“It Isn’t Nice” (live) by Judy Collins from Fifth Album [1965] 

I just finished my first semester of graduate school with a whirlwind final three weeks (I read something like 20 full books and skimmed another 10 or so, wrote 50 pages in three papers, and gave two paper presentations). Thank you for sticking around in my Tumblr absence. I’m back, at least for a few weeks.

One of the seminar papers I wrote tried to answer the question, “why the folk boom?” Why did folk music become such a popular genre between 1958 and about 1965, and not something else (say, calypso, which threatened to become massively popular in 1957)? And why then, as opposed to some other time? I won’t rehearse the paper here, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading some of the books for it. To anyone interested in this era, I highly recommend Ronald D. Cohen’s Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), an incredibly detailed chronicle of the whole revival, and Robert Cantwell’s When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), a more eloquent history of the various strands of American culture that intersected to make the folk boom what it was. 

To inspire myself in the writing process, I also listened to a lot of urban folk music from the late ’50s and early ’60s. Above all, I found a new appreciation for the songs of Malvina Reynolds.

Popular memory usually recalls the images of famous young stars like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul & Mary. But this 60-some-year-old understood the changing world as well as any of the disaffected youngsters around her. Her songwriting captured much of the spirit and many of the concrete goals of the various freedom movements (Civil Rights, New Left, peace/anti-war, Free Speech, etc.). Like members of these related movements, Reynold’s became more upset as violence against the Civil Rights Movement escalated and as the Kennedy and Johnson administrations repeatedly failed to protect Freedom Riders and protesters in the South, and her lyrics became more acerbic and more cynical.

In 1964, Reynolds wrote “It Isn’t Nice” to explain and justify the direct action tactics of the Civil Rights Movement. In her own performance, the music is jaunty and light in contrast to the serious protest lyrics. Soon after she published the song, singer Barbara Dane changed the melody a bit, added a more consistent chorus, and overall made the song a much more direct attack on establishment policies. Judy Collins then recorded it for her creatively-titled Fifth Album, released in November of 1965. This is my favorite version and the one posted above.

It wouldn’t take too many lyrical changes, I think, for this to become an OWS anthem. The song is especially effective in its attack on lack of government action in addressing grave injustices:

You were quiet just like mice,
Now you say we aren’t nice, 
And if that is Freedom’s price, 
We don’t mind.

“Ballad of Birmingham” by Jerry Moore [1967]

An Exploration of Music and Poetry, Day 14: Topical Song

Most of what I’ve posted in this playlist so far has been poetry about music, music about poetry, or some extension of those ideas. Today we look at poetry written about a real event. Since we’re dealing with the 1960s we get to look at the revival of broadsides, topical ballads published on the cheap, meant for distribution in public spaces.

Before I say anymore, you should all become acquainted with the Smithsonian anthology Best of Broadside 1962-1988:

89 songs, including some never commercially released. Compiled and annotated by Jeff Place and Ronald D. Cohen. 5-CD boxed set. It was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment. Underground—yet Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, and dozens of others first published songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Little Boxes,” and “Society’s Child,” in Broadside. The Best of Broadside features 89 songs from the Folkways collection, tapes from the Broadside magazine office, and some tracks released on other labels. The set contains a variety of performers, topics, and musical styles that tell tales spanning the 25 years of the Broadside era (1962-1988), but many of them address contemporary issues as well, since the new millennium has not see the end of warfare, nuclear threat, ethnic conflict, immigrants’ suffering, women’s unequal rights, ecological devastation, and social injustice. This is the underground music that fueled the innocent-sounding Folk Revival on the one hand and the explosions of angry rock and rap on the other. The Best of Broadside brings an era, its musicians, and its many stories to a new audience. The extensive notes feature the graphics of the original Broadside magazine and provide information on the careers of its many musicians with extensive discographies, the stories behind most of the songs as well as their full texts. They also describe the dramatic history of the magazine itself—a remarkable achievement of dedicated musicians and social activists. (Amazon product description)

“Ballad of Birmingham” does not come from that compilation, but it exemplifies this aspect of the 1960s folk scene and actually helped spark Broadside’s first major high-end publication. Here’s the story from the University of Illinois’s website on Modern American Poetry:

In 1962 [poet Dudley] Randall became interested in Boone House, a black cultural center which had been founded by Margaret Danner in Detroit. Every Sunday Randall and Danner would read their own work to audiences at Boone House. Over the years the two authors collected a group of poems which became the first major publication of Broadside Press, Poem Counterpoem (1966).

Perhaps the first of its kind, the volume contains ten poems each by Danner and Randall. The poems are alternated to form a kind of double commentary on the subjects they address in common. Replete with allusions to social and intellectual history, the verses stress nurture and growth.

In “The Ballad of Birmingham” Randall establishes racial progress as a kind of blossoming, as he recounts the incident, based on a historical event of the bombing in 1963 of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s church by white terrorists. Eight quatrains portray one girl’s life and death. (Four girls actually died in the real bombing.) When the daughter in the poem asks permission to attend a civil rights rally, the loving and fearful mother refuses to let her go. Allowed to go to church instead, the daughter dies anyway. Thus, there is no sanctuary in an evil world, Randall seems to say, and one may face horror in the street as well as in the church.

