For The Late Rosalie Sorrels *In Defense Of Whimsy, Part Two- The Music Of Priscilla Herdman

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of a performance of the song, "Waltzing With Bears." In defense of whimsy, indeed!

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

CD Review

Star Dreamer, Priscilla Herdman, Alacazam Records, 1988

Every once in a while I run into a CD or DVD that, for lack of a better term, is just plain whimsical. This detour started a couple of years back with a review of film about Miss (Ms). Beatrix Potter and her artistic talent, especially of illustrations for children’s books. And, in that spirit, we will just let it go at that. The CD under review, "Star Dreamer", by singer/songwriter Priscilla Herdman, in any case fits that description. I have described her work previously in a review of her 1998 CD, “Moondreamer” and the sense of that review can fit here:

“Sometimes you find out about a singer straight up, through a record, on the radio, a concert, or…”YouTube." Sometimes the route is more circuitous. That is the case here with singer/songwriter Priscilla Herdman. I first hear her doing a duet with the old Wobblie, singer/storyteller/ folk historian Utah Phillips on his song “I Remember Loving You.” Of course, for this old folk devotee anyone that has Phillips’ imprimatur on him or her bears further investigation. That is part of the reason that I know about the work of Kate Wolf, for one.

So here we are. And what we have with this presentation are lullabies and other “soft” songs for adults and …children. Well, that is okay, too. Sometimes this is just the kind of “dreamy” music that fits those moments just before slumber time, for adults and kids alike.”

The best to do just that here are “Waltzing With Bears,” “Time To Sleep,” “The Moon,” and “The First Star Lullaby”. End of whimsy…for now.


*********

Waltzing With Bears lyrics and chords

Waltzing With Bears


I went to his room in the middle of the night

I crept to his side and I turned on the light

But to my surprise there was no one in sight

'Cause my Uncle Walter goes waltzing at night


G-CG/D- -G/G-CG/CGDG

chorus: / " /D-G-/ " /CGCG/CGDG


He goes wa-wa-wa-wa-wa waltzing with bears

Raggy bears, baggy bears, shaggy bears too

There's nothing on earth Uncle Walter won't do

So he can go waltzing wa-wa-wa waltzing

He can go waltzing, go waltzing with bears.


We bought Uncle Walter a new suit to wear

But when he came in it was covered with hair

And lately I've noticed there are several new tears

I'm sure Uncle Walter's been waltzing with bears


Chorus


We told Uncle Walter that he should be good

And do all the things we said that he should

But I know that he'd rather be off in the woods

I'm afraid that we'll lose Uncle Walter for good


Chorus


We begged & we pleaded oh please won't you stay

And managed to keep him at home for a day

But the bears all barged in and they took him away

Now he's dancing with pandas and he can't understand us

And the bears all demand at least one waltz a day


Chorus

*The Genesis Of The World's "Greatest Rock Band"- The Rolling Stones

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of The Rolling Stones Doing "Street Fighting Man".

DVD REVIEW

The Rolling Stones: Under Review, 1967-69, The Rolling Stones and various artists, 2007

Recently, in reviewing Jean Luc- Godard’s 1968 “Sympathy For The Devil”, an experimental film documentary montage that featured the creation of one of The Rolling Stone’s most well-known songs of that title noted that while I was more than happy to see The Stones creative process on that work I did not need to spend an hour and one half to do so. This had to do more with Luc-Godard’s pretensions and propaganda needs that with any problems with the creative process of The Rolling Stones. Here, in the film documentary under review, we are treated to an infinitely more noteworthy and worthwhile introduction to The Stones’ creative process at its height and their place in the cultural, or rather counter-cultural history of the 1960’s. Without the Luc-Godard hubris.

One should note the time frame of this exposition, 1967-69, that is important both for the period of Stones creative outburst and their connection with the various cultural events that defined the late 1960’s. A little time is spent by the “talking heads” British music critics, who also covered The Stones up close during this period and that drive the narrative of this film, on the early Stones and their efforts like “Satisfaction” and “Ruby Tuesday” as they attempted to compete song for song with the Beatles. However, the bulk of the time is spent discussing the latter period when The Stones went off to explore their own musical capacities. This period includes their efforts on “ Their Satanic Majesties” (an album that, while it has some historical value as acid rock, is virtually unlistenable, at least to this reviewer these days), “Between The Buttons” (a transitional album) and then on to the classic ‘Beggar’s Banquet”. “Beggar’s Banquet” is arguably the equivalent in the Stones discographic pantheon of Elvis Presley’s 1956 “Elvis” to his.

Along the way we get also get a look at the troubled relationship between the eccentric Brian Jones and the other Stones, his death spiral, and the eventual emergence of the Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership that has lasted until this day. We also get some fulsome analysis of individual songs like “Jumping Jack Flash”, the seminal “Gimme Shelter” and the above-mentioned “Sympathy For The Devil”. Various interesting arguments are made along the way for the role of music in the evolving counter-cultural/drug milieu of the time and whether and if that would be the revolution.

