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.
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.
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see, The smiling brothers walkin’ down the courthouse stairs. For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free, While Emmett’s body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
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.
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man, That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan. But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give, We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
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.
In response to popular demand, Chimesfreedom continues its periodic discussion of the best gospel songs by pop singers. In this Post, we consider one gospel song overwhelmingly identified with one pop singer, another gospel song that is recorded by many singers, and finally, a beautiful song about being an agnostic that deserves a place next to other songs of faith.
“Morning Has Broken,” Cat Stevens.
This song is so associated with Cat Stevens — now Yusaf Islam — that for a long time, I thought it was one of his original songs. But the Christian hymn first appeared in 1931, and the music goes back even further to the nineteenth century as a traditional Gaelic tune, “Bunessan.”
“Morning has Broken” is a simple song with a simple message of being thankful for each day: “Praise with elation, praise every morning / God’s recreation of the new day.”
Alfred E. Brumley wrote “I’ll Fly Away” in 1931. He was picking cotton when he came up with the song. As he later explained: “I was dreaming of flying away from that cotton field when I wrote I’ll Fly Away.” Many believe the song is the most-recorded gospel song of all time. If true, it is not surprising because it is a beautiful song.
A number of country singers have recorded the song, including Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Charley Pride, Jim Reeves, and Alan Jackson. Etta James does an uplifting version. Kanye West does an excellent version too. I especially like Alison Krauss’s version, and in particular this version with Gillian Welch from the film O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000).
One might dispute including “Let the Mystery Be” from Iris DeMent’s Infamous Angel (1993) album in a discussion of Gospel songs because the song reflects DeMent’s agnosticism rather than faith in a higher power. Yet, the song only could have been written by someone who was raised in a religious environment.
DeMent grew up in a Pentecostal family where she was not allowed to listen to non-gospel music, and the song brings out the division between her upbringing and her adult beliefs. But “letting the mystery be” takes a leap of faith too. And, as in many of the best gospel songs, it highlights a beautiful struggle in a beautiful song.
Some say they’re goin’ to a place called Glory and I ain’t saying it ain’t a fact. But I’ve heard that I’m on the road to purgatory and I don’t like the sound of that. Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly. But I choose to let the mystery be.
Singer Etta James has passed away from leukemia at age 73. You’ll be hearing a lot of her greatest hit, “At Last,” so here let us take a moment to close our eyes and listen to the more appropriately named, “All I Could Do Was Cry.” RIP.
That is real emotion you hear in James’s vocals. Supposedly, “All I Could Do Was Cry” was inspired by her former boyfriend Harvy Fuqua dating Gwen Gordy. The song was written by Gwen Gordy and her former boyfriend, Billy Davis (and Berry Gordy). Fuqua and Gwen Gordy eventually got married, so there is genuine tension in the song from one of the broken-hearted writers and the broken-hearted singer. That is complicated, but the result is brilliant.
What is your favorite Etta James song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(2010).
