Apparently, Saturday was National Clash Day, as well as National Kazoo Day. While I suspect that I was supposed to wear clothes that do not match, which I often do anyway, I am celebrating National Clash Day with one of the bands that helped keep my faith in rock music through the 1980s before the group broke up in 1986. So, celebrate National Clash Day with one of my favorite songs from The Clash, “Train in Vain” from London Calling (1979).
Fortunately, there are no kazoos in the song.
Should there be a National Clash Day in honor of the band? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Peter Paul & Mary signed their first recording contract on January 29, 1962. Thus began a recording career with Warner Brothers that would help bring folk music and Bod Dylan’s music to a broad audience.
That broader audience included me when I was a kid. We did not have Bob Dylan albums in my house when I was a kid, but we did have Peter Paul & Mary’s second album, Moving (1963), which included “Puff the Magic Dragon.” The trio and “Puff” eventually led me to Dylan and other folk singers. They even led me to John Denver with their cover of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.”
Although today I only have a couple of Peter Paul & Mary albums, I have a huge collection of Dylan and other folk songs that they helped me discover. So, while some hear them and think of a group less authentic than some other folk singers because of their smooth harmonies and the way the group formed, I hear the joy in their music. And I appreciate the role they played in my music education.
“Puff the Magic Dragon”
The story of “Puff the Magic Dragon” began in 1958 when Leonard Lipton, who was a Cornell student, found inspiration in Ogden Nash’s “The Tale of Custard the Dragon.” Lipton used that inspiration to write his own poem about a dragon.
Lipton showed his poem to another Cornell student, Peter Yarrow, who added music and additional lyrics. Not much later, Manager Albert Grossman, looking to capitalize on the growing folk music trend, put together what he saw as a commercial pairing of Yarrow with Peter Stookey and Mary Travers.
Thus began Peter Paul & Mary. The new group recorded “Puff the Magic Dragon” in 1962, and it went on to rise to #2 on the Billboard charts.
What is “Puff” About?
Several years after “Puff the Magic Dragon” was released, rumors started about drug references in the song. Yarrow and Lipton have both explained that the song is really about a loss of innocence, and Lipton has compared the story to Peter Panon his blog.
Many decades on, the song’s themes about lost innocence resonate more strongly for those of us who grew up listening to the song. When I hear the song, I think not only about the lost innocence of Little Jackie Paper. I also think about my own childhood listening to the unusual dark children’s song. In the song, I sensed some frightening message about the world ahead where little boys do not live forever and dragons are left alone to disappear.
But in addition to the haunting elements, there was something comforting in the way the three voices blended together, revealing something else in the world. Perhaps there was a touch of the nearly half-century friendship between the three singers that continued until Mary Travers’s death in 2009.
And maybe some things do last forever. I do not know where I will be in another half century, but I do know that children still will be singing the college student’s poem about a dragon who frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.
Update: Dick Kniss, who played bass for Peter Paul & Mary for almost five decades, passed away in 2012 at the age of 74. He also co-wrote John Denver’s hit, “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” RIP.
On a cold day on this date of January 26 in 1945 in France during a World War II battle, Audie Murphy earned the Medal of Honor when he engaged in a single-handed battle with Germans. His heroic actions would save many of his fellow soldiers, and it eventually garnered Murphy attention from Jimmy Cagney and Hollywood, helping launch a film career.
Murphy’s Act of Heroism
In the January 1945 battle, Murphy saw his unit reduced from 128 men to 19. So, he ordered the remaining men to fall back while he fought the Germans by himself for a period. He eventually climbed up on an abandoned tank and used its machine gun to enable his comrades to return and organize a counter-attack.
The counter-attack won back the town of Holtzwihr, France for the Allies. When he later was asked why he took on an entire company of German infantry, Murphy explained “They were killing my friends.”
After the decorations led to a profile in Life magazine, Hollywood came calling. The attention eventually led to a film based on Murphy’s war service.
The movie was called To Hell and Back (1955). And it starred . . . Audie Murphy.
Upon seeing a trailer for the exploits of a war hero with the war hero playing himself based on a co-written autobiography, one might conclude that Murphy had a big ego and thought of himself as a great hero. But Murphy originally did not want to play himself.
The film is largely a tribute to Murphy’s fallen comrades. The movie highlights the deaths of the fallen, including the dead soldiers haunting Murphy’s award ceremony.
My favorite film with Murphy is Destry (1954), a remake of the also good Destry Rides Again (1939), which starred Jimmy Stewart. He also appeared in a number of television shows, including a Western, Whispering Smith (1961).
