Singer-actor Trini Lopez was born in Dallas on May 15, 1937. At the age of 26, he had his first hit recording with “If I Had a Hammer.”
Lopez’s released a live album as his first record, Trini Lopez at PJ’s, in 1963. That album featured his live version of “If I Had a Hammer” that became a hit song for him.
Although the song seems timeless, Pete Seeger and Lee Hays wrote “If I Had a Hammer” in 1949 and first recorded it in 1950 as “The Hammer Song” with The Weavers. I believe the first time I heard the song was in the version by Peter, Paul & Mary. They had a top ten hit with the song in 1962, one year before Lopez’s release.
Other artists continued to record the anthem, even immediately after the hit versions by Lopez and Peter, Paul and Mary. For example, Sam Cooke featured a live version of the song on his 1964 album Sam Cooke at the Copa. And Martha and the Vandellas included their version on the 1963 album Heat Wave.
There is something about the song about the hammer. It reminds me of “The Riddle Song (I Gave My Love a Cherry)” where the final verse of the songs answers the riddles about the cherry, the ring, the chicken, and the baby. Perhaps the way “If I Had a Hammer” is similarly structured gives it the timeless quality of the old English folk song, “The Riddle Song.”
As others have noted, though, with “If I Had a Hammer,” Seeger and Hays beautifully combined activism with a popular song format. The lyrics re-purpose the working person’s hammer, the laborer’s song, and the work bell. And the writers use those tools as patriotic instruments to change the world and protect civil rights.
And while “The Riddle Song” is melancholy like a lullaby, “If I Had a Hammer” has more energy. Lopez’s driving version really captures that it is a song about the hammer of justice, the bell of freedom, and the song about love between my brothers and my sisters.
What is your favorite version of “If I Had a Hammer”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Steve Earle has released a wonderful tribute to one of his mentors, Guy Clark, with his album GUY. Yet, the album is a bit of a surprise. Earle has long been outspoken on important issues, incorporating political messages into many of his songs. So, one may wonder why, during a crazy period of American political history, Earle’s new music is largely silent on the issues of the day. The question about why Earle is doing this album at this time is further complicated by the fact that there is already an outstanding multi-artist tribute to Clark. So, why GUY?
During the George W. Bush administration, Earle released the album Just an American Boy (2003), along with a documentary by the same name. The album featured songs criticizing the war, and Earle provoked controversy with his song humanizing “enemy combatant” John Walker Lindh (“John Walker’s Blues”). When Bill Clinton was in the White House, Earle called for Woody Guthrie and other activists to “come back” in “Christmas in Washington.” When Barack Obama was president, Earle sang about a “City of Immigrants.” Going back to the beginning of his career, Earle was never afraid to take on important issues, recording several songs about capital punishment.
But now, as the current occupant sits in the White House, Steve Earle gives us a tribute album for his friend? Really?
What “GUY” Is
Let’s start with the fact that GUY is one of Earle’s best albums in recent years, perhaps since 2004’s The Revolution Starts Now. As a starting point, Guy Clark was one of the great American songwriters, so Earle had a great group of songs from which to choose.
And Earle and the Dukes sound great. Earle and the Dukes, for the most part, do not change a lot in their interpretations of the songs. There are a few exceptions, like a more rocking version of “Out in the Parking Lot.” While Earle does not radically rework “Dublin Blues,” Earle and the band highlight the boasts in the song (“I’ll stand up and be counted”). While Clark’s voice emphasized the sadness in the lyrics.
Throughout the album, the Dukes give new energy to the songs, and the band’s work is a large reason to get this album. The Dukes include Kelley Looney (bass), Ricky Ray Jackson (pedal steel guitar), Eleanor Whitmore (fiddle and mandolin), Chris Masterson (guitar), and Brad Pemberton (drums).
And the world can always use another version of “L.A. Freeway.” It is one of the best songs ever written about leaving somewhere.
GUY is a personal album for Earle. Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt were two important mentors to Earle. Earle has jokingly explained that the reason he made GUY was that he had already created a tribute album of Van Zandt’s songs, Townes(2009). So, he feared meeting Clark in the afterlife and having to explain why he made an album for Van Zandt but not for Clark.
It is a funny story, but perhaps there is a sense of obligation that helps explain why Earle made GUY. And it gives Earle a reason to gather together friends like Rodney Crowell, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Emmylou Harris to sing Clark’s song, “Old Friends.”
So Come Back Steve Earle, Come Back To Us Now
So, why GUY? Well, Earle crafted a beautiful album of wonderful songs played with energy by the Dukes. And even in troubled times, we need to affirm personal values and our own lives and bonds. Like Earle, who recently saw the ending of his marriage to singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, all of us must trudge on with our own real lives.
So, singing songs about friends, fathers (“Randall Knife”), broken hearts (“Dublin Blues”), old men (“Desperados Waiting for a Train”), and other personal connections is needed in troubled times, perhaps even more than other times. We need to remember our departed friends, as Earle is remembering Guy Clark. We all need sanctuary from the evening news and our lives.
So if you do not have this album, which is one of Earle’s best, get it. He will get around to the political message songs. Earle says he has already been working on such a political album. He plans to release it in time for the 2020 election.
What is your favorite Steve Earle song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919 in New York City. He grew up to be a great social justice activist and folk singer. His many contributions to the battle against the Vietnam War included his song, “Bring Them Home,” which decades later he also later used to protest U.S. wars in the Middle East.
