Our Lady Of The Mountain-With Hazel Dickens In Mind    

By Zack James

Jack Callahan caught the folk minute bug when he was in high school in his hometown of Carver back in maybe 1961, 1962 he was not sure now exactly which with the elapse of almost sixty years and his memory not what it once had been. Knew it could not be before that since Jack Kennedy, of his own clan and brethren was President then so 1961 would be the earliest. Caught that bug after having heard some songs that held him in thrall over a fugitive radio station from Rhode Island, a college station, that every Sunday night would have a two hour show called Bill Marlowe’s Hootenanny where he, Bill Marlowe, would play all kinds of songs. Songs from the latest protest songs of the likes of then somewhat unknown but soon to explode onto scene as the media-ordained king of folk Bob Dylan and sullen severe Phil Ochs to old country blues, you know, Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, and above all Mississippi John Hurt who were “discovered” and feted by adoring mostly white urban college students who had a famous “king of the blues’ shoot-out one year down at the Newport Folk Festival to Bob   Wills and Milton Brown Western Swing and everything in between. A fast paced glance at a very different part of the American songbook from which he knew either from his parent’s dreary (his term) 1940s Frank Sinatra-Andrews Sisters-Inkspots material to budding rock and roll. What got to Jack, what caused him to pay attention though was the mountain music that he heard, things like East Virginia, Pretty Polly and his favorite the mournful Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies sung by Linda Lane, a now forgotten treasure of a singer from deep in the Tennessee hills somewhere whose voice can still haunt his dreams.     

Now this adhesion to folk minute was quite by accident since most Sunday nights if Jack was listening to anything it was Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour out of WNAC in Chicago where the fix was on for the electric blues and rhythm and blues that were the precursors of that rock which would be the staple of his early musical tastes (and reaction to that parent’s dreary 1940s music but that story has been told elsewhere and this is about mountain music so forward). Usually in those days something had gone awry or some ghost was in the air in radio wave land, classmate Irwin Silver the science wiz of his school tried to explain it one day but he never really caught the drift of the science behind it,   and he had caught that station and then the Rhode Island Station, WAFJ. Although he was becoming something of an aficionado of blues just then and would become something of a folk one as well his real love then was the be-bop classic rock and roll music that was the signature genre for his generation (and again for those who missed the point the bane of his parents). He never lost the love of rock or the blues but he never went all out to discover material he had never heard before like he did with mountain music. 

One summer, this was 1964 he thought, while he was in college in Boston, he had decided rather than a summer job he would head south down to mountain country, you know West Virginia, Kentucky maybe rural Virginia and see if he could find some tunes that he had not heard before. (That “no job” decision did not set well with his parents, his poor parents who both worked in the local industry, the cranberry bogs, when that staple was the town’s claim to fame so he could go to college but that is a story for another day). Now it was not strange in those days for all kinds of people, mostly college students with time on their hands, archivists, or musicians to travel down to the southern mountains and elsewhere in search of authentic American music by the “folk.” Not professional archivists like Pete Seeger’s father, Charles, or the Lomaxes, father and son, or inspired amateurs like Harry Smith from earlier times but young people looking for roots which was a great occupation of the generation that came of age in the 1960s in reaction to their parents’ generation trying might and main to favor vanilla Americanization, golden age modernization and forget the hunky, dusty, dirty immigrant pasts. (A sad admission in an immigrant country except for those indigenous peoples who ground we stand on today making no discrimination between sacred or profane land, or mocking those distinctions. Sadder today when vast tracts of people are being denied access to their sacred and profane lands down along the gringo-imposed southern American border and working the northern ones now too. But that story too is for another day.)      

A lot of the young, and that included Jack who read the book in high school, had first been tuned into Appalachia through Michael Harrington’s The Other America which prompted them to volunteer to help their poor brethren. Jack was somewhat animated by that desire to help but his real purpose was to be a gadfly who found some hidden trove of music that others had not found. In this he was following the trail started by the Lally Brothers, a local Boston folk group who were dedicated to the preservation of mountain music and having headed south had “discovered” Buell Hobart, the lonesome fiddler and had brought him north to do shows and be acclaimed as the “max daddy” of the mountain world.    

Jack had spent a couple of weeks down in Kentucky after having spent a couple of weeks striking out in West Virginia where, for a fact, most of the rural folk were either rude or suspicious of his motives when he inquired about the whereabouts of some old-time red barn musicians he had read about from outside Wheeling. Then one night, one Saturday night he found himself in Prestonsburg, down in southeast Kentucky, down in coal country where the hills and hollows extent for miles around. He had been brought to that town by a girl, a cousin of his high school friend Jimmy Jenkins who was later killed in hellhole Vietnam on his father’s side from back home in Carver. Jimmy had told Jack to look her up if he ever got to Hazard where his father had hailed from and had lived before World War II had driven him to the Marines and later to love of his mother from Carver.  

This girl, a pretty girl to boot, Nadine, had told Jack that mountain music had been played out in Hazard, that whatever legends about the coal wars and about the music had long gone from that town. She suggested that he accompany her to an old-fashioned red barn dance that was being held weekly at Fred Brown’s place on Saturday nights on the outskirts of Prestonsburg if he wanted to hear the “real deal” (Jack’s term). That night when they arrived and paid their dollar apiece jack saw a motley crew of fiddlers, guitar player, and a few of what Nadine called mountain harps.

The first half of the dance went uneventfully enough but the second half, after he had been fortified with what the locals called “white lightning,” illegal whiskey, this woman came up to the stage after being introduced although he did not for some reason remember her name at first, maybe the sting of the booze and began to play the mountain harp and sing a song, The Hills of Home, that had everybody mesmerized. She sang a few other songs that night and Jack marveled at her style. When Jack asked Nadine who that woman singer was she told him a gal from “around those parts” (her expression) Hazel Dickens and wasn’t she good. When Jack got back to Boston a few weeks later (after spending more time with friendly Nadine in that searching for mountain music) he contacted the Lally Brothers to see if they could coax her north for college audiences to hear. They did so although Hazel initially was fearful of coming north to what she thought was a crime-ridden black plague city but which turned out since she was to play at Harvard’s Memorial Hall an ivy-covered sanctuary which she would visit several times later in her career and recognize as the start of her break-out from the hills and hollows of home to a candid world.  That was Jack Callahan’s small proudly boasted contribution to keeping the mountain music tradition alive. For her part Hazel Dickens did before she dies several years ago much, much more to keep the flame burning.            

