This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Good riddance, of course, though there is little doubt that his replacement will be any less destructive of the EPA’s mission. However, if you haven’t read the text of Pruit’s resignation letter, you are missing something startling – an evangelical-inflected, Nazi-sounding tribute to Trump that only seems to lack the “Dear Führer” salutation.
“No Happy Ending” for Planet as Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler Takes Over EPA
“Before everyone gets excited about Pruitt, remember we’re going to get all the same horrific policy under Andrew Wheeler, without any of the comic, attention-drawing personal corruption,” Vox environment writer David Roberts tweeted after President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he had accepted Pruitt’s resignation. “Pruitt’s departure may cost us some jokes,” added Public Citizen president Robert Weissman in a statement, “but it won’t change the Trump administration or help save the planet or Americans’ health. Next in line to run the EPA is a coal lobbyist.” Judith Enck, an Obama-era former EPA regional administrator, told Mother Jones in an interview ahead of Wheeler’s confirmation as deputy EPA administrator in April that Wheeler serving as EPA chief would be comparable to “having a tobacco lobbyist heading up the American Lung Association.” More
Real Border Security Comes From a Moral Foreign Policy
Half a century ago, Martin Luther King Jr. argued that “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” Turning to the Western Hemisphere, King said, “It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’” The time is now for such a revolution: By decisively breaking with long-standing US policy, we can ease the violence and misery south of our borders, so that people may finally lead dignified lives in stable communities throughout the Americas… A progressive vision for the hemisphere, then, must first end any US military support for repressive governments throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Second, as President Trump has blithely entertained a “military option” for Venezuela, we must stop the pursuit of interventionism and regime change against governments that Washington dislikes, and instead support peaceful negotiations. Finally, a humane hemispheric policy must also overhaul the corporate-dominated trade and investment pacts that rob nations of their economic agency. On Capitol Hill and throughout Latin America, the beginnings of that moral revolution articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. are finally emerging. More
WEAPONIZED KEYNESIANISM IN WASHINGTON
Other than shouting about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Donald Trump’s most frequently proclaimed promises on the 2016 campaign trail was the launching of a half-trillion-dollar plan to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure (employing large numbers of workers in the process). Eighteen months into his administration, no credible proposal for anything near that scale has been made. To the extent that the Trump administration has a plan at all for public investment, it involves pumping up Pentagon spending, not investing in roads, bridges, transportation, better Internet access, or other pressing needs of the civilian economy… In reality, Pentagon spending is the Trump administration’s substitute for a true infrastructure program and it’s guaranteed to deliver public investments, but neglect just about every area of greatest civilian need from roads to water treatment facilities… . The $683 billion extra that the administration proposes putting into Pentagon spending over the next 10 years pales in comparison to the trillions of dollars the American Society of Civil Engineers claims are needed to modernize U.S. infrastructure. More
TRUMP’S AMERICAN CARNAGE
Whether American institutions would be resilient enough to resist Trump was one of the questions raised by his victory. We received a bleak answer last week from the Supreme Court, which voted by 5-4 both to weaken the collective bargaining power of public unions and to uphold the Muslim travel ban. Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was a striking example of the topsy-turvy logic of Trump world, invoking the First Amendment right to free speech against the right of public unions to collect dues from non-members. Some commentators argued that the Muslim ban, an obvious case of animus against members of a religious minority, contradicted the Court’s recent decision in support of an Evangelical baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. But the upholding of the ban was consistent in spirit, if not in logic, with the Court’s decisions in favour of the strong against the weak. In its judgment, the court took the opportunity to overturn the 1944 decision that authorised the Japanese-American internment camps. Like Trump’s pardon of the black boxer Jack Johnson, the decision used the victims of an earlier injustice as cover for new injustices… Voting him out may turn out to be the easy part. Repairing the damage he has caused, and containing the domestic forces he has unleashed, will be far more difficult. More
By labeling her foreign policy platform “A Peace Economy,” Ocasio-Cortez, using a phrase popular with the peace movement, makes the financial connection without shying away from
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Charley Patton performing "Shake It And Break It"
CD Review
Charley Patton:Founder Of The Blues, Yazoo Records, 1995
Okay, so this review shows one way my reviewing choices get made. Recently I was reviewing Volume Eight of the Bob Dylan Bootleg series. One of the outstanding tracks on the CD is Dylan's tribute version of the old country blues singer Charley Patton's "High Water Everywhere (Parts 1&2)". So, naturally, I had to go back and check out Mr. Patton's version.
