Bruce Springsteen quickly responded to the killings by ICE in Minneapolis with the song, “Streets of Minneapolis.”
Like many Americans, Bruce Springsteen has been watching recent events and the deaths in Minnesota while people in Minneapolis continue to protest President Trump’s influx of ICE officers. In response, Springsteen very quickly wrote and recorded a song about the protests and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Along with the song, Springsteen released the following statement:
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free, Bruce Springsteen
Of course, it is difficult to write a protest song so quickly and folks may debate whether they like the song as a song. And it is sure to draw the ire of Trump supporters. But either way one must hand it to an artist who recognizes their position and ability to put themselves out there for the less fortunate in spite of knowing many listeners will criticize him for taking a stand.
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice, Singing through the bloody mist; We’ll take our stand for this land, And the stranger in our midst; Here in our home they killed and roamed, In the winter of ’26; We’ll remember the names of those who died, On the streets of Minneapolis.
Update: Below is the official video for “Streets of Minneapolis,” directed by Thom Zimny.
Springsteen is not the only songwriter paying attention to the events in Minneapolis. Billy Bragg also wrote a protest song called, “City of Heroes.“
Springsteen has often spoken out regarding Donald Trump. And “Streets of Minneapolis” is not Springsteen’s first statement on the ICE protests in Minnesota. Earlier in January at a concert, Springsteen dedicated a performance of “The Promised Land” to Renee Good, calling on ICE to leave Minneapolis: “If you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest; then send a message to this president.”
The famous Stanley Brothers song “Rank Strangers to Me” has a mysterious meaning that inspired Bruce Springsteen writing about the alienation of modern politics.
I wandered again, To my home in the mountains, Where in youth’s early dawn, I was happy and free. I look for my friends, But I never could find ’em. I found they were all Rank strangers to me.
According to Ralph Stanley’s autobiography, in the 1950s the Stanley Brothers were on their way to a performance, driving on a Sunday through Bristol, Virginia. Listening to the radio, they heard the song, “Rank Stranger to Me.” The song, performed by the Willow Branch Quartet, immediately grabbed Ralph and his brother Carter Stanley.
In “Rank Strangers to Me” (sometimes referred to as “Rank Stranger”) the singer recounts visiting their old hometown. But as they go through the town, they do not recognize anyone and all of the people are complete (“rank”) strangers.
“The song was all about feeling a stranger in this world, even with your own family and friends and neighbors, and how the next world would make all that right,” explained Stanley. The brothers soon added the song to their act, shortening their recorded version of the song to fit on a 45 rpm record.
Initially released as a single, the song then appeared on the Stanley Brothers album Sacred Songs of the Hills. Ralph later noted that “it became the most popular song the Stanley Brothers ever sung.”
The Willow Branch Quartet was based in Bristol and included Wilda Dillon singing lead and her mother, Ettie Dillon, singing alto. As others have noted, Wilda’s soprano lead singing gave the group a unique sound along with the harmonies of a family singing together.
According to Wilda’s son Gary Combs, the group had found the song in the Stamps-Baxter gospel songbook.
Albert E. Brumley, who lived in Missouri and wrote “I’ll Fly Away” and other songs, wrote “Rank Strangers to Me” in 1942. After the Stanley Brothers recorded their version of “Rank Strangers to Me,” a number of artists continued to cover the song, including Porter Wagoner, Freakwater, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, and Crooked Still. Bob Dylan included the song on his 1988 album Down in the Groove.
Brumley, who was born in 1905 and passed away on November 15, 1977, lived to see many of his songs, including “Rank Strangers to Me,” become classics.
One may wonder too whether “Rank Strangers to Me” may have inspired a similarly themed song written by Percy Mayfield, “Stranger in My Hometown.” That song reflects the flip side of “Rank Strangers to Me,” with the singer feeling like the stranger back in their hometown. Elvis Presley recorded “Stranger in My Hometown” in 1969, releasing it on Elvis Back in Memphis.
The Meaning of Rank Strangers
“Rank Strangers to Me,” like a good episode of The Twilight Zone, can haunt you. The idea of returning to a place where you should feel at home but discovering that everyone is a stranger has a supernatural element to it. One may wonder what meaning Brumley was trying to convey with the song.
Because Brumley wrote the song as a hymn, there is a good reason to assume that Ralph Stanley’s initial impression of the song is correct, that it has a religious connotation. We are all strangers in the earthly world, only to find our true place when we go to heaven.