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Juliet Mitchell On Freud And Marx-"Pyschoanalysis And Feminism"- A Book Review (March 1975)

Markin comment:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
From The Pages Of Young Spartacus-Juliet Mitchell On Freud And Marx-"Pyschoanalysis And Feminism"- A Book Review (March 1975)

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM by Juliet Mitchell. New York: Random House, Pantheon Books, $8.95 hardcover, 456 pp.

A Review by Ed Clarkson

The pioneering theories of Sigmund Freud have engendered stormy controversy in scientific, literary and political circles ever since their embryonic formulation around the turn of the century. The birth of the psychoanalytic movement was attended by a split between co-workers Freud and Breuer, and dissension was frequently to beset the developing psychoanalytic school as many of Freud's collaborators and followers rejected central tenets of his theories—the role of the unconscious, the importance of sexuality and its energizer libido, and the critical significance of the Oedipus conflict in personality development.

Likewise in the communist movement heated debates have raged over the validity of Freudianism as a science of human behavior. As a consequence of the growing bureaucratic degeneration of the backward and isolated Soviet workers state, Freudian theory came under attack in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920's from both Stalinist-Bukharinist bureaucratic philistines in the party and the intelligentsia following Pavlov, whose ideas had the dual advantage of being more ostensibly materialistic and having a Russian origin—no small consideration for the proponents of ^"socialism in one country."

Marxism vs. Freudianism?

It was the embattled Trotsky who insisted against the vulgar materialists that Freudian psychoanalytic theory required attentive consideration. In a 1926 essay on culture and socialism, which is breathtaking in its brilliance, Trotsky evaluates Freud as follows:
"The school of the Viennese psychoanalyst Freud proceeds in a different way [than Pavlov]. It assumes in advance that the driving force of the most complex and delicate of psychic processes is a physiological need. In this general sense it is materialistic, if you leave aside the question whether it does not assign too big a place to the sexual factor at the expense of others, for this is already a dispute within the frontiers of materialism.

But the psychoanalyst does not approach problems of consciousness experimentally, going from the lowest phenomena to the highest, from the simple reflex to the complex reflex; instead, he attempts to take all these intermediate stages in one jump, from above downwards, from the religious myth, the lyrical poem, or the dream, straight to the physiological basis of the psyche....

"The attempt to declare psychoanalysis 'incompatible' with Marxism and simply turn one's back on Freudian-ism is too simple, or, more accurately, too simplistic. But we are in any case not obliged to adopt Freudianism. It is a working hypothesis that can produce and undoubtedly does produce deductions and conjectures that proceed along the lines of materialist psychology."

Psychological theories conflict with dialectical materialism when they attempt to demonstrate that human beings are innately incapable of organizing society in such a manner that would qualitatively advance their material conditions of existence. For instance, Robert Audrey's theory of territoriality and Konrad Lorenz' theory of aggression are counterposed to Marxism precisely because they set out to prove that human cooperation beyond the narrow limits established by class, particularly capitalist, society is impossible.

There is a historical fatalism to be found in Freud's thought, especially in his pessimistic post-WWI writings, in which Thanatos (the death wish) hovers over a self-immolating humanity. Because Freud's petty-bourgeois world view does intrude upon his effort to formulate a scientific theory .of behavior, many in the working-class movement regard Freudianism with hostility.

In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Freud declares that the possibilities • for human satisfaction and happiness are "limited from the start by our constitution," and "the natural human aversion to work gives rise to the most difficult social problems." The abolition of private property would "in no way alter the individual difference in power and influence." Commenting on a by then Stalinized Soviet Union, Freud confirms his skepticism by accepting the bureaucracy's claims of "socialist" society:

"The Russian Communists, too, hope to be able to cause human aggressiveness to disappear by guaranteeing the satisfaction of all material needs and by establishing equality in other respects among all members of the community. That, in my opinion, is an illusion. They themselves are armed to-day with the most scrupulous care and not the least important of the methods by which they keep their supporters together is hatred of everyone beyond their frontiers." -"Why War?," Collected Papers, Vol. 5

Freud and Feminism

While his views on Marxism and the Soviet Union brought Freud denunciation by the Stalinists and fellow-traveling intellectuals, His theories of femininity similarly evoked considerable antipathy from "feminists. For Freud, two themes were of "paramount importance" in analysis: "the wish for a penis in women and, in men, the struggle against passivity [toward other men]... “("Analysis Terminable and Interminable^ *° Collected Papers Vol. 5). To feminists this theory of penis envy seemed to doom women td the status of biological second-class citizenship—men in wish, but not in being.

In the context of the general anti-Marxist and anti-Freudian biases of New Left feminism, the "socialist-feminism" of Juliet Mitchell's first book, Woman's Estate (1971), appeared as a left bulge in "Movement" feminism. A quasi-Marxist and a "scientific" Freudian, Mitchell argued that Marxism was both relevant to the liberation of women (which it certainly is) and in harmony with the feminist "principle" of women" organizing separately as women (which it is not). Woman's Estate even criticized, albeit mildly, the implications of the anti-Leninist basis of New Left feminism:
"Feminist consciousness will not \// 'naturally' develop into socialism, nor should it. If we simply develop feminist consciousness (as radical feminists suggest) we will get, not political consciousness, but the equivalent of national chauvinism among Third World nations or economist!) among working-class organizations."

The penchant of American behaviorist psychologists to focus on "antisocial" behavior, recently expressed in the extreme by Skinner's apologetics for a benevolent totalitarianism, has prompted the radical petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, yesterday sympathetic to the "progressive" pragmatism of Skinner's Walden II, to search elsewhere for a psychological justification for their liberalism. Much in vogue in the feminist milieu have been the humanist psychology of Maslow, the hyper-genital theories of Reich and the "schizophrenia-is-good-for-you" ravings of Laing.