Oh, did I mention that along with many Dylan reviews I have lately been on a country blues tear. You know Robert Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and the like. That, my friends, is where this all comes together. You cannot mention Delta blues without mentioning the name and influence of Charley Patton. There is no question that he influenced Son House (who played with him on occasion) or that Robert Johnson sat at his feet (maybe Patton is the "devil" he sold his soul out of Highway 51 to ratchet up his blues work). Whether he, as assumed by the title here, was the founder of the blues is a question that I believe is up in the air.
Certainly looking through this compilation Patton's whinny-voiced but driven (a factor that leads me away from him as founder) version of "High Water Everywhere" makes it now totally understandably why Dylan honored Patton on that latest CD of his. Others that make the Patton "greatest hits" list are the raucous "Shake It And Break It", "Stone Pony Blues" and a fantastic "Tom Rushen Blues". Now you can see how all the folk/blues things I write about are interconnected, musically at least. There is indeed a method to my madness.
Blues Lyrics - Charley Patton High Water Everywhere (Part 1)
All rights to lyrics included on these pages belong to the artists and authors of the works.
All lyrics, photographs, soundclips and other material on this website may only be used for private study, scholarship or research.
by
Charley Patton
recording of 1929-1934
from
Charley Patton: Founder Of The Delta Blues (Yazoo L-1020)
Well, backwater done rose all around
Sumner
now,
drove me down the line
Backwater done rose at Sumner,
drove poor Charley down the line
Lord, I'll tell the world the water,
done crept through this town
Lord, the whole round country,
Lord, river has overflowed
Lord, the whole round country,
man, is overflowed
You know I can't stay here,
I'll go where it's high, boy
I would goto the hilly country,
but, they got me barred
Now, look-a here now at
Leland
river was risin' high
Look-a here boys around Leland tell me,
river was raisin' high
Boy, it's risin' over there, yeah
I'm gonna move to
Greenville
fore I leave, goodbye
Look-a here the water now, Lordy,
Levee
broke, rose most everywhere
The water at Greenville and Leland,
Lord, it done rose everywhere
Boy, you can't never stay here
I would go down to
Rosedale
but, they tell me there's water there
Now, the water now, mama,
done took Charley's town
Well, they tell me the water,
done took Charley's town
Boy, I'm goin' to
Vicksburg
Well, I'm goin' to Vicksburg,
for that high of mine
I am goin' up that water,
where lands don't never flow
Well, I'm goin' over the hill where,
water, oh don't ever flow
Boy, hit Sharkey County and everything was down in Stovall
But, that whole county was leavin',
over that
Tallahatchie
shore
Boy, went to Tallahatchie and got it over there
Lord, the water done rushed all over,
down old Jackson road
Lord, the water done raised,
over the Jackson road
Boy, it starched my clothes
I'm goin' back to the hilly country,
won't be worried no more
__________
Note: this song tells the story of the great Mississippi flood of 1927. The two-part song is long, it covers both sides of a 78 rpm. The music of part one is very similar to Willie Brown's "Future Blues" and Son House's "Jinx Blues";
Note 1: origin: from the old French word levée, act of raising, from lever to raise. An embankment for preventing flooding, or a river landing place, also, a continuous dike or ridge (as of earth) for confining the irrigation areas of land to be flooded. A levee camp therefore is a work camp for building or improving dikes to prevent rivers from flooding the land, primarily in the
Mississippi Delta
area.
