know who killed those FBI agents.  If Leonard Peltier dies in prison, it will be one of the worst miscarriages of justice in this country’s long history of injustice.

For more info and to sign a petition demanding hearings on the Pine Ridge “Reign of Terror” and COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence program conducted against activists including Native groups, go to WhoIsLeonardPeltier.info.

Write to Leonard Peltier at Leonard Peltier, #89637-132, USP Coleman 1, P O Box 1033, Coleman, FL 33521.  Prisoners really appreciate mail, even from people they don’t know.  Cards and letters are always welcome.

This rally is organized by the Committee for Int’l Labor Defense, CForILD@gmail.com, InternationalLaborDefense.org.

In Harvard Square Cambridge, Ma Tuesday December 19^th 5 PM to 6 PM The Committee For International Labor Defense (labor donated)

Free Native American Leader Leonard Peltier-Free “The Voice Of the Voiceless” Mumia Abu Jamal-Free Russian Interference Whistle-Blower Reality Leigh Winner-Hands Off Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden and all our political prisoners from this year’s anti-fascist struggles.   

Holidays are tough times for political prisoners- join us to show your support from outside the wall for those inside the walls so that they know they do not stand alone.  

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Today the Committee for International Labor Defense (CILD) follows in the tradition of the International Labor Defense, established by the early Communist Party to mobilize labor and progressive-centered protest to free leftist political prisoners. An especially important tradition during the holiday season for those inside the prisons and their families.

Every political prisoner we honor today had the instinct and inner strength to rebel against the injustices which were there for all to see. They knew that if they fought those injustices in the face of governmental repression the prisons were part of the price they might have to pay for standing up for what they believed in.

The political prisoners of today, just as those in previous periods of history, are representatives of the most courageous and advanced section of the oppressed. They are individuals of particular audacity and ability who have stood out conspicuously as leaders and militants, and have thereby incurred the hatred of the oppressors.

As James Cannon one of the founders of the ILD said in The Cause That Passes Through a Prison- “The class-war prisoners are stronger than all the jails and jailers and judges. They rise triumphant over all their enemies and oppressors. Confined in prison, covered with ignominy, branded as criminals, they are not defeated. They are destined to triumph...”

This stand-out is organized by the Committee for Int’l Labor Defense, CForILD@gmail.com, InternationalLaborDefense.org.

Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Lead Belly's "Bourgeois Blues"-A Song For Our Times-Build The Resistance

Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-Lead Belly's "Bourgeois Blues"-A Song For Our Times-Build The Resistance   

A YouTube clip to give some flavor to this subject from Leadbelly who may have sang the song seventy or eighty years ago but is not that far off now-except now it is more than just black people.


Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. And those songs provide our movement with that combination entertainment/political message that is an art form that we use to draw the interested around us. Even though today those interested may be counted rather than countless and the class struggle to be whiled away is rather one-sidedly going against us at present. The bosses are using every means from firing to targeting union organizing to their paid propagandists complaining that the masses are not happy with having their plight groveled in their faces like they should be while the rich, well, while away in luxury and comfort.  

But not all life is political, or rather not all music lends itself to some kind of explicit political meaning yet speaks to, let’s say, the poor sharecropper at the juke joint on Saturday listening to the country blues, unplugged, kids at the jukebox listening to high be-bop swing, other kids listening, maybe at that same jukebox now worn with play and coins listening to some guys from some Memphis record company rocking and rolling, or adults spending some dough to hear the latest from Tin Pan Alley or the Broadway musical. And so they too while away to the various aspects of the American songbook and that rich tradition is which in honored here.   

This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up. 

These  are the lyrics-take the "n" word part as you will but that is what he wrote.

The Bourgeois Blues

Lead Belly

Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Home of the brave, land of the free
I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say "I don't want no niggers up there"
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow
Lord, it's a bourgeois town

Uhm, the…  

*The Brown Hills Of California- The Music Of Kate Wolf

The Brown Hills Of California- The Music Of Kate Wolf

CD Review

Gold In California-A Retrospective, Kate Wolf, Rhino, 1986

Well, what goes around comes around, as they say. I have spend much time this year in on this site going through a litany of roots performers, folk revivalists of the 1960s performers and more contemporary performers, folk, root or rock. I have not, as yet, uttered the name, Kate Wolf, in any previous reviews. I make that omission right here.

Kate Wolf is a name that is well known among my musical acquaintances, although frankly, before I reviewed a Utah Phillips album, "Starlight On The Rails", a few years ago I was not familiar with her work at all. And that Phillips connection, my friends, is the key to why Ms. Wolf is being reviewed here today. The imprimatur of the late Utah Phillips, an old Wobblie (IWW) singer/songwriter/storyteller and general gadabout was enough to get me to listen to her. And although I cannot say that she is at the top of my musical list she certainly, based mainly on her lyrics, has my attention.

Unlike Utah, with whom she traveled with to various folk venues when she was getting her start and who cadged her a few of his songs (or ideas for songs), she did not write many overtly political songs (except maybe for some antinuclear ones, dear to the hearts of many Californians at the time, when they were trying to shut down the nuclear power plants there in the late 1970s-early 1980s) that I know of. Mainly, as here, she wrote of love, longing for love, the misunderstandings of love, the traps and travails of love set out in, for the most part, the West, and particularly in those brown hills of California where she called home. Unfortunately, she died young so we will never know how good she really could have been, but off of this compilation of material we surely missed something. Stick outs here are “The Trumpet Vine,” Across The Great Divide,” and “Here In California”.

"Across The Great Divide"-Kate Wolf

I've been walkin' in my sleep
Countin' troubles 'stead of countin' sheep
Wher the years went I can't say
I just turned around and they've gone away

I've been siftin' through the layers
Of dusty books and faded papers
They tell a story I used to know
And it was one that happened so long ago

Chorus:
It's gone away in yesterday
Now I find myself on the mountainside
Where the rivers change direction
Across the Great Divide

Now, I heard the owl a-callin'
Softly as the night was fallin'
With a question and I replied
But he's gone across the borderline

Chorus

The finest hour that I have seen
Is the one that comes between
The edge of night and the break of day
It's when the darkness rolls away

Chorus

Support The Class-War Prisoners During The Holidays-Support The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Help Build The Resistance

Support The Class-War Prisoners During The Holidays-Support The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Help Build The Resistance  

By Josh Breslin  

My yearly comment on behalf of the Holiday Appeal

I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley) and more recently the courageous anti-fascist fighters who have been rounded up for protesting the alt-right, Nazi, KKK, white supremacist bastards.      

Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like the late Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, the Anti-fa anti-fascist street fighters to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Of course a couple of years ago  we lost Hugo Pinell, George Jackson’s comrade-in-arms from the San Quentin Six to a murderous vendetta. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. One year though, and it now bears repeating each year, after I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner the late Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven,  as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and the late wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. 

The class-war prisoners must not stand alone. 

                                                                                                

PDC    

Box 99 Canal Street Station                        

New York, N.Y. 10013

Google Partisan Defense Committee for more information and updates    

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days, Maybe More, Of ......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars-From Some People Who Know About Endless Wars

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days, Maybe More, Of  ......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars-From Some People Who Know About Endless Wars