But what makes “Rank Strangers to Me” a great song is that it never explicitly lays out the religious meaning, leaving the song open to interpretation. Similar to other religious songs like “The Great Speckled Bird,” the spirituality of the song dwells in the mystery it presents, allowing our imagination and own interpretations to guide our feelings.
In the Stanley Brothers recording, they highlighted the mystery of the song with their arrangement. Unlike their other recordings, the song alternates between Carter’s voice on the verses and Ralph’s loud wail on the chorus. Ralph later explained, “We wanted it to be like somebody surprising you from behind. Like somebody waking you up and everything seems different and you don’t know if you’re awake or still dreaming.”
The Rank Strangers In Bruce Springsteen’s “Long Walk Home”
Bruce Springsteen has used the mysteriousness of “Rank Strangers To Me” to reference that song’s title phrase in a more political context. On his 2007 album Magic, the Stanley Brothers hymn (with perhaps a dash of Elvis’s recording of Percy Mayfield’s “Stranger in My Hometown”) provided inspiration for Springsteen’s song “Long Walk Home.”
It’s gonna be a long walk home; Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me; Gonna be a long walk home, A long walk home.
In town I pass Sal’s grocery; Barber shop on South Street; I looked in their faces, They’re all rank strangers to me.
Springsteen’s song “Long Walk Home” begins with it’s own mystery. The singer recounts that the night before he was on his former lover’s doorstep wondering what went wrong. She slipped an unnamed item into his hand and then “was gone.” The singer sees his hometown in the distance and realizes it is going to be a long walk home.
The singer recognizes places in his home town, but as quoted above, like in “Rank Strangers to Me,” does not recognize the faces: “They’re all rank strangers to me.”
Like the Stanely brothers song, Springsteen’s song is elevated by the mysteries. What went wrong with the relationship? Why can’t the singer recognize the faces in his hometown? Who is the “pretty darling” he is asking not to wait up for him (if the night before he was going through a breakup)?
But the deeper meaning of the song is revealed by the context of the writing and the timing of the release of the song. Many of the songs on the album Magic reflect Springsteen’s frustration with American society at the time, following the reelection of President George W. Bush after the unnecessary Iraq War. Indeed, Springsteen has explained “Long Walk Home” as about a singer realizing that those “he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers.”
The meaning of the song resonates in present day for Springsteen and many others. More recently, on November 6, 2024, following the second election of Donald J. Trump the night before, Springsteen opened his show in Toronto with “Long Walk Home” and its reference to the struggle to understand one’s fellow citizens. The song, which along with “Land of Hope and Dreams,” Springsteen called “a fighting prayer for my country,” reflected the frustration of many Americans wondering how their fellow citizens could have voted for such a man.
One may struggle with the question of how your friends could support the choices made by this president. In the year leading up to the second election of Donald Trump, I saw many posts on social media by friends and family complaining about things that Pres. Biden had allegedly done or failed to do and how Trump would do them better: fix the economy immediately, stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine, help North Carolina better recover from a disaster, protect kids, “drain the swamp,” etc. But in the months after Trump’s election, when he has done the opposite of many of those things, I have seen the same people defend Trump no matter what he does. These include defenses of cutting aid to disaster relief , taking actions that may lead to the suffering and deaths of others, random acts upsetting the economy, more corruption, etc.
Why are so many still supporting these choices they would not have supported from another president? Who are these people I thought I knew? Why did they seem to care about something one minute and then defend the opposite the next? Why are they allowing people to suffer? Of course, I’m sure that many people on the other side of the political spectrum similarly struggle to understand the “strangers” with different views than them.
I suspect this feeling of alienation is why Springsteen continues to include “Long Walk Home” in current performances. He is asking the question many of us are asking about people we once thought we knew.
And that is why, whether you agree with the politics or not, the alienating feeling of not understanding your friends and family remains with us so many years after the Stanley Brothers first heard the haunting sound of “Rank Strangers to Me” on the car radio.
The film “Judgment at Nuremberg” ends with a stunning indictment from Spencer Tracy’s character that should offer a chilling lesson for today.
The 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer and written by Abby Mann, presents a fictionalized trial based on real events following World War II. There were twelve trials in military courts in Nuremberg, Germany regarding Nazi crimes committed during the war. The movie centers on a trial similar to the actual trial of jurists and lawyers (sometimes called “The Judges’ Trial“). [Warning: This post contains some spoilers for the movie.]