Debunking Reich and Laing

Juliet Mitchell's most recent book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, is an 1 attempt to come to terms with a declining movement which has become hardened in its anti-Marxism, anti-Freudianism and virulent bourgeois feminism. By this time, the reconciliation attempted in Woman's Estate between an eclectic Marxism, Freudianism and anti-capitalist feminism had obviously become untenable. Something had to give; it was Juliet Mitchell's "Marxism."

For those who prefer Freud to his detractors, Psychoanalysis and Feminism will prove, at least in part, an eminently satisfying work. Mitchell presents an intelligent and for the most part accurate exposition of the core elements of Freudian theory, especially the analysis of femininity. This is combined with insightful critiques of the "radical psychotherapists" Reich and Laing and of Freud's feminist critics, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Eva Figes, Germaine Greer, Shoal-Smith Firestone and Kate Millet.

Mitchell argues convincingly that most criticisms of psychoanalysis are based on a misunderstanding of an important distinction in Freudian psychology: the distinction between the psychic representation of the conflict of social reality with instinctual forces (the data of psychoanalysis) and the biological instincts themselves. Freud fully realized that he was dealing only with the former; the latter he regarded as the subject of investigation for a future, more advanced science.

Reich asserts the matter in more "basic" terms: the repression of sexual energy is bad, its "ultimate" orgasmic expression good; heterosexual genitality is natural, homosexuality unnatural; the vagina is thus the biological counterpart of the penis. Lost are Freud's insights into the inherently bisexual natural of human sexual development and the extent to which the conflict between human drives and social reality both shape (through sublimation) and distort happiness and role. For Reich, instinct is all. Similarly, where Freud analyzes both normal and abnormal behavior as manifested through the a-logical operations of the unconscious, Laing sees the delusional world of the schizophrenic as a logical response to a current conflict. For Laing, humans are simply reactive.
Although Mitchell is frequently brilliant and incisive in her defense of the "science" of psychoanalysis, she is disquieted by Freud's insistence that all understanding of behavior, in the final analysis, must be grounded on the bedrock of biology. In Mitchell's schema biological determinism has no place, and her uneasiness with its presence in Freudian theory leads her to distort precisely that area of Freudianism she is most concerned to defend—his hypotheses concerning the "psychological consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes."

Freudianism and the Oppression of Women

Generally Freud carefully distinguishes between the psychological impact of biological factors and the factors themselves. When Freud takes up the problem of the psychological development of women, however, he sidesteps this distinction.
Freud posits that the fear of castration for males is caused not merely by the sight or conception of penisless beings (women), but in addition by an actual, although perhaps implied, threat of castration. The female case is different:

"A momentous "discovery which little girls are destined to make [is that] they notice the penis of a brother or playmate, strikingly visible and of larger proportions, at once recognize it as the superior counterpart of their own small and inconspicuous organ, and from that time forward fall a victim to envy for the penis.... A little girl... makes her judgment and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows that she is without and wants to have it." (our emphasis)

— "Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes," Collected Papers, Vol. 5

For Freud, the esteem for the penis is established not socially, but phylo-genetically: "The penis (to follow Ferenczi) owes its extraordinarily high narcissistic cathexis to its organic significance for the propagation of the species" (ibid.). The penis is valorized because of its role in reproduction.

Although the clitoris is "analogous to the male organ," Freud regards the vagina as the "true female organ" (Female Sexuality). Freud thus considers women as constitutionally inferior to men.

Freud's error is a logical one, based, no doubt, on the intrusion of male chauvinist assumptions into his scientific thinking. His letters to his wife are1 adequate testimony to his susceptibility to such influences. They reek of sexism, although of the icky-poo, "women-as-the-salt-of-the-earth" variety. Mitchell's aversion to Freud's biologicisms, however, is motivated not by political opposition to their anti-feminist implications, but by the desire for an idealistic revision of psychoanalysis which could provide the long-sought feminist "answer" to Marxist dialectical materialism.

Mitchell Contra Engels
In Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Mitchell sweeps aside the self-proclaimed Marxist orientation of Woman's Estate and poses anew the, "fundamental question of the cause of women's oppression:

"The longevity of the oppression of women must be based on something more than conspiracy, something more complicated than biological handicap and more durable than economic exploitation (although in differing degrees all these may feature)."

The missing link turns out to be "culture"; specifically, patriarchal culture:
"It seems to be the case that contemporary anthropology supports Freud's contention that human society in many ways equals patriarchy rather than Engels' notion that patriarchy can be limited to strictly literate civilization."

Using the anthropological theories of academic doyen Claude Levi-Strauss, Mitchell argues that since the exchange of women by men between kinship groupings (exogamy) has characterized all human societies, all human society has been patriarchal, i.e., "fathers not men" have "determinate power." The Oedipus complex now becomes for Mitchell the internalized manifestation of the cultural tyranny represented in the incest taboo. With the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, "man finally enters into his humanity."

Mitchell realizes that kinship systems are obviously neither operative nor relevant in modern capitalist society and therefore maintains that the bourgeois nuclear family is socially redundant, merely "created to give that law [the patriarchal law] a last hearing." The struggle against the oppression of women no longer must be directed against capitalism or even the "domination of men," but must become a "struggle based on a theory of the social non-necessity at this stage of development of the laws instituted by patriarchy."

This contention that fathers have "determinate" power flies in the face of the fact that their role in anthropologically earlier (avuncular) societies was not significantly greater than the mother's. Nor is the father's son prohibited from copulating with the father's wife (the Oedipus complex as understood by Freud), although biological mother-son sexual relationships have apparently generally been taboo. The most primitive societies seldom have mechanisms for identifying either the father’s sons or his mates (i.e., the nuclear family).

Incest (the prohibition of heterosexual copulation between certain biologically related individuals) only imperfectly correlates with the more primitive forms of unilinearity (kinship determined by membership to either the mother's or the father's clan) and exogamy (marrying out of one's clan). The incest taboo as such is a more recent historical development associated with increasingly differentiated social arrangements and the rise of the monogamous family.

