Project Nim (2011) is a fascinating documentary that follows the life of Nim, a chimpanzee who was part of an experiment in teaching chimps to communicate. Nim Chimpsky, named with a humorous nod to linguist Noam Chomsky, became famous for his ability to use sign language as part of a study by Herbert Terrace, a Columbia University behavioral psychologist. The documentary shows the ups and downs of Nim’s life where he is repeatedly removed from his environment in the name of science. The film asks questions about the role of communication and our human relationships to animals.
Although the movie shows Nim repeatedly abandoned, it also features several people who cared very much about the chimp. Ultimately, it’s the human stories in the film that make the movie compelling. While Nim’s behavior is interesting to the scientists because it tells us about chimps, the behavior of the people in Nim’s life is what makes the film interesting. Because it tells us more about us.
Bonus Review (Because why should you trust me?): Ethicist Peter Singer wrote an interesting essay about the film, the science about animals’ use of language, and the ethics of scientific experiments on primates in the New York Times Review of Books. What did you think of Project Nim? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In 1940 after John Ford made John Steinbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath into a popular film, Woody Guthrie was finding some fame while living with various friends in New York. In the biography Woody Guthrie: A Life, Joe Klein explained that as Victor Records worked to produce a set of Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads, the company asked Guthrie to write a song that would capitalize on Grapes of Wrath‘s popularity. (p. 163.)
It was a good fit to have the balladeer who had first-hand experience with the Dust Bowl write a song about a fictional character who experienced it. In the clip below, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott discusses the film.
Writing “Tom Joad”
So, Guthrie went to work on his song. One night Guthrie asked his friend the young Pete Seeger where he could get a typewriter to use to compose the song related to the film. Seeger took Guthrie to the lower East Side to see an artist friend with a typewriter.
Guthrie sat down at the machine with a half gallon of wine and began writing, periodically going to his guitar to test out what he was writing. When Seeger woke up the next morning, he found the song written on the typewriter next to an empty wine bottle and Guthrie passed out on the floor.
The seventeen-verse song summarized Tom Joad’s story. Despite the length, the record company recorded the entire song on May 3, 1940 in its New Jersey studios. Then, the record company had to use both sides of a record to get it to fit.
Guthrie was usually dissatisfied with his songs. But he was proud of this song, saying, “I think the ballad of the Joads is the best thing I’ve done so far.”
The Music from “John Hardy”
Guthrie took the music for “Tom Joad” from an outlaw ballad he had been playing, “John Hardy.” In the clip below, Roscoe Holcomb sings “John Hardy,” where you can hear the music behind Guthrie’s “Tom Joad.”
Holcomb, who grew up in Daisy, Kentucky, recorded a number of traditional songs in the 1960s after John Cohen and Smithsonian Folkways discovered the authentic voice in the Appalachian Mountains.
Guthrie’s Lyrics
While the music of “John Hardy” helped inspire Guthrie to write “Tom Joad,” Guthrie’s lyrics captured Steinbeck’s book and Henry Fonda’s portrayal of Joad in Ford’s film. At the end of all the book, the film, and the song, Tom Joad makes an impassioned speech to his mother. And Guthrie included that key scene in his lyrics.
Wherever little children are hungry and cry, Wherever people ain’t free. Wherever men are fightin’ for their rights, That’s where I’m a-gonna be, Ma. That’s where I’m a-gonna be.”
How “Tom Joad” Inspired Others
While several sources influenced Guthrie, he of course influenced others. In particular, “Tom Joad” influenced Bruce Springsteen making an album about troubled men and women.
Consistent with recent Springsteen comments that he found “fatalism tempered by a practical idealism” in Guthrie’s works, the title track of Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) follows Guthrie’s song in capturing Joad’s conversation with his mom.
Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy, Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries, Where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, Look for me mom I’ll be there; Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand, Or a decent job or a helpin’ hand, Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free, Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”
It is somewhat amazing that one conversation from Steinbeck’s book has resonated so much for other artists. But the words are timeless.