Part 2
Backwater at
Blytheville
, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The man said to his women folk, "Lord, we'd better go"
The water was risin', got up in my bed
Lord, the water was rollin', got up to my bed
I thought I would take a trip, Lord, out on the big ice sled
Oh, I can hear, Lord, Lord, water upon my door,
you know what I mean, look-a here
I hear the ice, Lord, Lord, was sinkin' down,
I couldn't get no boats there, Marion City gone down
So high the water was risin' our men sinkin' down
Man, the water was risin' at places all around,
boy, they's all around
It was fifty men and children come to sink and drown
Oh, Lordy, women and grown men drown
Oh, women and children sinkin' down
Lord, have mercy
I couldn't see nobody's home and wasn't no one to be found
__________
Blues Lyrics - Charley Patton Shake It And Break It
All rights to lyrics included on these pages belong to the artists and authors of the works.
All lyrics, photographs, soundclips and other material on this website may only be used for private study, scholarship or research.
by
Charley Patton
recording of 1929-1934
from
Charley Patton: Founder Of The Delta Blues (Yazoo L-1020)
You can shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall
Throw it out the window, catch it 'fore it roll
You can shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
My
jelly, my roll
, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Everybody have a jelly roll like mine, I lives in town
I, ain't got no brown, I, an' I want it now
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
You can snatch it, you can grab it, you can break it, you can twist it,
any way that I love to get it
I, had my right mind since I, I blowed this town
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Jus' shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall
.. it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it...
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
I ain't got nobody here but me and myself
I, stay blue all the time, aw, when the sun goes down
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
You can shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall
... it out the window, catch it 'fore it fall
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch...
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
You can snatch it, you can grab it, you can break it, you can twist it,
any way that I love to get it
I, had my right mind, I, be worried sometime
'Bout a jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Just shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall
... it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
I know I been to town, I, I walked around
I, start leavin' town, I, I fool around
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Just shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall
... it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it...
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Jus' shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall
... it out the window, catch it 'fore it...
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it...
__________
Note: this song is an ode to... the jelly roll, a pastry but also, like in this case, a reference to the male genitals. The triple-dot parts are not missing lyrics, Patton just left them unspoken.
Happy, Happy Birthday Karl Marx, On The 200th Anniversary Of His Birth-Some Thoughts
A link to NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s Open Source 2018 program on the meaning of Karl Marx in the 21st century on the 200th anniversary of his birth:
http://radioopensource.org/marx-at-200/
By Seth Garth
Normally Frank Jackman would be the natural person to do his take on the name, the role, the legacy of one German revolutionary exiled to London after the revolutions of 1848 faded away, Karl Marx on the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2018. And Frank at first fought me a little on this and mentioned it to site manager Greg Green. Greg had both of us come in to his office to discuss the issue. My frame of reference and what amounted to the winning argument was that I had been Peter Paul Markin’s closest friend in high school, forever known as Scribe for obvious reasons, and so I knew the details of how Frank, Frankie Riley, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon and maybe a couple of others first heard about the name and ideas of one Karl Marx and later would act on them a little. (Some of the other guys who hung around with Scribe and the rest of us like Ricky Rizzo and Dave Whiting, both who would lay their heads down in hellhole Vietnam and wound up on the town monument and Washington black granite, Red Riley and even Frank Jackman almost lynched him when he started talking favorably about Karl Marx and the idea of red revolution in those dead ass red scare Cold War nights. All they wanted to hear about was whatever intelligence Scribe had on some girl they were interested in of which he had been plenty or what his next plan was for the “midnight creep” which I assume needs no further explanation except he planned the capers but no way would Frankie Riley or the rest of us let him lead the expeditions-hell we would still be in jail.)
Others, including Frank Jackman, have now seemingly endlessly gone over the effect Scribe had on them a little later when the turbulent 1960s we all got caught up in blew a gasket in the Summer of Love, 1967 as the culmination of what he also had been talking about for years on those lonely forlorn weekend nights when we hung around good guy Tonio’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” in the growing up Acre section of North Adamsville. What most guys did not know, or did not want to know, was that a little of what Scribe was thinking at the time was that maybe Karl Marx might be proven to be right, might have been onto something when he spoke about the working classes, us, getting a big jump ahead in the world once things turned upside down. He held those views pretty closely then, especially when he was practically red-baited into silence by those guys who were even more hung up, as was Scribe in many ways, on normal American propaganda about Russia, Communism, and Karl Marx.