Completely absent from Mitchell's analysis is any sense why the "law of patriarchy" should endure. Basing his hypothesis on inadequate anthropological data (Morgan's studies), Engels wrongly inferred that a matriarchal stage preceded the development of patriarchy. But the essence of Engels' method, however, is the appreciation of the role of social relationships (the emergence of private property) in causing a qualitative perforation of the condition of women. Mitchell draws her analysis, however, from Freud's unfounded, fanciful hypothesis that in the dawn of primitive society exogamy and the incest taboo resulted from the successful alliance of sons against the sexual privileges of the all-powerful father, which resulted in the cannibalization of the father and the sharing out of his women.

Forward to the Pages of Ms.

Psychoanalysis and Feminism thus floats above any concern for the actual oppression of women. The degradation suffered by women imprisoned within the nuclear family and oppressed by capitalist society simply becomes the equivalent perforce of men exchanging women. Prostitution, social isolation, divestiture of legal rights, sole responsibility for child raising—all features of the monogamous nuclear family noticeably absent in most primitive societies —recede in importance for Juliet Mitchell. The bourgeois nuclear family is "not in itself important. V Rather, it is the kinship system, which "in our society... barely can be seen to regulate social relationships," that is the source of women's oppression, because "it is within kinship structures that women, as women, are situated"!

Mitchell has accomplished an idealist subversion of even that rudimentary Marxist understanding revealed in Woman's Estate. Now she conceptualizes culture as having its own dynamic (exactly what, remains unstated) and being transmitted through the unconscious independent of material conditions. Mitchell now recognizes "two autonomous areas: the economic mode of capitalism and the ideological mode of patriarchy."

In Woman's Estate Mitchell envisioned the revolution as the product of a coalition of oppressed groups, each raising its consciousness of its own particular oppression by a theoretical operation-bootstrap and then working to a point of solidarity. From her revised perspective, Mitchell has come to consider even a tactical unity between the women's liberation movement and the labor movement as unnecessary:

"Because patriarchy is by no means identical with capitalism the successes and strengths of the two revolutionary movements [the women's liberation movement and the working-class movement] will not follow along neatly parallel paths."

Not only are these paths not "neatly parallel," but they may in fact diverge. Mitchell readily admits that "It is perfectly possible for feminism to make more gains under social democracy than it does in the first years of socialism." Indeed, if capitalism has already rendered women's oppression redundant, then it is difficult to explain why the liberation of women could not occur under any form of capitalist government, from reformist Laborism or the popular front to fascism. In fact, the most optimum conditions could well be a fascism where there are sufficiently strong drives toward racial purity as to necessitate the challenging of the "utility" of the incest taboo.

The politics of Psychoanalysis and Feminism are a justification for "Movement” feminism at any of its-stages, from the radical, anti-capitalist; New Left period through its current trivial, careerist and venal expression. For Juliet Mitchell the battle against cultural oppression no longer need be waged in the streets; the need for a Popular Front against Patriarchy can 'be propagated with equal efficacy from the pages of MS.

From The Archives- JOIN US! Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and The Leftist Marching Band for Armistice / Veterans ! ! Day for Peace November 11, 2019

JOIN US! Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and  The Leftist Marching Band for    Armistice / Veterans
!  ! Day for Peace November 11, 2019
 
Armistice / Veterans Day Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace.  We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm  on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route  then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our  Armistice Day for Peace Event Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Veterans For Peace Chap. 9, Boston, MA                                           www.smedleyvfp.org 

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren  

Once Again On The - 75th Anniversary Of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” -

Once Again On The - 75^th Anniversary Of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” -

By Bart Webber (October 2017)

I have spent much ink this year starting almost at the beginning of the year writing about the classic black and white film Casablanca a staple at every retro-film locale including the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts where I first saw it with a “hot date” back in the late 1960s. “Hot date” in those days for those not around then or who have forgotten (shame on you) in the female department being a gal who wore short dresses (mini-skirts being a heavy fashion sea-change brought over I think by the English rock invasion which in any case replaced the severe stiff collared shirt and long flouncy, I guess that is the right word, skirt of earlier high school times) and long hair. Long hair also something of a sea-change brought not from over the ocean deeps but locally by imitation of folk-singing icon Joan Baez among the folk set which I was hung up on. (Many a young woman with less than candid straight hair had told me that she spent not a few hours “ironing” her hair to perdition to get that cool “look”)      

More important than the skirt-hair combo attached to the folk scene aficionado-hood a date who did not mind going on a cheap date (hell the theater admission was about a dollar maybe two so there was something left over for the obligatory popcorn) when I told her what film we would be seeing. (That cheap movie date acceptance usually having already having been charted by a first or second date Harvard Square coffeehouse date where for the price of two long sipped cups of coffee and a shared pastry you could sit and talk to while away the night, sometimes depending on the night accompanied by some rising folk singer working out his or her performance kinks playing for the “basket” passed through the audience.)    

Now I am talking about Casablanca but when the Brattle did a retro usually there were twelve to twenty films in the repertoire almost all of which I would have either seen in my youth with my old friend Sam Lowell, who later became a film critic for a bunch of alternative newspapers like back in the day like The Rolling Stone, or by myself on Saturday afternoon double feature days at the Strand Theater in North Adamsville where we grew up. The young woman in this Casablanca scenarios and maybe others as well somehow had asked her mother who had been there on the first run about the film and so was intrigued about this hot on-screen romance during wartime between Rick and Ilsa. I am sure the mother young and in love with some departed soldier boy ready to go to Europe or the Pacific to do battle against that age’s night-takers filled her head with all the classic expressions and all the intimate moments when the two wartime star-crossed lovers had to go their separate ways reflecting just a bit her own concerns. Maybe she couldn’t explain the twenty some years after tear in her eye when reciting the plotline to that young daughter but she must have reflected on that line “We’ll always have Paris” dovetailing with her own broody thoughts back then.    