One of the clever aspects of “Bring Them Home” is that Seeger asserts that he wishes to bring the soldiers home because of his love for his country. Many who favored the war accused anti-war activists of being anti-American. But Seeger reminded them that the truth was far different. The people protesting the war did so because they cared about their country and what their country was doing.
While some of Seeger’s activism made TV executives nervous, such as the time he was censored in 1967 on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, many artists respected him. So, he did find his way onto our televisions, including in this March 1970 appearance on The Johnny Cash Show.
It is pretty amazing to watch Seeger perform “Bring Them Home” on a national television show in 1970. That year, Richard Nixon was in the White House and the war still going on. But Seeger (and Johnny Cash) always sang the truth. Check it out.
One of the signs of a great song is how it can be timeless even if written about a certain moment in time. “Bring Them Home” holds up. During the Iraq War, Bruce Springsteen performed a slightly modified version of the song, called “Bring ‘Em Home,” which was released as a digital download to support his album in tribute to Seeger, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006).
As long as there are wars, “Bring Them Home” will be sung.
In honor of Seeger’s 100th birthday, Smithsonian Folkways is releasing Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection. What is your favorite Pete Seeger song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Bruce Springsteen has released a video for his new single, “Hello Sunshine.” The track will appear on his forthcoming album, Western Stars.
Springsteen has explained that the new solo album features “character driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements.” And according to the singer-songwriter’s website, the new album contains a “sweeping range of American themes, of highways and desert spaces, of isolation and community and the permanence of home and hope.”
Earlier, Springsteen told Variety that this new record is influenced by 1970s pop music out of Southern California. He listed artists like Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, and Glen Campbell. While one usually does not think of those artists in the same breath as Springsteen, one can hear the influence in the orchestration of the first single, “Hello Sunshine.”
In the new song, the singer asks, “Hello Sunshine won’t you stay?” And while the inquiry may remind one of Springsteen’s “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” the new song is not a rousing anthem. Instead, it is a contemplative piano-driven meditation of someone alone on the move. It could be the same subject as the voice in “Born to Run,” only older, slower, and maybe a little wiser.
Son Volt, let by Jay Farrar, tackle many of the issues of our current era with the new album, Union. The result is an admirable attempt to aim high and create important music with something to say.
One hears echos of past activists and the tradition of folk music’s commentary on the times. Clearly, Farrar was trying to connect with that history. The band recorded three of the album’s songs at the Mother Jones Museum in Illinois and recorded four songs at the Woody Guthrie Center in Oklahoma.
Sometimes the earnestness and the weight of trying to connect to Mary Harris (“Mother Jones”) and Guthrie seem to burden the music, with direct lyrics that do not leave much to the imagination. But the band’s playing is great, and Farrar’s voice is in great form. The often-changing cast of the band here includes Mark Spencer, Andrew DuPlantis, Chris Frame, and Mark Patterson. So even lyrics that seem too obvious — “Ninety-nine percent / It’s a trickle-down world” — still come in catchy songs that stick in your head. Other songs like “Lady Liberty” and “While Rome Burns” also land direct punches.
Connecting the Personal to the Universal
The songs that work best connect to personal moments or make you think in ways you may not have thought before. For example, the title track “Union,” recounts Farrar’s father’s belief about the need for something to bind the country together: “He said national service/ Will keep the union together.” Of course, many presidents have shared a similar belief, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to more recent presidents like George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
One of the more powerful songs on the album is “Reality Winner.” A listener may be excused if after an initial listen the chorus makes the person think the song is about the reality TV star as president (“What have you done, Reality Winner?”). But the song tells the story of an Air Force veteran named Reality Winner. She is now in prison for being a whistleblower to let Americans know the Russians affected the 2016 election. While not as epic as Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” another song about a prisoner, one may hope that the song helps draw more attention to Winner, who was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
Similarly, “The Symbol” uses a personal tale to make a larger point. Farrar sings in the voice of an undocumented immigrant who has been in the U.S. for ten years and had children in the country. Even though he helped rebuild New Orleans, the immigrant now hears people calling him a criminal.
Not every song is about politics. “Devil May Care” is about a barroom band. Farrar has noted he included the song as sort of a respite from some of the heavier themes on the album. Other less political songs include “Holding Your Own” and “The Reason.”
The band also took an old song and made it new. Activist Joe Hill wrote the lyrics to “Rebel Girl,” and the words were published in the early 1900s in the Little Red Songbook by the Industrial Workers of the World. Farrar added music to Hill’s words. In doing so, he created a wonderful merger of meaningful heartfelt lyrics with beautiful music, forming an instant classic, again connecting something personal and individual to something larger.
That’s the rebel girl, that’s the rebel girl; To the working class she’s a precious pearl; She brings courage and pride to the fighting rebel boy; I will fight for freedom with a rebel girl.
Conclusion
So, what to make of this album that has received mixed reviews ranging fromAmerican Songwriter hearing an “emotionless approach and . . . muted instrumentation” to American Highways finding “new political depth” in the album? Union is far from perfect, but there are near perfect moments. It is difficult for an artist to take on modern political issues while society is still working out those issues and their meaning. But here is a noble attempt. And we should all appreciate that Jay Farrar and Son Volt are using good music to try to tell us something.
What is your favorite song on Union? Leave your two cents in the comments.
