It's Mayday, and we're celebrating International Worker's Day and the accomplishments of the labor movement--a good thing to celebrate in this season of layoffs, bankruptcies, and billion dollar bailouts. The economy looks shaky, but the weekend is here (thanks to unions) and today we're looking beyond our shores for some good music to kick it into high gear. The Cold War is over, they tell me, and since we're already trading with Vietnam and China (those commies drink a lot of Coca Cola) perhaps it's time to get off our high horse and recognize the people living on a tiny island just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Let's celebrate Mayday with some Cuban soul. Adelante!
In the 1940s, the Buena Vista Social Club was a members only club that regularly held dances in old Havana. A half century later, musician and musicologist Ry Cooder hurdled the blockade and traveled to Cuba to meet with the surviving musicians of the legendary club, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Rubén González and Eliades Ochoa. The result was a brilliant and popular album that brought international attention to Cuban music, and a worldwide tour. Enjoy the music and humanity of this fine documentary by Wim Wenders.
The Waterboys play "Fisherman's Blues" in 1986. Mike Scott, the band leader, originally from Edinburgh, moved to Ireland in the eighties and brought along ragpickers, junkmen, carnies and grifters and taught them to play a unique blend of Celtic, folk, country, and rock he had heard in a dream. Great song.
Nick Reynolds, a founding member of the Kingston Trio, died Wednesday in San Diego, California. His smooth tenor voice helped the trio popularize folk music back in the 1950s and 60s. The Kingston Trio had huge hits with traditional ballads like "Tom Dooley," as well as comical tunes like "MTA" shown in the clip above, in which Reynolds sings lead.
“Nobody could nail a harmony part like Nick,” said Bob Shane, another founding member of the group. “He could hit it immediately, exactly where it needed to be, absolutely note perfect, all on the natch.”
The trio was wildly popular, but folk purists considered them commercial, and put them down for avoiding the political music of other folkies such as The Weavers, who were tarred as un-American traitors during the McCarthy Era witch hunts of the 1950s. (Students of history, take note: the right-wing Republican cultural wars are nothing new)
Later, as if in response to the folk purists, the Kingston Trio produced a wonderful album of political folk called "Time to Think," which was a favorite around our house when we were growing up. There has always been a-- dare I say it?--"liberal" tradition in America, and these songs reflected the struggles of the common man, the working family, the downtrodden, the screwed-over, the people working in fields and mines who wouldn't have any rights at all if they didn't organize and stand up for themselves.
Don't believe these hardshell Republicans who want to revise history and claim the flag as theirs alone; the American eagle has always had a left wing, too. The only difference is, in the past people knew the difference between miners and mineowners, and they voted accordingly. They weren't so easily bamboozled by "folksy" phonies like Palin who act like the average Joe but shill for the corporate status quo. Joe six-pack? Closer to Joe McCarthy, if you ask me.
Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who played on people's fears and appealed to their patriotism while leading the witch hunts in the 1950s
Like fine port or habanero peppers, Richard Thompson isn't for everyone. The guitar boy genius of seminal British folk group Fairport Convention grew up to slay dragons with wife and vocalist Linda Thompson, and was then in turn slayed by them in a brilliantly dark solo career someone nicknamed "Tales of Gloom and Doom." The nickname stuck.
A guitar player's guitar player, deeply appreciated by a rabid few, Thompson has never enjoyed the notoriety of many less talented musicians. These clips are from a BBC documentary covering his career -- the first clip is near the beginning, covering the early days, and the second clip is playing with Fairport, and the last clip skips to the end of the doc, and covers the solo days, after the divorce, since the Londoner moved to sunny Southern California. Don't worry. Palm trees and sunny vistas didn't ruin his dark vision.
Young Richard, with Fairport Convention in 1970
If you haven't heard him before, this will be a treat. Click to hear Richard and Linda sing "When I Get to the Border."
Yes, this is just a pop song. More important things are going on. Gitmo is in the news again. The Supreme Court smacked Bush and restored habeas corpus, and struck down a key part of the Military Commissions Act. Republicans are busy avoiding the issues, and trying to trash Michelle Obama, who has more class than all of them, especially those standard issue Stepford wives. Bush met the Pope, and I swear he said "Lookin' good, yer Excellency!" What a dipstick.
And now, a pop song:
Meet Tegan and Sara. These post-folk punk identical twins look just like bookends. This song is 19. This goes out to everyone who is 19. Good luck.
We're sorry to hear this old tramp passed on. Utah Phillips was a union organizer, storyteller, anarchist, folksinger, and a hobo rider on the rails. He was a living folk hero, maybe not as big as Paul Bunyan but just a doll hair shy. Utah was a proud member of the International Workers of the World, popularly known as "the Wobblies," and he fought for better conditions for working people all his life.
Phillips was a combat vet who returned from Korea badly shaken by his experiences, and like so many returning soldiers, he had a hard time fitting back in. Utah drank and hopped freights. Drunk and destitute, he wound up in Salt Lake City, at Joe Hill House, a homeless shelter operated by anarchist Ammon Hennacy, a member of the Catholic Worker movement. It turned him around. He sobered up and started working there himself.
An avid researcher, he served a stint as an archivist for the State of Utah, and developed an understanding of the history most folks never learn in school. His folk songs and stories reflected that untold history, and laced up tales he'd heard riding the rails as a hobo. He recorded albums and sang on picket lines and in concert halls. He sang with many folks, but his longtime singing partner was Rosalie Sorrels:
"He was like an alchemist," says Sorrels, "He took the stories of working people and railroad bums and he built them into work that was influenced by writers like Thomas Wolfe, but then he gave it back, he put it in language so the people whom the songs and stories were about still had them, still owned them. He didn't believe in stealing culture from the people it was about."
Joe Hill - "Don't mourn, organize!"
Utah Phillips is gone, but don't think he's in heaven. There is no pie in the sky for this tramp. He had no place for religion, and loved to sing "The Preacher and the Slave" by organizer and songwriter Joe Hill, a fellow Wobbly who was later executed on trumped up charges by the state of Utah. The song chastises preachers, "holy rollers and humpers," who tell their congregation
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
Of course, the singer turns it around by the final verse:
If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.
Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good
Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye
So long, Utah!
Utah Phillips performs at the Strawberry Music Festival in 2007
In the 1940s, the Buena Vista Social Club was a members only club that regularly held dances in old Havana. A half century later, musician and musicologist Ry Cooder hurdled the blockade and traveled to Cuba to meet with the surviving musicians of the legendary club, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Rubén González and Eliades Ochoa. The result was a brilliant and popular album that brought international attention to Cuban music, and a worldwide tour. Enjoy the music and humanity of this fine documentary by Wim Wenders.