Here’s what was really nice about that particular date and I may have owed it all to the film (and a mother’s reflections too not recognized at the time.  That movie coupled with a quick after film stop at equally cheap Harvard Square Hayes Bickford for coffee (always an iffy proposition depending on when the stuff was brewed also iffy) and some kind of pastry that had been sitting on the stainless steel dessert shelves for who knows how long got me away without having to call “Dutch treat.” (Of course going to a local coffeehouse for coffee and pastry was out of the question once the gold bars had been spent on the movie and that mandatory popcorn.) The Hayes in those days not only a waystation for winos, the homeless and friendless and con artists but a place where rising folk-singers and their hangers-on hung out on the cheap.

Got me as well another six months of very nice dates so my memories of that gorgeous film with the six million quotable and unforgettable lines from “play it again, Sam” (Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa request to Humphrey Bogart  Rick’s main entertainment provider Dooley Wilson to play the sentimental As Time Goes By) to that “We will always have Paris” (when Rick responds to Ilsa’s bewilderment that he is letting her take that last plane to Lisbon with those wicked blood-stained letters of transit provided by him to her husband Czech liberation leader Victor Laszlo so he  can continue to do his work against the night-takers running the world in those days) are still pristine.              

As we commemorate the 75^th anniversary of that premier of that film I am not the only one who is crazy for this movie since I am enclosing a link to an interview done by Terry Gross on her Fresh Air show on NPR with film historian Noah Isenberg on  the making of the classic Hollywood film in his new book, We'll Always Have Casablanca. "  Needless to say when I get my greedy little hands on that item I will be reviewing it in this space. This guy has me and even know it all Sam Lowell who knows a lot about all the characters particularly the fate of Paul Henreid l beaten six ways to Sunday with what he knows about that film. Kudos.  

http://www.npr.org/2017/10/11/557101633/75-years-later-a-look-at-the-life-legend-and-afterlife-of-casablanca

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Two- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Peter, Paul And Mary

Click on title to link to my blog entry upon the death of Mary Travers. The remarks below were originally written before her death and despite her passing they will suffice here.

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc Two: Dave Van Ronk on “He Was A Friend Of Mine” and You’se A Viper”, The Chad Mitchell Trio on “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream”, Hedy West on “500 Miles”, Ian &Sylvia on “Four Strong Winds”, Tom Paxton on “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound”, Peter, Paul And Mary on “Blowin’ In The Wind”, Bob Dylan on “Boots Of Spanish Leather”, Jesse Colin Young on “Four In The Morning”, Joan Baez on “There But For Fortune”, Judy Roderick on “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”, Bonnie Dobson on “Morning Dew”, Buffy Sainte-Marie on “Cod’ine” and Eric Von Schmidt on “ Joshua Gone Barbados”.


Peter, Paul and Mary on “Blowin’ In The Wind”. Okay, okay I will not go into that thing again about the crass commercialization of our “pure” folk music of the 1960s by those who sought wider fame than those who wanted to keep “our thing” pure as the driven snow. When the deal went down, no less an authority than Dave Van Ronk has stated that everybody, and that means everybody wanted that big time (meaning at the time Columbia Records) recording contract. And at the career level why not. But let me leave it at this- I would still rather be spinning, let's say, Mississippi John Hurt platters in some lonesome basement if I only heard Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of this early Bob Dylan anthem to "the better angels of our natures". Folk musak, pure and simple even forty some years later. We will be hearing this version in our assisted living quarters as we go “gentle into that good night”.

*OnIn Honor Of John Brown Late Of Harpers Ferry-1859- The Harpers Ferry Raid Anniversary- All Those Who Honor John Brown Are Kindred Spirits- A Guest Commentary

Click on title to link to an article from "Workers Vanguard", November 6, 2009, "From The Archives Of Marxism-The 150th Anniversary Of Harpers Ferry Raid- Honor John Brown". I need add nothing here-the title speaks for itself for readers of this space.


John Brown's Body

The tune was originally a camp-meeting hymn Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore? It evolved into this tune. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music may be by William Steffe.


John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
His soul goes marching on

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on

He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled
through and through
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew
His soul is marching on


Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

His soul is marching on
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
But his soul is marching on!


Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on

The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on

Information and lyrics from
Best Loved Songs of the American People
See Bibliography for full information.

From The Archives-What is Armistice Day? Prior to its designation by Congress in 1954 as Veterans Day, November 11 was known as Armistice Day. World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919.

What is Armistice Day?

Prior to its designation by Congress in 1954 as Veterans Day, November 11 was known as Armistice Day. World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.” In recognition of the significance of that date, in 1926 Congress resolved that “this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”

Statement of Purpose
We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will work, with others
 To increase public awareness of the costs of war;
 To restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations;
 To end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons;
 To seek justice for veterans and victims of war;
 To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.
To achieve these goals, members of Veterans For Peace pledge to use non-violent means and to maintain an organization that is both democratic and open with the understanding that all members are trusted to act in the best interests of the group for the larger purpose of world peace.
Smedley D. Butler Brigade (Ch. 9)
P.O. Box 320683
Boston, MA 02132
www.smedleyvfp.org
vfpsmedley@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/smedleyvfp/ 
Armistice (Veterans) Day For Peace
November 11, 2017
2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Samual Adams Park
Boston Massachusetts



“War is a racket.
A few profit. The Many pay.”
Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, USMC



In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

It is believed that the death of his friend and former student, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was the inspiration for the poem written by Major John McCrae, a surgeon attached to 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. Helmer was a popular young officer in the 1st Brigade who, on the morning of Sunday, May 2, 1915, left his dugout and was killed instantly by a direct hit from an 8 inch German shell in the second week of fighting during the Second Battle of Ypres. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day. In the absence of a chaplain, Major McCrae conducted a simple service at the graveside, reciting from memory some passages from the Church of England’s ‘Order of Burial of the Dead.’
The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook – what would become one of the most memorable war poems ever written.

Armistice (Veterans) Day For Peace
November 11, 2017
2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Samual Adams Park
Boston Massachusetts

PROGRAM

Leftist Marching Band/Voice Opposition Bring Us Together Music

Dan Luker, Smedley Butler, Welcome
VFP Coordinator       

Doug Stuart, Smedley Butler, VFP Opening Words-What Is Armistice Day?