Murphy’s War Experience
Murphy was humble about his exploits and realistic about war, as shown by this 1963 radio interview. In the interview, he explains that the highlight of the war for him was the day he heard the war was over.
Murphy also became a hero when he helped veterans of the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam by breaking taboos to speak about his own post-war struggles. He was open about his personal battles, including post-traumatic stress syndrome and addiction to sleeping pills.
You may see how unassuming he is in this clip from the TV show What’s My Line?, recorded before To Hell and Back hit theaters.
Murphy the Songwriter
It was not until I started writing this post that I discovered that Murphy also co-wrote a number of country songs. His songs were recorded by singers such as Dean Martin and Porter Wagoner.
Below is one of Murphy’s biggest hits, “When the Wind Blows in Chicago,” sung here by Roy Clark.
Murphy’s Death and Confusion About His Age
Murphy died in a plane crash on May 28, 1971. His widow, Pam Murphy, continued to work for veterans until she died in 2010.
Audie Murphy had been 21 when he risked his life and earned the Medal of Honor. When he died, he was only 45, although many sources like Wikipedia and even his tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery claim he was 46.
The age confusion was created because this honorable and talented man did lie once. Several months after his mother died, with some help from his sister, the teenaged Murphy falsified his birth certificate. He lied so he could serve his country when he was only seventeen. What is your favorite Audie Murphy film? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On January 24 in 1956, Look magazine published “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi” that featured a confession from two men claiming they had murdered the teenage Emmett L. Till on August 28, 1955. The killing would inspire both Bob Dylan and the Civil Rights movement.
The Murder
Jurors had acquitted the two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, of the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Till. But after the acquittal, in the magazine article, Bryant and Milam described the killing.
After beating and shooting Till, they used barbed wire to tie a heavy cotton gin fan around his neck to weigh down his body when they threw him in the Tallahatchie River.
Throughout the ordeal, the two men could not break the spirit of the teenager. Till maintained that he was as good as them and that he had dated white women.
Emmett Till
Till was a 14-year-old African-American teenager from Chicago. Prior to his death, he was visiting Mississippi relatives in 1955.
In Money, Mississippi, he went to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market to buy some candy. Reportedly, while he was in the store, the teen either whistled at or requested a date from Carolyn Bryant, who ran the store with her husband Roy, who was out of town.
As word spread around town about the incident, the husband Roy Bryant returned to town and contacted his half-brother J.W. Miliam. A few days after the encounter in the store between Till and Byrant’s wife, Miliam and Bryant abducted Till from his great-uncle’s home. Three days later Till’s body was found in the river.
Authorities arrested Miliam and Bryant, who were tried and acquitted by an all-white all-male jury. Many were outraged with the acquittal, and some credit the events with helping inspire the Civil Rights Movement.
The events also inspired a young Bob Dylan to write about the Till in the song “The Death of Emmett Till.” He performed the song on a radio program in 1962, explaining the tune came from a song by folk-musician Len Chandler.
On the March 11, 1962 radio show, the host flattered the young Dylan’s skills. But Dylan responded, “I just wrote that one about last week, I think.”
Relatively consistent with Dylan’s comments, in Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager reports that the 22-year-old Dylan wrote the song around February 1962. That date means it is one of the first songs Dylan ever wrote. Trager also suggests that Emmett Till’s death may have affected Dylan because they were born only months apart.
Although Dylan initially was proud of “The Death of Emmett Till,” he later seemed embarrassed by its literalness. He claimed he was just trying to write about something topical. He even went further and said that it was a “bullshit song.”
It’s true that the song does not rise to the poetic level of the more brilliant similarly themed song, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” But “The Death of Emmett Till” was a good start for the young songwriter, and it helped highlight a great injustice.
Through the years, listeners rarely got the chance to hear Dylan’s song. “The Death of Emmett Till” never appeared on an official Bob Dylan release until in 2010 when it was on the CD The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9) (2010).
The photo above of Till — whose nickname was Bobo — was taken by his mother on Christmas 1954, eight months before he was murdered.
How does “The Death of Emmett Till” rank in the Dylan canon? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Today is National Pie Day. The holiday was created by the National Pie Council. You may learn more about pies on the council’s website, with facts like: “Pie has been around since the ancient Egyptians,” early crusts were not edible, and most early American pies were meat pies.
I do not understand why pies need representation, but the holiday is a good excuse for some Three Stooges paying tribute to the Egyptian pie founders.
(2010).