As long as there are economic inequalities, the words about fighting for the common people will resonate in society. Steinbeck’s version passed on to John Ford who then connected to Woody Guthrie who then connected to Bruce Springsteen. And the line will continue.
Already, Springsteen has passed the Joad mantle onto Tom Morello, who performed a Guthrie song during a May Day protest, and his band Rage Against the Machine.
We do not know who will take it next. But as long as somebody’s strugglin’ to be free, Joad’s words will be there.
Rage Against the Machine’s version of the Bruce Springsteen song sounds a long way from Woody Guthrie’s guitar. But I suspect that if Woody were around today and heard the song’s critique of society’s treatment of the poor, he would be on stage with them. “That’s where I’m a-gonna be.”
{Woody at 100 is our continuing series celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie in 1912. Check out our other posts on Guthrie too. }
In 1984, Willie Nelson and Ray Charles released the duet, “Seven Spanish Angels,” a Western saga telling a tragic story of two lovers and the mysterious seven Spanish Angels.
Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas on April 29, 1933. In 2012 a statute of Willie was unveiled in Austin, but instead of choosing his birthday, organizers chose the appropriate date of April 20 at 4:20 p.m. for the man who released an album that features a song with Snoop Dogg called, “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die.” Today we consider another one of his great collaborations, this one with Ray Charles singing “Seven Spanish Angels.”
The songwriters wrote the song in a style reminiscent of Marty Robbins’s “El Paso.” But since Robbins had passed away, reportedly they turned to Willie Nelson. And, in at least one version of the story, after Nelson made a demo of “Seven Spanish Angels,” producer Billy Sherill suggested they also enlist Ray Charles in a duet. (But see video below for a slightly different version of events.)
The duet was released as a single in November 1984 and originally appeared on Nelson’s album, Half Nelson (1985) and on Charles’s album, Friendship (1984). Although Charles had several successful country recordings including his great album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, this song was his most successful single.
I was surprised to learn that this song was so successful for Charles, as it is not the first country recording I think of when I think of Charles. But it is an excellent one.
In the video below, contrary to the Wikipedia story that Nelson’s producer enlisted Ray Charles after Nelson already had made a recording of the song, Nelson says here that Charles brought the song to him. Nelson adds that “it is going to be a phonograph record pretty soon.”
The Song’s Story and Who Are the Seven Spanish Angels?
Like Willie Nelson’s great recording of Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho & Lefty” with Merle Haggard, “Seven Spanish Angels,” written by Troy Seals and Eddie Setser, recounts the story of an outlaw in Mexico. Instead of being about two men, though “Seven Spanish Angels” tells the story of an outlaw and his girlfriend. But the song takes a more tragic turn than the death of the outlaw.
After the outlaw is killed in a gunfight with a posse, the woman exclaims, “Father, please forgive me; I can’t make it without my man.” Then she picked up his rifle, knowing it is empty, and points it at the men who then shoot and kill her. The Seven Spanish Angels in the song “pray for the lovers in the valley of the guns.” When the smoke cleared, “seven Spanish angels took another angel home.”
The line about “another angel” at the end always made me wonder, does that mean the Seven Spanish Angels left the woman’s boyfriend behind? But there is another way to read the chorus because it repeats throughout the song, including after the first verse.
He looked down into her brown eyes, And said “Say a prayer for me;” She threw her arms around him, Whispered “God will keep us free;” They could hear the riders comin’, He said “This is my last fight; If they take me back to Texas, They won’t take me back alive.”
The outlaw does not clearly die in the first verse but it is followed by the chorus, which includes the line “And seven Spanish Angels / Took another angel home.” So the chorus at that point tells us the outlaw died and the seven Spanish Angels took him “home.” Then, after the verse about the girlfriend dying, the chorus, which is repeated, is just referring to the angels taking her “home.”
Such a reading is also consistent with a verse written for the song that was omitted in the Nelson-Charles version: “Now the people in the valley swear/ That when the moon’s just right,/ They see the Texan and his woman/ Ride across the clouds at night.” That verse tells us the lovers are still together after death. But the producer of the recording, Billy Sherrill apparently opted to omit that verse as it made the song too long.