Pat Scanlon, Smedley Butler, VFP David Spinney, Presente
This program is dedicated to his memory 

Paul Atwood – VFP, Marine Corps, U.S. Foreign Policy
peace activist, professor U/Mass-Boston “The Crisis On The Korean Peninsula”
                                                         
Leftist Marching Band/Voice Opposition              Musical Interlude

Ray Ajemian, Smedley Butler, VFP 100th Anniversary Of World War I-Lessons

Bob Masters–Smedley Butler, VFP, Vietnam Experiences
Vietnam Veteran, Doctor-101st Airborne

David Rothhauser, Smedley Butler VFP Jihadi Girl - poem read by Al Johnson

Webb Nichols, Smedley Butler, VFP, poetry selections
U.S. Army, Vietnam veteran 

Juston Eivers, Smedley Butler, Closing Words
VFP Secretary

Leftist Marching Band/Voice Opposition Musical Wrap-up


Many thanks to the City of Boston for use of Sam Adams Park

From The Archives -Armistice Day 2018

JOIN US! Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and The Leftist Marching Band for Armistice / Veterans ! ! Day for Peace November 11, 2019

JOIN US! Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and  The Leftist Marching Band for    Armistice / Veterans
!  ! Day for Peace November 11, 2019
 
Armistice / Veterans Day Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace.  We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm  on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route  then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our  Armistice Day for Peace Event Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Veterans For Peace Chap. 9, Boston, MA                                           www.smedleyvfp.org 

*From The Marxist Archives-Open Up The Corporate Books!!! Expropriate The Banks!!!

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's version of "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International", also known as "The Transitional Program" for the full scope of the what is necessary to replace this international capitalist system that is thwarting human progress and development, among many other sins.

Commentary

Here are some very pertinent sections of the Transitional Program developed in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and The Fourth International as a means of bridging the then current concerns of the day and the ultimate need for socialist solutions to solve the crisis of humankind. Sounds about right for today. For a look at all of the Transitional Program use the Trotsky Archive link and click to the year 1938. It is in that list about half way down.


“Business Secrets” and

Workers’ Control of Industry

Liberal capitalism, based upon competition and free trade, has completely receded into the past. Its successor, monopolistic capitalism not only does not mitigate the anarchy of the market, but on the contrary imparts to it a particularly convulsive character. The necessity of “controlling” economy, of placing state “guidance” over industry and of “planning” is today recognized – at least in words – by almost all current bourgeois and petty bourgeois tendencies, from fascist to Social Democratic. With the fascists, it is manly a question of “planned” plundering of the people for military purposes. The Social Democrats prepare to drain the ocean of anarchy with spoonfuls of bureaucratic “planning.” Engineers and professors write articles about “technocracy.” In their cowardly experiments in “regulation,” democratic governments run head-on into the invincible sabotage of big capital.

The actual relationship existing between the exploiters and the democratic “controllers” is best characterized by the fact that the gentlemen “reformers” stop short in pious trepidation before the threshold of the trusts and their business “secrets.” Here the principle of “non-interference” with business dominates. The accounts kept between the individual capitalist and society remain the secret of the capitalist: they are not the concern of society. The motivation offered for the principle of business “secrets” is ostensibly, as in the epoch of liberal capitalism, that of free competition.” In reality, the trusts keep no secrets from one another. The business secrets of the present epoch are part of a persistent plot of monopoly capitalism against the interests of society. Projects for limiting the autocracy of “economic royalists” will continue to be pathetic farces as long as private owners of the social means of production can hide from producers and consumers the machinations of exploitation, robbery and fraud. The abolition of “business secrets” is the first step toward actual control of industry.

Workers no less than capitalists have the right to know the “secrets” of the factory, of the trust, of the whole branch of industry, of the national economy as a whole. First and foremost, banks, heavy industry and centralized transport should be placed under an observation glass.

The immediate tasks of workers’ control should be to explain the debits and credits of society, beginning with individual business undertakings; to determine the actual share of the national income appropriated by individual capitalists and by the exploiters as a whole; to expose the behind-the-scenes deals and swindles of banks and trusts; finally, to reveal to all members of society that unconscionable squandering of human labor which is the result of capitalist anarchy and the naked pursuit of profits.

No office holder of the bourgeois state is in a position to carry out this work, no matter with how great authority one would wish to endow him. All the world was witness to the impotence of President Roosevelt and Premier Blum against the plottings of the “60” or “200 Families” of their respective nations. To break the resistance of the exploiters, the mass pressure of the proletariat is necessary. Only factory committees can bring about real control of production, calling in – as consultants but not as “technocrats” – specialists sincerely devoted to the people: accountants, statisticians, engineers, scientists, etc.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The struggle against unemployment is not to be considered without the calling for a broad and bold organization of public works. But public works can have a continuous and progressive significance for society, as for the unemployed themselves, only when they are made part of a general plan worked out to cover a considerable number of years. Within the framework of this plan, the workers would demand resumption, as public utilities, of work in private businesses closed as a result of the crisis. Workers’ control in such case: would be replaced by direct workers’ management.

The working out of even the most elementary economic plan – from the point of view of the exploited, not the exploiters – is impossible without workers’ control, that is, without the penetration of the workers’ eye into all open and concealed springs of capitalist economy. Committees representing individual business enterprises should meet at conference to choose corresponding committees of trusts, whole branches of industry, economic regions and finally, of national industry as a whole. Thus, workers’ control becomes a school for planned economy. On the basis of the experience of control, the proletariat will prepare itself for direct management of nationalized industry when the hour for that eventuality strikes.

To those capitalists, mainly of the lower and middle strata, who of their own accord sometimes offer to throw open their books to the workers – usually to demonstrate the necessity of lowering wages – the workers answer that they are not interested in the bookkeeping of individual bankrupts or semi-bankrupts but in the account ledgers of all exploiters as a whole. The workers cannot and do not wish to accommodate the level of their living conditions to the exigencies of individual capitalists, themselves victims of their own regime. The task is one of reorganizing the whole system of production and distribution on a more dignified and workable basis if the abolition of business secrets be a necessary condition to workers’ control, then control is the first step along the road to the socialist guidance of economy.

