Charlie, of course, was written as a campaign song for Walter O’Brien, Progressive candidate for Mayor of Boston in 1949. The song protests a fare hike to transfer money from T riders to shareholders of private companies who had been bailed out by the agency.
But by 1959, the candidate had been blacklisted and run out of town, and the song’s most political lyrics were simply edited out.
The blacklist was no joke. O’Brien
and his wife were placed on the state’s highly publicized blacklist in 1955. Even as he retreated from politics, he found himself ostracized and unable to hold down a job. Within the year, he uprooted his family and settled in Gray, Maine.
Even his name was erased from the song recorded by the Kingston Trio, who substituted a fictitious “George O’Brien” in his place.
It’s a delightful piece to read, all the more since it includes the fact that the T today is honoring the whole story in its entirety.
It just made me reflect on all the American history and traditions that began with the left and have been scrubbed and sanitized so that rich clods like Romney can safely enjoy them.
But all the “secret” verses to Charlie and to This Land Is your Land and all the rest–those verses were made for you and me.
Today, Glen Beck’s tea people enjoy wearing tricorn hats, but does anyone doubt that they would have been Tories during the American Revolution? Or which side they’d have favored during the Civil War?
Do you think they’d be with Roosevelt on helping Churchill and the Allies fight Hitler early on in the war, or with the isolationists? Is there any part of America these people would defend?
The Charlie story just made me think. From California to the New York Island, there’s another side to things–an American side.
That side was made for you and me.
that made me happiest at President Obama’s inauguration was that Pete Seeger insisted on singing every last verse of “This Land Is Your Land” – including the really uncomfortable ones. It was a great moment.
I’m pretty sure that I have heard or read all the verses of that song at one point or another, even the ones not usually used. I remember thinking they weren’t THAT bad.
They are fantastic! But in a way that would make a lot of people uncomfortable. Woody Guthrie was a revolutionary – the real kind, not the weak beer we have today.
Sincerely,
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…to make a passing reference to the fact that some people are poor? Doesn’t sound all that revolutionary to me.
Nor, apparently, do you know much about Woody Guthrie.
Here’s what I found:
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p>I admit I don’t quite understand the first of these verses, but it sounds like the gist is that the less fortunate wonder if there is a place for them. I’ve mentioned myself at times that the American Dream seems a bit elusive, but I still think these lyrics are pretty tame.
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p>He apparently had some association with, but not actual membership in, Communist groups, but it seems only the red scaremongers would really be hostile.
I’ll add that the song was written in 1940, when the protection of free speech was far less robust than it is today, and that I think you’re looking at the song from a 2011 perspective without any historical context.
(ie still in the Great Depression), wasn’t being communist more common? I know when I read about the HUAC in the 1950s the thought that crosses my mind is, “Are you really going to fault someone for having communist sympathies during a time when it appeared capitalism had failed?” If we DO come back to the recent decade (Romney was refered to in the diary.), then I still say there’s no reason to sanitize it. I’d love for you to elaborate on the lyrics.
I’m with Christopher on this one.
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p>Tellingly, in light of subsequent events, the version sung for the Obama celebration was, in fact, toned down from the original (“made more bipartisan,” in current parlance). Wikipedia:
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I’ve always interpreted that other-side verse as a call for trespassing, a critique of private property even, but I agree it is not clear.
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p>(Hint: What is on “the other side” of a “private” sign?)
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p>I don’t think that the true lyrics of either Charlie or This Land are really all that shocking or “bad” or disruptive of the rich an powerful. (If only they were!)
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p>That they were expunged says lots more about the dominant social order than the songs.
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p>Although, if the Powers that Be felt so threatened by Woody and Charlie that they had to snuff out the very mention of the Relief Station, or Walter O’Brien, who am I to argue?
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p>And I assume you all know what was written on Woody’s guitar
This land ain’t your land,
This land is my land.
I’ve got a shotgun,
And you ain’t got one.
If you don’t get off, I’ll blow your head off!
This land is Private Property.
I wax nostalgic for the days of Club 47. You got me playing converted vinyl on Rhythmbox. Thinking about a time when about eight kids could squeeze into a Chevy II and go and hear people sing about the misery of the world. And have a great time.
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p>A theme Pete Seeger used in many of his recordings is the history of music as social protest from Elizabeth times to LBJ times. Has this communication been lost for good?
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p>“[I]t becomes increasingly easy, as you get older, to drown in nostalgia.” –Ted Koppel