Like I say a glimmer then in high school, not at all thought out like it would be more so later in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we got back to the “real” world from ‘Nam and knew we had been fucked over by our government. That the “reds” in Vietnam were poor folk, peasants, with whom we had no quarrel. But that was later. I remember one night Scribe told me that he had had to stay after school one day for Mr. Donovan, the World History teacher and football coach which tells you what he was about, when Scribe had given a surly answer about some question Mr. Donovan had asked not about Marxism but something else and Donovan had asked him if he was a “Bolshevik.” Scribe recoiled in horror he said knowing that to say yes would get him in some trouble (probably more after school time at least) and for the simple fact that he could not say truthfully whatever teen angst and alienation he was feeling was driven by that kind of understanding of the world-then.
What this confrontation did do was get Scribe looking again at his dog-eared copy of Karl Marx’s (and his co-thinker and financial “angel” Friedrich Engels) classic statement of his views The Communist Manifesto to confirm whether he was a “Marxist,” “Communist,” whatever and he came away from that re-reading knowing that he was not one of those guys, a red. That was the kind of guy Scribe was when he was confronted with something he didn’t understand. The rest of us would have said “fuck it” and let it go at that or have challenged old Donovan with a spurious “yeah, what about it.” Maybe some silly remark like “better red than dead” or “my mommy is a commie,” expressions making the rounds in that dead air time.
To finish up on this though I should say that the way Scribe got his copy of the Manifesto back when he was fourteen or fifteen and had heard that it was a cool document or something, who knows with Scribe was kind of strange. He couldn’t find the book in either the school or town libraries for the simple fact that neither had the document not wanted to have it in circulation. Yeah it was that kind of time. A young librarian suggested that he try the Government Printing Office which might have a copy if somebody in Congress (like the red-baiter par excellence Senator Joseph McCarthy) or some governmental agency had ordered it printed for whatever reason. He got the address in Washington and the GPO sent back a brochure with their publications for sale. And there it was. He ordered a copy and a few weeks alter it came in the mail. Here’s the funnier part, funnier that the government providing copies on the cheap (or maybe free I forget on that point) of such a notorious document the document had been placed on the publication list because it was part of the record for the raucous House Un-American Activities Committee meeting in San Francisco in 1960 when they were practically run out of town by protestors as the Cold War began to thaw in certain places. Of course that was a recollection later when we were deep into the Summer of Love out in that very town.
Yeah, Scribe was a piece of work and he would eventually drag some of along with him in his good days like the Summer of Love and later after Vietnam time running around with radical students in Cambridge when checking out Mark and Marxism was all the rage. Like I said old Marx has had his up and downs, has taken his beatings but some things he said were spot on. Worse, in a way, some of the stuff reads like it could have been written today. How about that.
"America, Where Are You Now...."- Steppenwolf’s The Monster-Take Three
A YouTube Film Clip Of Steppenwolf Performing Monster. Ah,
Those Were The Days
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Steppenwolf: 16 Greatest Hits, Steppenwolf, Digital Sound, 1990
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
Chorus Line From The Monster
The heavy rock band Steppenwolf (maybe acid rock is better signifying that the band started in the American dream gone awry 1960s night when the likes of the Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, The Byrds and groups like the transformed Beatles and Stones held forth, rather than in the ebb-tide 1970s when the harder sounds of groups like Aerosmith and Black Sabbath were needed to drown out the fact that we were in decisive retreat), one of many that was thrown up by the musical counter-culture of the mid to late 1960's was a cut above and apart from some of the others due to their scorching lyrics provided mainly, but not solely, by gravelly-voiced lead singer John Kay.