Judgment at Nuremberg features many great actors of the time, including Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, Maximilian Schell (who won the Best Actor Oscar) and a young William Shatner. Much of the fim, though, centers on the characters played by Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster.
Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster
Spencer Tracy, who was 61 at the time and looked older, plays Chief Judge Dan Haywood, one of the judges overseeing the trial. Tracy’s Maine judge is in many ways the heart of the film, as we see through his eyes the war-torn streets of Germany and the moral questions surrounding the war and the atrocities.
Lancaster, plays Dr. Ernst Janning, one of the German defendants. Initially appearing defiant, Janning is troubled by what the Nazi’s did. Eventually, Janning takes the stand as a witness for the prosecution. During his testimony indicting the works of the Nazis, he confesses his own role in sentencing a Jewish man to death for having sex with a 16-year-old Gentile girl when he knew the charges were not true.
Lancaster was a great handsome movie star, and he brings his gravitas to the role, evoking sympathy from us for the guilt he feels and for his willingness among the defendants to admit the sins of the Germans. Tracy and Lancaster were long-time movie stars by this point, and we were familiar with Tracy as a trustworthy character and Lancaster as a strong man with a vulnerable heart and intense eyes.
The Final Confrontation
Janning: “Those people . . . Those millions of people. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it.”
Haywood: “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
At the end of the film, we do finally get a one-on-one scene between the two heavyweight actors. After Janning and the other three defendants are found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, Janning asks Judge Haywood to visit him in his cell. And Judge Haywood agrees. Throughout the film, Tracy has played Haywood as a man conflicted about how blame may be assessed among the living for the crimes of the Nazis, and we have seen him moved by Janning’s acceptance of guilt. So, the viewer may expect that this final scene of the two men (and great actors) meeting alone, will provide some common understanding between the two judges. But that is not what happens.
The two men complement each other. Lancaster’s Janning tells Spencer’s Haywood that his decision of the court was a just one. Haywood responds that Lancaster’s testimony was what needed to be said.
Then, Burt Lancaster’s Janning turns to the reason he wanted to talk to the judge in private. He does ask for some type of understanding, if not forgiveness from Spencer Tracy’s judge, explaining he did not know the extent of the horrors and the killings of the Jewish people. He pleads, “Those people . . . Those millions of people. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it.”
But Spencer Tracy’s judge does not give forgiveness or understanding, only an indictment. He replies, “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.” The camera captures Lancaster’s pained and haunted face as the movie ends with his prison door closing.
America’s Dilemma
That scene from Judgment at Nuremberg has always stayed with me, and I have been thinking about it a lot lately. In the news, we have read and seen about the Trump administration rounding up immigrants and sending them to an inhumane prison in El Salvador. A few years ago, it might have been hard to imagine the United States sending convicted criminals to such a place, but because these men are not citizens of the U.S. and the administration asserts they are members of the MS-13 gang, so far we have mostly accepted sending people who have been convicted of no crimes.
As we find out more about some of the men sent, we should be more troubled. There is Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist who sought asylum in the United States last year. He was sent to the prison based on a signature from a disgraced former police officer, now a private prison contractor, with a record of lying.
Merwil Gutiérrez also was sent to the El Salvador prison. The 19-year-old with no criminal record and reportedly no gang affiliation was taken from the Bronx and sent to the prison. Reportedly, he was seized after an ICE agent realized he was not who they were looking for. But another agent responded “take him anyway,” so they did. Gutiérrez’s father is still trying to get information on his son.
Ábrego García also sits in the El Salvador prison, though his case has already gone to the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawyer for the foreign-born Maryland father says he has no ties to criminal gangs. The U.S. has admitted it was a mistake to send García to El Salvador, and the Supreme Court has ordered the government to “facilitate” his return to the U.S. But the Trump administration continues to do nothing and claim both that they cannot do anything to get García back — and anyway García is still a bad guy who is not a citizen.
García’s case in particular might remind one of Spencer Tracy’s rebuke to Burt Lancaster’s character in Judgment at Nuremberg. After observing Lancaster’s sympathetic performance, like his character, we are reminded that one bore the blame for the atrocities that followed once one was complicit in the first injustice.