Expropriation of Separate Groups of Capitalists

The socialist program of expropriation, i.e., of political overthrow of the bourgeoisie and liquidation of its economic domination, should in no case during the present transitional period hinder us from advancing, when the occasion warrants, the demand for the expropriation of several key branches of industry vital for national existence or of the most parasitic group of the bourgeoisie.

Thus, in answer to the pathetic jeremiads of the gentlemen democrats anent the dictatorship of the “60 Families” of the United States or the “200 Families” of France, we counterpose the demand for the expropriation of those 60 or 200 feudalistic capitalist overlords.

In precisely the same way, we demand the expropriation of the corporations holding monopolies on war industries, railroads, the most important sources of raw materials, etc.

The difference between these demands and the muddleheaded reformist slogan of “nationalization” lies in the following: (1) we reject indemnification; (2) we warn the masses against demagogues of the People’s Front who, giving lip service to nationalization, remain in reality agents of capital; (3) we call upon the masses to rely only upon their own revolutionary strength; (4) we link up the question of expropriation with that of seizure of power by the workers and farmers.

The necessity of advancing the slogan of expropriation in the course of daily agitation in partial form, and not only in our propaganda in its more comprehensive aspects, is dictated by the fact that different branches of industry are on different levels of development, occupy a different place in the life of society, and pass through different stages of the class struggle. Only a general revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat can place the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the order of the day. The task of transitional demands is to prepare the proletariat to solve this problem.

Expropriation of the Private Banks and
State-ization of the Credit System

Imperialism means the domination of finance capital. Side by side with the trusts and syndicates, and very frequently rising above them, the banks concentrate in their hands the actual command over the economy. In their structure the banks express in a concentrated form the entire structure of modern capital: they combine tendencies of monopoly with tendencies of anarchy. They organize the miracles of technology, giant enterprises, mighty trusts; and they also organize high prices, crises and unemployment. It is impossible to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism and capitalistic anarchy – which supplement one another in their work of destruction – if the commanding posts of banks are left in the hands of predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investments and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material resources – and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources – for economic planning.

The expropriation of the banks in no case implies the expropriation of bank deposits. On the contrary, the single state bank will be able to create much more favorable conditions for the small depositors than could the private banks. In the same way, only the state bank can establish for farmers, tradesmen and small merchants conditions of favorable, that is, cheap credit. Even more important, however, is the circumstance that the entire economy – first and foremost large-scale industry and transport directed by a single financial staff, will serve the vital interests of the workers and all other toilers.

However, the state-ization of the banks will produce these favorable results only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers.

All The Liquor In Costa Ricah-With The Max Daddy Blues Guitarist Taj Majal In Mind

All The Liquor In Costa Ricah-With The Max Daddy Blues Guitarist Taj Majal In Mind

By Zack James 

Seth Garth the old time music critic for the now long gone alternative newspaper The Eye who had followed all the trends in the folk world in the old days once his friend from high school, Jack Callahan, had turned him on to the genre after having heard some mountain music coming on high via the airwaves from a fugitive radio station one summer Sunday night still was interested in what was left of that world. More importantly who was still left still standing from that rough-hewn folk minute of the early 1960s. An important part of that interest centered on who still “had it” from among those who were still standing.

That was no mere academic question but had risen quite sharply in the early part of 2002 when Seth, Jack and their then respective wives had attended a Bob Dylan concert up in Augusta Maine and had come away disappointed, no, more than disappointed, shocked that Dylan had lost whatever voice he had had and depended increasingly on his backup singers and musicians. Dylan no longer “had it.” Both agreed that they would have to be satisfied with listening to the old records, tapes, CDs, and YouTube on sullen nights when they wanted to hear what it was like when men and women played folk music, protest and meaningful existence folk music, for keeps.

That single shocking event led subsequently to an earnest attempt to attend concerts and performances of as many of the old-time folkies as they could find helter-skelter before they passed on. The pair have documented elsewhere some of those others some who have like Utah Phillips and Dave Van Ronk have subsequently passed on. But one night recently, a few months ago now, they were discussing one Taj Majal (stage name not the famous wonder of the world mansion, building, shrine, mausoleum whatever it is in India) and how they had first heard him back in the day in anticipation of seeing him in person up at the great concert hall overlooking the harbor at Rockport.     

Naturally enough if you knew Seth and Jack they disagreed on exactly where they had first seen him after Jack had hear him do a cover of the old country blues classic Corrina, Corrina on that fugitive folk program out of Rhode Island, WAFJ. Seth said it was the Club 47 over in Harvard Square in Cambridge and Jack said they had gone underground to the Unicorn over on Boylston Street in Boston. Of course those disputes never got resolved, never got final resolution. What was not disputed was that they had both been blown away by the performance of Taj and his small backup band that night. His blues mastery proved to them that someone from the younger generation was ready to keep the old time blues tradition alive, including playing the old National Steel guitar that the likes of Son House and Bukka White created such great blues classics on. The highlight that night had been The Sky Is Crying which has been covered by many others since but not equaled.     

The track record of old time folkies had been mixed as one would expect as the shocking Dylan experiences pointed out. Utah Phillips by the time they got to see him at the Club Passim in Cambridge had lost it, David Bromberg still had it for two examples. The night they were discussing and disputing the merit of Taj’s case both agreed that he probably had lost it since that rough-hewn gravelly voice of his had like Dylan’s and Willie Nelson’s taken a beating with time and many performances. Needless to say they should not have worried (although they did when old be-hatted Taj came out and immediately sat down not a good sign for prior experiences with other old time performers) since Taj was smokin’ that night. Played the old Elmore James Television Blues on the National Steel like he was about twenty years old. Did his old version of Corrina proud and his version of CC Rider as well. Yeah, Taj still had it. But if you don’t believe a couple of old folkies and don’t get a chance to see him in person out your way then grab this album Shoutin’ In Key from the old days and see what they meant. Got it.

