Listen: Listen Mr Bilbo

Pete Seeger: Listen Mr Bilbo

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In the early part of the twentieth century, the Democratic Party was the one that welcomed racists. One such was Theodore Bilbo, Senator from Mississippi from 1935 to his death in 1947. Bilbo was one of the most important Southern racist senators that Roosevelt courted to win passage of his New Deal programs. Bilbo boasted of his membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and he promoted segregation and Jim Crow laws throughout his career. Listen Mr Bilbo was written by Robert and Adrienne Claiborne in 1946, the year of Bilbo’s last Senate campaign. Robert Claiborne performed with Pete Seeger, so that would be where Seeger learned the song. I have not been able to find a recording of the song by Robert Claiborne, if there even was one. Bilbo had by this time made himself the face of Southern racism, and of bigotry more broadly. Claiborne’s song is a reminder of how important all the people Bilbo hated were in American history.

Peter Paul and Mary: Listen Mr Bilbo

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By 1990, when Peter Paul and Mary recorded Listen Mr Bilbo, Theodore Bilbo himself was largely a forgotten figure, but the attitudes he embodied were still very much with us. So they sang the song as Listen Mr Bigot, but they kept the original title. Where Pete Seeger kept the arrangement simple, just him and his banjo, Peter Paul and Mary created a musical setting that reminds us of the cultural contributions made by minorities, especially black musicians. The song has eerie echoes in our situation today, so it may be time for someone to make a new recording of it.

Live: The Great Mandala

Peter Paul & Mary (with Richie Havens): The Great Mandala

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A live performance can certainly give you a greater appreciation of a musician’s instrumental prowess. Sometimes it allows you to capture a moment or a song that an artist would not put out in an official recording. There can be unlikely collaborations, as happens here. But only once can I recall a time when a concert caused me to completely reassess my view of a musical act. And I wasn’t even there! I saw it on TV, and I almost changed the channel. That was the Lifelines concert.

I must have first heard Peter Paul & Mary at a peace march in the 60s. These were chaotic affairs, and you couldn’t always hear the announcements of the musical acts from the stage. Add in the fact that I was eight years old. I remember that I began my lifelong habit of asking, “who was that?” at these events, but it’s hardly surprising that I didn’t always find out. So the first song I remember connecting to Peter Paul & Mary was Leaving on a Jet Plane. It was all over the radio, and it struck me as corny and cloyingly sweet. And that was how I thought of Peter Paul & Mary for many years. Certainly, this was not folk music.

In time, I met my wife. Her father was into the folk-pop groups, the Limelighters, the Kingston Trio, and so forth. I lumped Peter Paul & Mary in with these, and I still felt that this was not folk music. Folk music was made by one person with a guitar or a banjo. The folk-pop groups arose, (as I saw it), because some former folk musician sold out.

But, channel surfing one night in 1996, I came across the fund drive on my local PBS station. And there were Peter Paul & Mary. And Odetta. And Dave Van Ronk. And Ronnie Gilbert from the Weavers. By this time, I “knew” that the Weavers were the exception to my folk-pop group rule; it was impossible to believe that Pete Seeger could ever sell out.

The Lifelines concert was Peter Paul & Mary’s tribute to the folk musicians who inspired them, those who came up at the same time as they did, and those were inspired by them. And it placed them right in the middle of the folk music continuum in the United States. That combined with the quality of the performances made me realize that I had been wrong about Peter Paul & Mary all those years. I just have one request: don’t ask me to like Leaving on a Jet Plane.

In Memorium: Mary Travers

Peter Paul & Mary: Puff the Magic Dragon

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I will get to Mary Travers, but first, let me set the scene.

In the late 1940s, there was a group of folk singers called the Almanac Singers. Members included Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Their songs were overtly political, and the group was destroyed by the blacklist. Seeger then formed the Weavers. The Weavers avoided political material, and enjoyed a few hits in the early 50s, but soon they too were blacklisted, and could no longer find work. But the Weavers showed that there was a sizable audience for the ensemble folk sound. The folk revival was in full swing, and soon the airwaves were filled with pop-folk groups. The songs were apolitical, and hit followed hit.

By 1961, Greenwich Village in New York City was a center of the folk scene. Mary Travers was one of the few who actually grew up there. That year, she joined up with Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow to form Peter, Paul & Mary, and they began to play local gigs. The next year saw the release of their first album, which was an immediate success.

But Peter, Paul & Mary’s timing could have been better. The next year, the Beatles arrived in the United States, and the popularity of the pop-folk sound vanished. So how is it that Peter Paul & Mary did not? There were two reasons. Ironically, Peter, Paul & Mary stayed in the public eye by performing political material. They played at civil rights demonstrations, and then at peace marches, which is where I first heard them.