I don’t know if we are there yet, and of course we are not Nazi Germany. But there are lessons to be learned from history (and movies).
And many of us are surprised that more of our fellow citizens are not outraged at the thought of innocent people being sent to this inhumane foreign prison. And to have our government concede it committed a mistake that results in suffering and do nothing to correct it (even assuming anyone should be in this prison) is something out of a horror movie if you imagine what these people are going through each day.
The U.S. has never been perfect. And maybe in recent years the fact that people did not stand up to the horrors we perpetrated in the wake of 9/11 like torturing suspects and accepting the mistreatment, torture, and rapes at Abu Ghraib prison have made us immune to these atrocities committed by our country against non-citizens.
Twenty-five years ago, I would have thought that my fellow citizens would not have allowed these things to happen. Yes, some have stood up and many are fighting the administration’s cruelty and bullying today. For example, constituents showed up in Iowa at a Republican senator’s town hall to ask what was being done about getting García out of the prison where he does not belong.
Yet, how many of us will allow our government to send people to an inhumane prison without any type of due process?
Maybe like Burt Lancaster’s Janning character we will be thinking that later we will be able to claim that we never knew it would come to whatever comes next.
Find your representatives in Congress to call them athttps://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member. Leave your two cents in the comments.
The night after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Bruce Springsteen opened his show in Canada with two of his most powerful songs.
On November 6, 2024, Bruce Springsteen awakened feeling like many people in the United States did following the previous night’s election of Donald Trump. While many were happy, in a divided country there were around just as many people who were sad, angry, scared and/or feeling despair. Those feelings have amplified for many people in the months following the election.
Back in November, like many of us, Springsteen did not have the option of staying in bed all day and had to go to work. Unlike most of us, though, Springsteen had to do his job in front of a large audience.
And as he often does, he let his music speak for his feelings. So that night, playing for our neighbor and friend Canada, Springsteen opened with a brief comment introducing what he called “a fighting prayer” for his country, which was a one-two punch of two of his most powerful songs.
First, he opened with “A Long Walk Home” from his 2007 album Magic. He had never opened with that song prior to the election. The song, inspired by a Stanley Brothers song, is in the voice of a person coming back home and not recognizing where he once lived. Originally written about the George W. Bush and the post-9/11 years, the song is even more relevant for many today.
But Springsteen is not one to leave us in the dark, as his songs and performances bring together his fans and lifts them up. So, as part of the opening after “A Long Walk Home” he followed with one of his most hopeful songs, which we have previously discussed more in-depth, “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
While many may not have felt they were living in such a land that morning, Springsteen reminded us that your community is what you make of it. ” This Train / Dreams will not be thwarted; / This Train / Faith will be rewarded.”
Music does not change the world overnight. But at least for now, here is something to listen to during the next several years when you need to feel less alone and to find some hope to get you through the night.
The full audio of the November 6, 2024 show is also available on Nugs.net. Leave your two cents in the comments.
The new album from Lucinda Williams — Good Souls Better Angels (2020)– is a far cry from her 1992 album Sweet Old World. Of course, the world has changed a lot since 1992 and so has Williams. But her new album, veering at times more toward punk music and blues than country, still reflects her great talent.
Recorded in Nashville with Williams’s band Buick 6, the album Good Souls Better Angels is from a powerful singer and strong person asserting herself amidst a crazy world. In the opening blues track, Williams proclaims, “You Can’t Rule Me,” and you believe her.
Her energy comes through on such songs as “Wakin’ Up,” about an abusive relationship, and “Man Without a Soul” (“You bring nothing good to this world”) about Donald Trump.
But she also reveals softer moments in some of the highlights of the album, including “Big Black Train” and the closing track “Good Souls.”
Many reviewers love the new album. Pitchfork calls it an “unsparing new album” with “some of the heaviest, most inspiring music of [Williams’s] career.” Others have compared it unfavorably with her best work. AllMusic reports that Good Souls Better Angels is “full of fierce, engrossing music from a great band with a mesmerizing frontwoman, but as fine as that is, it comes from someone who is capable of better work.”
I’m still listening to the album more and more. And although at this moment I do not yet know if it will become my favorite Lucinda Williams album, it is the album for our current era. Williams captures the anger, insanity, and, yes, beauty, of our times in a powerful album. And I’m not sure you can ask for more than that.
What do you think of Good Souls Better Angels? Leave your two cents in the comments.