And so, due to time constraints, we did not get to see the lovers happy again. Although maybe it was enough to know they had gone off with the seven Spanish Angels.
But who are the seven Spanish Angels? Some have said they signify “not just celestial figures, but also a collective yearning for salvation and solace.” Others have focused on the number seven and used the Bible to conclude they are a “reference to the seven angels from the Book of Revelation, whom bear witness to the end times.” Still others have reasoned that since angels have no nationality, the “Spanish” in the description means the seven Spanish Angels is a “reference to the members of the posse sent in pursuit of the couple.”
But the ambiguity of the meaning of “Seven Spanish Angels” may be intentional and there is no one definitive meaning. Reportedly, songwriter Eddie Setser came up with the title before writing the song. Thus, it was maybe the sound of the mysterious title that first attracted them to creating the story. And there are other ambiguities in the song, as we are left wondering why the man was being pursued to be taken back to Texas. We assume he is an outlaw, but we do not even know that for sure.
The only certainty we end up with is that love is eternal. And that is not a bad message for a song. And that is the story behind the song. What do you think happened at the end of “Seven Spanish Angels”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
National Arbor Day is this week in the U.S. According to the Arbor Day website, Arbor Day has its seeds in the work of J. Sterling Morton. He was a Nebraska journalist and later Nebraska territory secretary who advocated for the planting of trees.
After Nebraska made the day an official holiday in the late 1800’s, the state eventually selected April 22 as the date because it was Morton’s birthday. Other states also began celebrating Arbor Day in the 1870s.
Today, National Arbor Day always falls on the last Friday of April. But some states celebrate Arbor Day on different dates depending on the planting season. Meanwhile, the holiday celebrating the planting of trees has spread around the world.
The Giving Tree
Planting trees is a nice thing to do for the earth for several reasons. And we humans benefit from trees in numerous ways too. Perhaps the best illustration of our love and destruction of trees is in Shel Silverstein‘s great children’s book, The Giving Tree.
In the 1973 animated video below, Silverstein narrates the book for viewers.
The late Shel Silverstein is also known for many other works, including books and songs recorded by Johnny Cash. Yet, he may be most famous for The Giving Tree, a book that many children grew up reading. For some reason, The Giving Tree was not a book in my childhood home so I came to it many years later as an adult.
I always find it interesting how different people react to the story. Some have very fond memories of the story and see it as a story of a loving tree who gives away everything it has. But others get angry when they think of the tale, seeing it as a story about a selfish boy taking everything from the tree.
Is it a story of love and charity? Or is it a story of selfishness and domination? What does the last line — “And the tree was happy” — signify? One may come up with several theories about the book’s meaning, but the ambiguity is why the book has become a classic. The book allows each of us to see different things, perhaps even understanding the story differently at different stages of our own lives.
No matter what you think of The Giving Tree, let’s take a moment to thank all of our tree friends this Arbor Day.
What do you think is the message of The Giving Tree? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Chris Ethridge, bassist and founding member of the Flying Burrito Brothers passed away earlier this week in Mississippi. Ethridge was a long-time collaborator with Gram Parsons, also playing with Parsons in the International Submarine Band and co-writing some of Parson’s solo songs. While with the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ethridge played on Gilded Palace of Sin (1969), an album Rolling Stone magazine lists as one of the top 200 albums of all time. He also co-wrote “Hot Burrito #1 (I’m Your Toy),” a song we previously discussed on Chimesfreedom. In this performance of “Christine’s Tune (Devil in Disguise),” you may see Ethridge playing bass in the background (with a black beard wearing a Nudie suit).
Ethridge also played as a session musician later in his career, playing with such artists as Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Jackson Browne. He also toured with Willie Nelson for eight years. Ethridge learned he had pancreatic cancer in September. He was 65. RIP.
What is your favorite Flying Burrito Brother song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
, Joe Klein explained that as Victor Records worked to produce a set of Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads, the company asked Guthrie to write a song that would capitalize on Grapes of Wrath‘s popularity. (p. 163.)