That musical counter-culture not only put a premium on band-written materials, as against the old Tin Pan Alley somebody wrote the lyrics, somebody else sang the song division before Bob Dylan and the Beatles made singer-songwriters fashionable) but also was a serious reaction to the vanilla-ization of rock and popular music in the earlier part of the decade that drove many of us from the AM radio dials and into “exotic” stuff like electric blues from Chicago with mad monks Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf jumping (country too from whence they all came in the great World War II to the factories migration leaving the old-timers like Son House, Skip James,John Hurt back in the woods to carry on that tradition, come to think of it) and the various strands of folk music from hard rain falling, times are changing, blowing in the wind protest fuss to rediscovery of old time traditional music from the mountains (think the original Carters) to the hollows with Hobart Smith and Buell Kazee.
Some bands played, consciously played, to the “drop out” notion popular at the times. “Drop out” of rat-race bourgeois society and it money imperative, its “white picket fence with little white house attached” visions. That the place where many of the young, the post-World War II baby-boomer young, now sadly older, had grown up and were in the process of repudiating for a grander vision of the world, the “world turned upside down” as an old time British folk tune had it (and reflecting an earlier turned upside down world around the 17th century English revolution. Drop out and create a niche somewhere (a commune maybe out away from the rat-race places which did spring up in the likes of Taos, Oregon, and the hills of old Vermont which if you care to see what happened to that old vision once the seekers got older you can go to and witness first hand these days but take your heart medicine along cause it ain’t pretty), so some physical somewhere perhaps but certainly some other mental somewhere and the music reflected that disenchantment.
That mental somewhere involved liberal use of drugs to induce, well, who knows what it induced but it felt like a new state of consciousness so make of that what you. The drugs used, in retrospect, to make you less “uptight” not a bad thing then, or today. The whole underlying premise though whether well thought out or not was that music, the music of the shamans of the youth tribe, mimicking recently learned Native American traditions was the revolution. An idea that for a short while before all hell broke loose with the criminal antics of Lyndon Johnson and one Richard M. Nixon, all hell broke loose with Tet 1968, with May 1968, with Chicago 1968, with the “days of rage,” with Altamont and with a hundred other lesser downers I subscribed to (hence the expression “generation of ’68” to signify that portion of youth always a minority that took the plunge to the “newer world.” That before those events and a draft notice made me get “religion” on the need for “in-their-face” political struggle. And every other young man and not a few young women have to decide to cooperate or seek that second road.
Musically much of that stuff was ephemeral, merely background music, and has not survived (except in lonely YouTube cyberspace). Yeah, Neal Young, the Airplane, the Doors, the Byrds still sound good but a lot of it is wha-wha music now you know Ten Years After, a lot of Rod Stewart, even the acid-etched albums by the Beatles and Stones, it is no wonder that the latter do not have any tunes from Their Satanic Majesties on their playlists).[CL1] Others, flash pan “music is the revolution,” period exclamation point, end of conversation bands assumed a few pithy lyrics would carry the day and dirty old bourgeois society would run and hide in horror leaving the field open, open for, uh, us. That music too, except for gems like The Ballad Of Easy Rider, is safely ensconced in vast cyberspace.
Steppenwolf was different, was political from the get-go taking on the deadliness of bourgeois culture, worse the chewing up of their young in unwinnable wars with no apologies or second thoughts, the pusher man, the draft resister and lots of other subjects (and a few traditional songs too about the love that got away, things like that which hadn’t, hasn’t change much whatever the new vision and dreams). Not all the lyrics worked, then or now. (See below for some that do). Not all the words are now some forty plus years later memorable. After all every song is written with some current audience in mind, and notions of immortality as the fate of most songs are displaced. Certainly some of the less political lyrics seem entirely forgettable. As does some of the heavy decibel rock sound that seems to wander at times like, as was the case more often than not, and more often that we, deep in some a then hermetic drug thrall, would have acknowledged, or worried about. But know this- when you think today about trying to escape from the rat-race of daily living then you have an enduring anthem Born To Be Wild that still stirs the young (and not so young). If Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone was one musical pillar of the youth revolt of the 1960's then Born To Be Wild was the other.
