The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The sinking of the Titanic,
The
Black Sunday
dust storm of 1935.
What do these great American disasters and tragedies have in common?
They all occurred on April 14.
Gillian Welch dubbed it "Ruination Day."
It's also the day that
Don Ho died
in 2007. But I won't go there.
There is no national holiday next Tuesday, but we can remember the victims and
the the historical consequences of all three events through songs like these:
And here are the two songs called "April 14 Part 1" and "Ruination Day Part 2"
on Gillian Welch's 2001 album Time (The Revelator). In both
there are images of Lincoln, the Titanic and Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl. She
makes direct reference to "God Moves on the Water," from the refrain of Bessie
Jones' song about the Titanic.
Tom Lehrer, satirist, math professor and high-ranking "sicknik" (at least
according to Time magazine) turns 87 tomorrow.
Known for his tinkling piano and a poisoned mind, Lehrer hasn't been active in
the music world for decades, but during his brief heyday he was one of the
musical heroes of the grim, gray '50s.
Behind his piano in a jacket, tie and horn-rimmed glasses, he looked like
the ultimate square. And yet he was singing subversive themes about nuclear
bombs, lynching, pollution, the military .. and poisoning pigeons in the park.
And unlike some of the people he lampooned in his song "Folk Song Army," he
pulled it off without sounding self-righteous.
I've enjoyed Lehrer's music for years, but I like him even more since reading
what Time magazine had written about him -- as related in an
excellent profile published last year in
BuzzFeed by editor-in-chief Ben Smith.
In July 1959, Time
featured Lehrer alongside Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as the avatars of a new
“sick” comedy, which it played as the symptom of a sick society. “What the
sickniks dispense is partly social criticism liberally laced with cyanide,
partly a Charles Addams kind of jolly ghoulishness, and partly a personal
and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world,” the magazine
wrote.
That's great company to be in, Lenny, Mort and Charles Addams too. Damn, I want
to be a sicknik!
So go read
Smith's article
and enjoy this sampler of Leher tunes below. Happy birthday, Tom!
It's probably a good thing that PETA wasn't around when Leher recorded this
one
And here's one about Los Alamos -- where Lehrer once worked for "the old AEC.".
This next one was written decades before 50 Shades of Grey,
As for the next one:
WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE DOES THIS SEND TO THE CHILDREN?
Not many singers have covered Tom Lehrer songs. But one who did was Barbara
Manning in the late 1990s. Backed by members of Calexico, she played with
Leher's melody, bringing out all the latent creepiness and wisely omitted the
first and last verse's of Leher's song, the ones that basically wink and tell
listeners the whole thing is a joke. With her wide-eyed delivery, Manning
creates something that is no longer a clever goof, but something that could be
ripped from today's headlines..
Friday, April 3, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Just 78 years ago this month, Life magazine did a three-page spread on Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly. who was well on his way to becoming one of the titans of 20th Century music.
There was a full-color picture, of the barefoot singer in overalls, sitting on grain sacks and playing guitar, his mouth wide open in song.
O.K., so the rustic image was pretty hokey. But what was really shocking about the Life article was the headline:
Lead Belly - Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel.
And just so we're clear, this was Life magazine. the epitome of mainstream American publications, not some KKK hate pamphlet.
And part of the photo spread was a black and white close-up of Lead Belly's hands playing a guitar. The caption: "These hands once killed a man."
Again, this wasn't the Police Gazette, it was Life magazine!
To say the least, Lead Belly deserved better.
I'm not going to go into his whole life story here. If you're not familiar with the man and his music, Check out the documentary Legend of Lead Belly, which will be airing on the Smithsonian channel later this month. (Or watch it right now, free, HERE)
It's sad that Lead Belly never lived to see it -- he died in 1949 at the age of 61 -- but through the years he really has gained a tremendous degree of respectability.
Like so many true avatars of American music, Lead Belly never sold many records himself. His biggest "hits' -- like "Goodnight Irene," "Midnight Special," "Rock Island Line," "Gallis Pole" (redone by Led Zeppelin as "Gallows Pole" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" (made famous by Nirvana) were all done by other singers. Musicians from Judy Garland to Nirvana have recorded Leadbelly songs.
With his 12-string guitar (and sometimes piano or even accordion) He sang sweet love songs; work songs; dirty blues; raw versions of pop songs; outlaw ballads; story songs retelling the news of the day; protest songs like "Bourgeois Blues"; cowboy famtasies and more.
Perhaps the cruelest irony was that "Goodnight Irene" became hugely popular -- the year after he died. The folk group called The Weavers was the best-known cover, but Frank Sinatra, Ernest Tubb and countless others covered it too.
Last month, Smithsonian Folkways released a five disc collection called Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection featuring five hours of music including 16 unreleased tracks. It's got most of his better-known tunes plus a bunch of obscurities. There's even a recording of a radio show in which Lead Belly starts singing along with a Bessie Smith song.
Leadbelly's most famous tunes are so much a part of our collective musical wiring, it's the less-famous ones I've been enjoying the most since the Smithsonian collection. So I'm going to embed a few of the great obscurities here.
Bob Dylan, as a horny teen, wrote a song for Brigitte Bardot. Lead Belly wrote this one for a movie sex symbol of his day.
Here's a more serious song, the story of nine Black teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Alabama. They were found guilty by (you guessed it) an all-white juries, The story of the Scottsboro Boys is widely considered an astonishing miscarriage of justice. Lead Belly thought so too. ("Stay woke," Lead Belly warned in the interview following the song)
I think this song was on the first Lead Belly record I ever heard. My high school friend Paul Songer had it on some album and it made me an instant Lead Belly fan.