The other thing that kept them in the public eye was one song: Puff the Magic Dragon. This song became, (and still is), a classic kid’s song. The lyrics about the power and the limits of childhood imagination are certainly one reason. But the sound of these three voices are a vital ingredient, and it can’t work without Mary Travers. Of course, it can’t work without Peter Yarrow or Paul Stookey either. I find it hard to separate them.

The group would last until 1970, and then go their separate ways for solo projects. They would find that the magic that happened when they were together was essential, and they would regroup in 1978. From there on, they would reaffirm their commitment to social causes. And they would record two albums especially for children and their families, including a new recording of Puff.

One last thought. If you get a chance, catch a special on PBS called Lifelines. It shows up during fund drives. Here, Peter, Paul & Mary share the stage with some of their inspirations, some of their contemporaries, and some of the musicians they inspired. Mary Travers had lost her youthful figure by this time, but I have the strong impression watching her that she is a mother figure here. To me, hers is the strongest presence among some very strong personalities. It is a quiet strength, calmly watching over the proceedings. I don’t know if that is how it was in the group for all those years. But that is how I will think of her.

Solstice, Etc.: Light One Candle

Peter, Paul and Mary: Light One Candle

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Hanukkah, from a purely Jewish point of view, is a minor holiday. I don’t think much is made of it in Israel. But, here in the United States, its importance is inflated. Hanukkah becomes a statement of Jewish identity in the face of competition with Christmas. There has always been, it seems to me, the fear on the part of Jewish parents that their children would convert to Christianity to get more presents.

But Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary remembers the true meaning of Hanukkah in his song Light One Candle. Hanukkah celebrates the freedom to practice one’s religion in the face of adversity, and the passing on of knowledge from one generation to the next is an essential element of any Jewish holiday. The holiday also recalls God’s promise to look after His children. And, oh yes, there was also some sort of military victory. That’s enough for any holiday to have to do.

For me, the rhythm of Yarrow’s song also recalls the touching of the shammas to the other eight candles to light each in turn. So Yarrow has perfectly captured the spirit of Hanukkah in a mere three minutes. No wonder any number of Jewish musicians have covered this for Hanukkah collections.

Soundtrack Songs: Gilbert and Sullivan Edition

The term “soundtracks” can apply to works for the stage, as well as the screen. And the screen in question may be the small or the big one. But the posts this week have been dominated by works written for the movies. There is, of course, a great body of work available in movie songs, and we can only scratch the surface in one short week. But now I would like to present a pair of songs which made their first appearance on stage.

I am referring to the London stage in the late 1800s. The movies, and some of the inventions that had to precede them, had not yet made their appearance. Hit songs were not judged by the number of downloads, or the volume of record sales, or the number of plays on the radio; all of that technology was still years away. But many people had pianos in their homes, and knew how to play them. If you went to the theatre, and heard a song you liked in a show, you bought the sheet music and learned to play and sing the song. And hits were measured by the volume of sheet music sold.

One of London’s biggest hit makers was the team of W S Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. Gilbert wrote the words and Sullivan provided the music for a series of comic operettas which graced the London stage. Although Gilbert worked a lot of topical humor into his librettos, his lampoons of human nature have proven to be timeless, and his characters retain their appeal. And Sullivan’s music has withstood the test of time. Over one hundred years later, the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan are now performed worldwide. The Pirates of Penzance was adapted into a Broadway show, which was then adapted into a movie. And filmmakers still tell the story of Gilbert and Sullivan themselves; the most recent example of this was Topsy Turvy.

I could have presented, for this post, recordings of songs from the operettas themselves. But I decided that the musical style was too far afield from what we feature here, so I have chosen a pair of Gilbert and Sullivan covers. If there is enough interest in the sound of the originals, I would consider doing a post at Oliver di Place in the future.

Richard Thompson: There is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast

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Richard Thompson gives us a song from The Mikado. In this song, Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner of Titipu, must win the heart of Katisha, the Mikado’s Daughter-in-law Elect, and “an acquired taste”, in order to save his own life. It’s a long, hilarious story.

Peter Paul and Mary: I Have a Song to Sing, O

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Peter Paul and Mary chose a song from The Yeomen of the Guard. Jack Point, a strolling jester, introduces himself to the other characters and the audience with this song. Sir Arthur Sullivan always wanted to produce a serious opera, and The Yeomen of the Guard is as close as Gilbert and Sullivan ever came. In the end, Jack Point loses his love, and he reprises this song at the end in despair. This makes the song an odd choice for one of Peter Paul and Mary’s children’s albums. But they perform it beautifully.