lyndon johnson told the nation tom paxton
In our July, 2021 episode on the first generation of folk music, “Folk Music Stood for America”, we talked about how the music was swept up in the major social movements of the day, especially the socialist/ American Communist party movements which gathered speed because of events like the Great Depression and the Dustbowl. The second revival of the 1960’s also had its own causes; the war in Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Women’s movement primarily. The ‘60s was the era when all the WWII war babies grew up. Highly idealistic, they wanted to seize the moment in history and change the world for the better. Raised in the suburbs of the concensus-driven fifties, and living under the palatable fear of the Cold War, with Eishenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex ringing in their ears, seeing their classmates ship off to Vietnam, and shipped back home in body bags, they’d grown cynical about their parent’s generation and demanded change NOW. Folk music was the soundtrack to their rebellion; you could hear it played on college campuses all over America. Many of the musicians matched that idealism note for note. That’s the theme of today’s episode, Folk Music Played the Changes in American Society.
In 1963, Joan Baez made it a point to take physical-political risks; once, in Birmingham, Alabama, she walked a little black girl to her integrated school through a crowd of white racists.
Richie Havens - Freedom
In this era, American youth were divided into two groups, the Counterculture and the Movement. If you were part of the Counterculture, you came from the conservative middle-class, but you were pushing the boundaries toward a freer life-style; couples started living together before marriage, womens’ liberation, racial blending, freer use of “recreational substances” (i.e., drugs of all sorts). They were called “hippies.”
If you were part of the Movement, it meant you were primarily politically motivated. Stop the War college protests like Kent State – four dead in Ohio – The heat was turned up the highest where the two groups met, and the result was massive agitation against the “Military-Industrial Establishment.” So, they fought for new Civil Rights’ laws and against the Vietnam War (1961-1973). They were called “politicos” or “militants.”
Because All Men are Brothers – PP&M
Picture this moment in time: It’s 1963; 250,000 people are marching for Civil Rights and they converge on the Lincoln Memorial to hear Dr. Martin Luther King share his dream with the world.
MLK - I Have a Dream speech.
In the midst of this, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Bob Dylan, and especially Joan Baez are lending their voices and passion to rally the people forward. In news videos from the day, Joanie can be seen in the middle of the crowd, singing “We Shall Overcome.”
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll – Dylan
Dylan wrote the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll to imprint the image of how the Southern legal system had sentenced a white man to just six months in jail after having killed a barmaid in a drunken fit, for not having served him his drink fast enough. It was the third of his civil rights protest songs – The Death of Emmett Till, and Only a Pawn in their Game having come first – and in ‘Hattie Carroll’, Dylan has decided that everyone is to blame – the hateful racists, the broken legal system and even the liberals who “philosophize with their pens and criticize all fears.” Like many of Bob’s songs from this period, it’s a devastating song.
Draft Dodger Rag - Phil Ochs
Phil Ochs was another songwriter whose music elevated the Civil Rights movement. Early on, he’d shared the stage with Dylan in the Village. Ochs may have been the greatest of the sixties protest singer-songwriters. The writer, Leon Wieseltier of the Washingtonian and the New Republic, wrote that "Ochs was the most brilliant and serious and moving and funny singer of the '60s, the movement's most intelligent contribution to American popular music." He went on to write that Ochs "was never, in his criticism of the United States, uninformed or unsophisticated." Ochs left a deep impression on the folk scene during his career. His songs called for equal rights on one hand, and damned the establishment on the other. He celebrated the lives and villifed the deaths of black leaders like Medgar Evers.
A lot like Joan Baez, Phil Ochs was a constant presence in the places and times that mattered, like the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Even now, 46 years after his suicide by handgun, his songs are part of the repertoire of current folk singers.
His influences included – like everybody’s - Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger – but also the early rock and roll icons, like Buddy Holly and Elvis. We talked about both of them in our October ’21 episode, Hail Hail Rock and Roll recently. If you missed it, you might want to go back and check that one out….
Changes
His best-known songs include “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Changes,” “Draft Dodger Rag,” “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” “Power and the Glory,” “There but for Fortune,” “The War Is Over,” and “When I’m Gone.” His song “Crucifixion” compared the deaths of Jesus Christ and assassinated President John F. Kennedy. he was capable of writing beautiful, lyrical songs. Rolling Stone put it like this; "Och’s hgas a poet's soul with the gutsy bravado and knife-point writing of a seasoned press hound." The Brit folky, Billy Bragg said, "America has yet to produce another songwriter like him."
Since I mentioned that he ended his own life, you’ve probably deduced that he had a problem with depression. His mental decline could be seen in album covers and album titles like Rehearsals for Retirement and the songs were all reactions the terrible year of 1968, in which Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both assassinated, there was a police riot during the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and Richard Nixon, Mr. “I am not a crook…” and ‘let’s bomb Cambodia’. The cover featured his own gravestone – although he was not to die for another eight years.
Ochs is gone, but his music is still relevant. Search the web; you’ll find online discussion groups about Ochs and his music; websites that have music samples, photographs, and other links; and articles and books continue to be written and published about him.
I’m thinking about what genetics has been revealing about our ancient past. Our genetic code still contains about 5% neanderthal. The theory is that neanderthal man didn’t just disappear. His genes were absorbed into homo sapien, and we carry them around inside us today. The 1960’s folk movement is a lot like that, too. It never fully disappeared. Instead, it was combined with other musical forms that have appeared, and faded, grown and diminished over the decades. The beautiful thing, is that we can always go back and revisit the music that was left behind. In these songs, we can experience something of the hopes and dreams that made the 1960’s what they were. We can look back at the idealism and hope that the boomers used to have, we can see the causes so many people gave their all for. Many of the artists who rose up in the ‘60s folk revival were still to have their greatest hours in music in the decades ahead. Think about all the great albums Paul Simon released for decades afterwards. Graceland might be my favorite…. Or even Bob Dylan; just last week, I heard a music critic say that Murder Most Foul, from his 2020 album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, might be his greatest song ever.
Easy Target
As long as there are things that need saying, folk music will always have an important role in our national song book. Today, we’re living in times that might be more difficult than any we’ve ever known before. Because it’s plain spoken, and because it echoes the sound of our own homes, families, and friends, folk music continues to be relevant today.
In future episodes, we’ll continue to follow the path the music has taken.
I want to thank you, as always, for supporting this podcast, and spending some time with me. For the American Song podcast, this is Joe Hines. If you’re curious about the folk movment, you can review any of our sources for this episode at americansongpodcast.facebook.com Take Care!