And if you needed (or need) a quick history lesson about the nature of American society in the 1960's, what it was doing to its young, where it had been and where it was heading (and seemingly still is as we seek to finish up the endless Afghan wars and the war signals for deep intervention into the Syria civil war or another war in Iraq get louder, or both are beating the war drums fiercely) then the trilogy under the title "The Monster" (the chorus which I have posted above and lyrics below) said it all.
Then there were songs like The Pusher Man a song that could be usefully used as an argument in favor of decriminalization of drugs today and get our people the hell out of jail and moving on with their lives and others then more topical songs like Draft Resister to fill out their playlist. The group did not have the staying power of others like The Rolling Stones but if you want to know, approximately, what it was like for rock groups to seriously put rock and roll and a hard political edge together give a listen to the group sometime.
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey
(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Happy Birthday Mississippi John Hurt-*Sweet and Low- The Blues of Skip James-Part Three
Heroes Of The Blues: The Very Best Of Skip James, Skip James, Shout Factory, 2003
The contents of this CD only confirm Skip's power. His great falsetto voice accompanied by guitar or piano (as a nice change up) hold forth here. Interestingly, the CD features newer arrangements of several songs from James' 1931 Paramount recording, like the well-known title track "61 Highway” (this is the most fervent rendition of several that I have heard on various CD compilations. By the way Mississippi Fred McDowell does a tanked up version of this one, as well). There are also some moodier songs for piano here like the "22-20 Blues" and "Illinois Blues”. Also featured here is the classic “I’m So Glad” that Cream turned into a rock classic. The killer on this one though is the haunting “Cherry Ball Blues”. Here is the “skinny” though on James. Like a number of blues artists you have to be in the mood and be patience. Then you don’t want to turn the damn thing off. That is the case here.
Happy Birthday Eric Andersen -Folk Music For Aging Children- The Music Of Judy Collins And Friends
CD Review
Wildflower Festival, Judy Collins, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, Arlo Guthrie, Wildflower Records, 2003
Okay, just when you thought there could not possibly be any more country folk, urban folk, suburban folk, folk rock, rock folk, semi-folk, or quasi-folk music from the folk revival of the early 1960 to review here I am again reviewing some of the stars of that time-in their dotage. Well, maybe not dotage, but we are all, including Judy Collins, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, and Arlo Guthrie, getting a little long in the tooth, and no one can dispute that hard fact. The real question is whether the artists in this compilation still have it, at least for those of us in that dwindling, graying, arthritic, prescription-needing folk audience that fills the small church basement “coffee houses” on this planet. And they do. Still have it, I mean.
That said, this little Wildflower Festival setting in 2003 provided Judy and her guests with a chance to show their stuff, new and old. Now, for those who have heard Judy Collins sing back in the day the question is why she did not challenge Joan Baez for the “queen” of folk title. She had the voice, the style, and the looks (ya, that WAS important, even then) to do so. I have been running a “Not Joan Baez” series and will deal with that question there at some other time but her work here is pretty good, especially her well-known cover of Ian Tyson’s “Someday Soon”. Eric Andersen, who I have already looked at in a “Not Bob Dylan” series hold forth on his “Blue River”. Tom Rush, ditto, on “The Remember Song”. Finally, Arlo, whom I have covered in relation to his father’s, Woody Guthrie, music “steals” the show here with his storytelling, notably the kids’ story, “Mooses Came Walking”.
Someday Soon Ian Tyson
There's a young man that I know whose age is twenty-one
Comes from down in southern Colorado
Just out of the service, he's lookin' for his fun
Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon
My parents can not stand him 'cause he rides the rodeo
My father says that he will leave me cryin'
I would follow him right down the roughest road I know
Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon
But when he comes to call, my pa ain't got a good word to say
Guess it's 'cause he's just as wild in his younger days
So blow, you old Blue Northern, blow my love to me
He's ridin' in tonight from California
He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me
Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon
When he comes to call, my pa ain't got a word to say
Guess it's 'cause he's just as wild in his younger days
So blow, you old blue northern, blow my love to me
He's ridin' in tonight from California
He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me
Real Border Security Comes From a Moral Foreign Policy
TRUMP’S AMERICAN CARNAGE