A lot of the argument centers on the meaning of “Street Fighting Man” as a personal statement by Jagger. We long ago learned- the hard way- that music, of itself, would not bring the revolution (here the fatal Altamont concert of 1969 kind of drives that point home) and that Mike was not going to lead, if he ever had such an intention, that revolution (“Gimme Shelter” is kind of his concession on that point). What is left then? Well, there is always that subjective question- Are The Stones the world’s greatest rock band? Pound for pound in those days I would argue that Jim Morrison and The Doors, on any given on night, could claim that title. But for the long haul, The Stones, hands down. View this well-done documentary to find out why.

"Street Fighting Man"

Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
cause summers here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
Tell me what can a poor boy do
cept for sing for a rock n roll band
cause in this sleepy l.a. town
Theres just no place for a street fighting man

A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man

Do you think the time is right for a palace revolution
Where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well then what can a poor boy
cept for sing for a rock n roll band
cause in this sleepy l.a. town
Theres just no place for a street fighting man

A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man

Well what else can a poor boy do?
Well what else can a poor boy do?
Well what else can a poor boy do?
Well what else can a poor boy do?

Hey my name is called disturbance
Ill shout and scream, Ill kill the king, Ill rail at all his servants
Well what can a poor boy do
For sing for a rock n roll band
In this sleepy l.a. town
Theres just no place for
For a street fighting man

A street fighting man
For a street fighting man
A street fighting man
For a street fighting man
A street fighting man
For a street fighting man
A street fighting man
For a street fighting man

A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man
A street fighting man


"Sympathy for The Devil"

Please allow me to introduce myself
Im a man of wealth and taste
Ive been around for a long, long year
Stole many a mans soul and faith

And I was round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around st. petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a generals rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made

I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
Im a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
cause Im in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or Ill lay your soul to waste, um yeah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down

Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!

Tell me baby, whats my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, whats my name
I tell you one time, youre to blame

Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who

Oh, yeah
Whats me name
Tell me, baby, whats my name
Tell me, sweetie, whats my name

Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Oh, yeah


Gimme Shelter
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away

It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away


"Backstreet Girl"


I don't want you to be high
I don't want you to be down
Don't want to tell you no lie
Just want you to be around

Please come right up to my ears
You will be able to hear what I say

Don't want you out in my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

Please don't be part of my life
Please keep yourself to yourself
Please don't you bother my wife
That way you won't get no hell

Don't try to ride on my horse
You're rather common and coarse anyway

Don't want you out in my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

Please don't you call me at home
Please don't come knocking at night
Please never ring on the phone
Your manners are never quite right

Please take the favors I grant
Curtsy and look nonchalant, just for me

Don't want you part of my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

*Walking Down Those Mean Teen Streets-"Street Corner" Society Then and Now

Click On Title To Link To "Rebel Without A Cause" Website.

Commentary

One never knows what subject matter will come bubbling up to the surface in this space from comments on yesterday’s amorphous memories through to today’s harsh social reality. Sometimes they merge so that I can make my usual cogent and witty comment on them. Case in point. Recently I found myself on one of my infrequent visits to a suburban shopping mall. A moderately upscale one if I can judge by the well-known national brand stores that are located there, in any case, one that seemed not different from any other of the ones that seem to dot the landscape of every outer urban area in America. That social characterization of the mall may be neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things but, perhaps, what went on there may be more common than I assume. You are entirely free to add your own observations on this one if you have had any mall experiences.

While taking care of my business there (if shopping for an appropriate gift for a special occasion is business rather than something akin to a visit to the dentist) I noticed several teenage boys about fifteen or sixteen (and possibly a couple of younger teenage girls on the periphery, it was not clear to me at that moment what their relationship to the scene was) being harassed and told unceremoniously to move on from their “hang out” benches by a couple of rent-a-cops. There was the usual back and forth "macho" talk before the boys left the area. From all appearances (which I later confirmed independently) these kids were from some kind of middle class families, were something like professional “mall rats” and had all the cultural attributes of today’s “youth nation”. You know-the right sneakers, the right technological gizmos (including the ubiquitous Sidekick) and the right tribal “language”. In short, these kids were being harassed and threatened for hanging out while being teenagers.