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Three- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Arlo Guthrie

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Arlo Guthrie performing "The Motorcycle Song" from "Alice's Restaurant".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD.Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc Three: Phil Ochs on “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”, Richard &Mimi Farina on “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, John Hammond on “Drop Down Mama”, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band on “Rag Mama”, John Denver on “Bells Of Rhymney”, Gordon Lightfoot on "Early Morning Rain”, Eric Andersen on “Thirsty Boots”, Tim Hardin on “Reason To Believe”, Richie Havens on “Just Like A Woman”, Judy Collins on “Suzanne”, Tim Buckley on “Once I Was”, Tom Rush on “The Circle Game”, Taj Mahal on “Candy Man”, Loudon Wainwright III on “School Days”and Arlo Guthrie on “The Motorcycle Song”

Arlo Guthrie on “The Motorcycle Song”. Well, we started this cycle with Woody Guthrie walking, hitching, whatever, down the road with “Hard Travelin’” and we end with his talented son, a product of the tail end of the folk revival that his father did so much to energize by his work, if not his person, riding into the sunset on his motorsickle. That seems about right in the great scheme of things, except, time factor excluded, Arlo’s signature song, and a very representative song of the tail end of the folk revival, “Alice’s Restaurant” would have put really paid to our “Washington Square Memoirs”.

The Motorcycle Song
words and music by Arlo Guthrie

CHORUS:
I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorsickle
And I don't want to die
I just want to ride on my motorcy...cle

It was late last night the other day
I thought I'd go up and see Ray
So l went up and I saw Ray
There was only one thing Ray could say, was:

CHORUS

Just last week I was on my bike
I run into a friend named Mike
Run into my friend named Mike
Mike no longer has a bike. He cries:

CHORUS

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Three- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Judy Collins

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Judy Collins performing Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD.Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc Three: Phil Ochs on “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”, Richard &Mimi Farina on “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, John Hammond on “Drop Down Mama”, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band on “Rag Mama”, John Denver on “Bells Of Rhymney”, Gordon Lightfoot on "Early Morning Rain”, Eric Andersen on “Thirsty Boots”, Tim Hardin on “Reason To Believe”, Richie Havens on “Just Like A Woman”, Judy Collins on “Suzanne”, Tim Buckley on “Once I Was”, Tom Rush on “The Circle Game”, Taj Mahal on “Candy Man”, Loudon Wainwright III on “School Days”and Arlo Guthrie on “The Motorcycle Song”

Judy Collins on “Suzanne”. Okay, so now we have a legitimate ‘not Joan Baez' who made it and could today probably stand on her own against the “queen”. I don’t know what it is, maybe the blues singers Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, and Memphis Minnie effect that drove most of my female singer attention but in those days Judy Collins, with a few exceptions, did not "speak" to me either. Here is the funny thing. I like Leonard Cohen’s original version of this song better. And Leonard is nothing but an ordinary singer, if an extraordinary writer. Judy, notwithstanding my indifference, is a great singer. Once again, go figure.

"Suzanne"-Leonard Cohen

Suzanne takes you down to her place newer the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that shes half crazy
But thats why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from china
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That youve always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For youve touched her perfect body with your mind.

And jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe youll trust him
For hes touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now suzanne takes you hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.         

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part One-The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Carolyn Hester

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Carolyn Hester performing "The Praties They Grow Small".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

"Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc One; Woody Guthrie on “Hard Travelin’”, Big Bill Broonzy on “Black , Brown And White”, Jean Ritchie on “Nottamun Town”, Josh White on “One Meat Ball” Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”, Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”, The Weavers on “Wasn’t That A Time”, Glenn Yarborough on “Spanish Is A Loving Tongue”, Odetta on “I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain”, The New Lost City Ramblers on “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down”, Bob Gibson and Bob Camp on “Betty And Dupree”, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”, Peggy Seeger on “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Hoyt Axton on “Greenback Dollar” and Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”."

Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”. I will listen to anything by Carolyn Hester anywhere and at anytime and this is a fine effort. However in the year of celebrating the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth (1809) and thinking about his role in the struggle to end slavery, his assassination and Walt Whitman’s great poem in his honor “Oh Captain, My Captain” I really would have liked to hear her eerily beautiful singing of the words to that poem. Wow!


Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

O Captain! My Captain!


1

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart! 5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck, 15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

3

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Three- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-John Denver

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of John Denver performing "Bells OF Rhymney".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:


Disc Three: Phil Ochs on “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”, Richard &Mimi Farina on “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, John Hammond on “Drop Down Mama”, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band on “Rag Mama”, John Denver on “Bells Of Rhymney”, Gordon Lightfoot on "Early Morning Rain”, Eric Andersen on “Thirsty Boots”, Tim Hardin on “Reason To Believe”, Richie Havens on “Just Like A Woman”, Judy Collins on “Suzanne”, Tim Buckley on “Once I Was”, Tom Rush on “The Circle Game”, Taj Mahal on “Candy Man”, Loudon Wainwright III on “School Days”and Arlo Guthrie on “The Motorcycle Song”


John Denver on “Bells Of Rhymney”. I love Pete Seeger’s raspy old voice. I love Pete Seeger’s energy. I can even go part way with some of his politics, soft-core Stalinist that they were. What I can’t get around is the paucity of good covers of his work. That is the case here, as well. Aside from the now moribund issue of the commercialization of some songs, as here, this is the kind of song that only old Pete could do justice to. Sorry, John.

“Bells of Rhymney”

Oh What will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney
Is there hope for the future?
Say the brown bells of Merthyr
Who made the mine owner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda
And who killed the miner?
Say the grim bells of Blaina
Put the vandals in court
Say the bells of Newport
All would be well if, if, if, if
Say the green bells of Cardiff
Why so worried sisters? Why?
Sang the silver bells of Wye
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney
Oh What will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney
Is there hope for the future?
Say the brown bells of Merthyr
Who made the mine owner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda
And who killed the miner?
Say the grim bells of Blaina

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