After folk singer Jerry Moore read the poem in a newspaper, he set it to music, and Randall granted him permission to publish the tune with the lyrics.

The website includes a much more detailed account of Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” (which was his very first broadside), of which I will only quote the following: 

Randall’s broadside reminds the audience of what is at stake in the struggle for civil rights—no sanctuary, no respect for innocence, the potential for violent resistance not just to social change, but even to the presence, new or continued, of blacks in community with whites. There is no such thing as staying out of the struggle in order to avoid trouble. The violence touches even this woman who would keep her family out of the danger of active political protests like the Freedom March. To read, buy, have, or give the card is to participate in the struggle she could not stay out of.

“Jacob’s Ladder (Albumesque)” by Chumbawamba [2002]

Random Music History Song of the Day

First of all… Yes, Chumbawamba has actually accomplished more in its career than just “Tubthumping.” They’ve been keeping the protest song alive for some 25 years.

Before they rewrote “Jacob’s Ladder” as a protest song directed specifically at the United States’ war in and occupation of Iraq, Chumbawamba recorded an acoustic version of the song. The acoustic version was included as a b-side of the re-written single along with the official album recording. This early version was still an anti-war protest song, but it used a different historical event as its inspiration.

Here is a good rundown from another site (I might as well not waste my own time paraphrasing the whole thing since I’m going to cite it regardless):

“‘Jacob’s Ladder’ was inspired by the drowning of 1,500+ British sailors in 1940. The band’s explanation accuses Churchill of letting them drown whilst the King of Norway was evacuated ahead of the invading Germans.

Political expediency versus class; Winston Churchill let 1591 ordinary sailors drown after their ships were sunk off the coast of Norway in WW2 by German battle cruisers. Churchill thought a rescue attempt might have alerted the Germans to the evacuation of the Norwegian royal family, so ordered ships in the area to abandon the drowning men.

So I did a few searches and came across this account in George Duncan’s Maritime Disasters of WW II:

H.M.S. GLORIOUS 
June 8, 1940 
- sunk by the German warships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau while aiding in the evacuation of British troops from Narvik in Norway. En route to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, the Glorious , commanded by Capt. D’Oyly-Hughes, encountered the German cruisers which scored direct hits on the carrier at a range of 20,000 yards putting her flight deck out of action. A total of 1,207 men, including 41 RAF ground personnel and 18 RAF and Fleet Air Arm pilots, died. There were 43 survivors. Two escort destroyers, the Acasta (Cdr.Glasford) and Ardent (Lt-Cdr.Barker) were also sunk during the attack. The Acastahad fired a torpedo at the Scharnhorst causing damage to her quarterdeck and killing 48 men. The total death toll from the three British vessels amounted to 1,519 ( Acasta 160 and Ardent 152) There were only 63 survivors but 25 of these died from exposure before being picked up two and a half days later. Only 38 men survived the sinking of the three ships (only one survivor from the Ardent, Able Seaman Rodger Hooke). One hundred miles away was the cruiser HMS Devonshirewhich picked up the garbled SOS from the Glorious but dared not repeat it. At that moment she was on a secret mission, transporting the King of Norway and his staff from Tromsó to the safety of the British Isles. The Glorious (22,200 tons) was the first aircraft carrier to be sunk by surface ships.

A 1999 Channel 4 documentary led to some questions in Parliament from Alan Beith and Tam Dalyell; evidently the SOS was not garbled at all - within 4 minutes of receiving the signal from the Glorious, the Devonshire’s speed was increased to 30 knots and all of its 8-in turret guns were manned. It was running for the UK and maintained its radio silence.” (source)

Sad but true. :/

“Kije’s Ouija” by The Free Design [1970]

Random Music History Song of the Day

The Free Design released some of the best album titles ever. Their 1967 debut album was called Kites Are Fun. Of course they are! “Kije’s Ouija” comes from their other album with a classic hippy title, 1970’s Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love.

The lyrics are a bit hard to follow (it’s a song about a Ouija board…), but I’m pretty sure it was meant as an anti-war song. Either way, check out these lyrics:

It told us that some wise old angel had prepared for us a special treat…
..that everyone who kicked a little dog would surely lose his feet.
And everyone who shook his fist in anger soon would be shaking in bed,
And every single time a curse was said
someone’s tongue would surely drop from his head.

Now many more like this the angel will send, but you could do yourself much worse.
Just push a couple buttons, let your favorite bombs completely cover over the earth.
Now the angel’s curse has come and gone, but everyone knew that.”

‘Anyone who kicked a little dog would surely lose his feet… so let your favorite bombs completely cover the earth and then see what the Ouija board angel has in store for you! Bitches.’ I guess Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love/The Ouija Board Angel will Fucking Kill You just didn’t sound as good as an album title. Too bad.

That’s pretty much how I read this song. Even if it doesn’t match the overbearingly peppy family-fun sound they have going with their harmonies. Man, I love The Free Design.