Needless to say there is nothing new under the sun here. It is apparently a rite of passage in post-modern bourgeois society to steamroll the young at every opportunity. Of course this little episode that I witnessed allows me to segue into a tale of my own youthful “hanging out” for a couple of years in the early 1960’s. Obviously my tale is not centered on shopping malls which were just coming, for better or worst, into vogue. No, this is a tale of hanging around street corners. Or rather, a street corner as the etiquette of the day (enforceable by fists, if the occasion warranted) set the parameters of who “hung” where. Well, for my bravos and me this spot happened to be a very popular pizza parlor at the corner of two main streets of the section of town that I grew up in. Religiously, on Friday and Saturday nights seemingly at any time of the year , for that couple of years, we could be seen in or just out in front of that establishment “holding up the wall” by the automobile traffic going by. And just as religiously, the store owner or someone else would, on occasion, call the police to have us removed. Sometimes, just to keep in shape, the police would just do it on their own authority. And our offense- hanging out while being teenagers. Sound familiar?

The upshot of all this is that my boyos and I got something of an undeserved reputation for being “hard guys”. Oh sure, a couple of the guys wore the then common footwear for tough guys - big black engineer boots complete with silver buckets- that the ‘real’ motorcycle gang types wore. And we certainly affected a James Dean/Marlon Brando existential air about ourselves, without knowing what the hell it was all about. And, sorry to say, a couple of the guys later turned in some very wrong directions. However, in the main, we were just asserting, as of right, all the approved outward bravado of 1950’s alienated white working class youth.

A funny sidebar to our ‘reputation’ was that a Boston area graduate sociology student who was doing research on “street corner” youth society heard about us and interviewed us. And we were more than willing to comply with our ‘stories’, maybe too willingly. Now, for those who are unfamiliar with the times or with a film like "Rebel Without A Cause” starring the above-mentioned James Dean as the consummate alienated middle class youth, not only was mainstream society concerned about the “red menace” but also about this disturbing drift of that era’s “youth culture” toward nihilism.

At the working class level (and below) that translated into a concern about juvenile delinquency, especially the fascination with small-time crime, fast cars, booze, and ‘babes’. Actually, that too sounds familiar, right? So we probably piled it on for our very proper middle class professor. She later sent us a copy of her paper. I am a lot more jaded by such things now and nonplussed by the methodologies used to argue academic theories but I remember reading her thesis ( Ya, I liked to read that kind of stuff even then.) and scratching my head in disbelief about her narrative. Something, as I would later discover from reading, out of Nelson Algren. A vivid imagination is not confined to the literary types. Nothing new there either, right?

But let’s get to the real point of my entire ‘thesis’. What were we, young unattached teenage boys, doing "hanging out” at that corner with all that traffic flowing by? Well, for one thing when we went inside the joint the pizza was great-and cheap. For another it had a great jukebox where one could hear all the hits of those days, as long as the nickels held out. But who is fooling who here. We were standing there looking at (and for) girls going by. Are you shocked? And to bring this little tale to an end I’ll come forward to today again. I mentioned, rather obliquely, in describing the recent scene that I witnessed the presence of a couple of teenage girls on the periphery. Well, what do you think those teenage boys were doing “hanging out” at the mall? Hello.

*A Walk Down Dream Street, Circa 1964

The is a response to another question (edited somewhat for local and personal references)asked by my Class of 1964 committee. Apparently this is walk down memory lane week. Not everything is political in this world, but a lot turns on that fact.

Today’s Question: When you were a student did you ever sit on the main entrance steps of our old high school and dream of your future?

Obviously not every question I intend to answer is as whimsical as the first one about the comparative merits of the Rolling Stones and Beatles. Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives. I will confess here, as this seemingly is a confessional age, that my returning to the High School Class of 1964 fold did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of years ago my mother, passed away. For a good part of her life she lived a stone’s throw from the school. You could see the back of the school from my grandmother’s house. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to the old home town. To my roots and hers. As part of that experience I passed by the old high school. That triggered some memories that motivate today’s question.

If my memory is correct I had not be in my old home town for at least the pass 25 years and so I was a little surprised that the main steps of the high school were no longer there. You remember the steps, right? They led to the then second floor and were flanked by, I think, a couple of lions or some gargoyles. I can remember spending many a summer night during high school, along with my old pal Billy, the great track man and cross country runner who I am trying to reach, sitting on those steps talking about our futures. Now for this question I am only using the steps as a metaphor, so to speak. Your probably have your own ‘steps’ where you thrashed out your dreams. How did they work out?

A lot of what Billy and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons. (Remember those were the days when future expectations were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every athlete does. Billy went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, at best, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.

We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember the content of Billy’s but mine went something like this. I wanted to be an educator (however vaguely defined at the time) and I also wanted to fulfill my grandfather’s dream for me of becoming a lawyer. Well, come hell or high water and through a very circuitous route I managed to do both of those. Put a check next to those dreams. I also had dreams for social justice, for working people to get a fair shake in this sorry old world. That, my friends, has, sorry to say, not turned out as expected. But enough. I will finish with this entry with an old expression from a Bob Dylan lyric. “I ‘ll let you be in my dream, if I can be in your dream.” Fair enough?