![]() ![]() You ask about work and you ask about pay , ![]() I’ll let you shake hands with the people you see,Īnd watch the kids dance round their big Christmas tree. I’ll take you in the door and up a high stair, Imagine you’re watching a movie, for that’s how Woody’s word camera moves in-from the opening distant shot to a close-up: Who, what, when, where, why and how-the journalist’s credo-and all in the very first verse. Where the miners are having their big Christmas ball. I’ll take you to a place called ‘Italian Hall’ To Calumet, Michigan, in the copper country But don’t take my word for it take Nobel Prize winning novelist John Steinbeck’s-who sent the following note to Woody upon hearing his Ballad of Tom Joad for the first time: “You little fucker-it took me 250 pages to tell the story of the Joads, and you did it in twelve verses.” Why, by our lights, Woody’s 1913 Massacre is barely a song-it’s more of a dramatic monologue-it’s a story, and no one tells a story better than Woody Guthrie. So there you have it my friends-the defining feature of every Folk Club you have ever been to-group singing-was sedulously ignored by the royal succession of America’s three greatest folk singers: Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Bob Dylan. He didn’t steal This Land Is Your Land, or Pastures of Plenty, or I Ain’t Got No Home (the tune that I stole for my tribute Walking By Woody’s Side-with a nice Pete Seeger sing along chorus eschewed by Woody, Jack and Bob). That’s 60% of my case right there-the other 40% being that Bob stole the tune for his own tribute to Woody. You listen to Ramblin’ Jack-if you’re lucky enough to catch one of his increasingly rare public performances. And as you may have noticed, no one sings along with Ramblin’ Jack it’s impossible-his phrasing is so unpredictable, so nuanced, and so expressive no one would dare. It’s the best performance of Ramblin’ Jack’s career a song he has come back to in virtually every live show I have seen throughout the decades, and which has grown in his interpretation through time. But Bob didn’t learn the song from listening to Woody he learned the song-like everyone else in Washington Square did in the halcyon days of the Greenwich Village folk revival of 1961 and 62-from listening to Jack, specifically Ramblin’ Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie on Reprise Records. So let me make my case: Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is the missing link between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan-i.e., the man who wrote the song, and the man who borrowed its traditional tune and song structure for his first eponymous album’s Song to Woody-his first great song. But note: I did not say most popular, or best known, or most beloved, or most honored for which we all know the answer. So if not Pete, who is America’s greatest folk singer? Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, that’s who. Oh, but Pete Seeger never recorded it? Not even on his Pete Seeger Sings Woody Guthrie album? Not even on his American Industrial Ballads album? Not even on his Dangerous Songs album? Or the other 97 plus albums he recorded for Folkways and Columbia? Of course not, little darlings just imagine Pete coming to the line “and the children were smothered on the stairs by the door,” and saying to the audience, “Sing it out! Now try a little harmony!” No, this is not a Sing Along With Pete-another of Pete’s one hundred plus albums you won’t find it on-kind of song it’s not a Weavers kind of song. Well, I’ll tell who would want to sing it: America’s greatest folk singer-that’s who. Who would want to sing it? It doesn’t even have a chorus its ten verses would strain the limited attention span of today’s Folk Clubs and Hoots. It did not fit in Rise Up Singing- Sing Out!’s definitive modern songbook of the best folk songs of our time. It would not have fit in the program I just put on for Daniel Pearl World Music Days-presented as one of their “Harmony for Humanity” concerts for Woody’s song strikes a discordant note in that theme it’s a “Disharmony for Inhumanity” song if there ever was. So let me make my case: this sad lament and angry outcry against what happened in Calumet, Michigan on Christmas Eve, 1913 is to my mind the most complete statement of what Woody Guthrie stood for as a songwriter and folk singer-the voice for those who could not speak for themselves-73 children murdered as a result of the greed and inhumanity of the copper mine owners who ran their lives. But note: I did not say most popular, or best known, or most singable, or most patriotic for which we all know the answer. Woody’s greatest song? Hmm…them’s fightin’ words. ![]()
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