Wars for 'Fortunate Sons'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Said to have been written in about 20 minutes, John Fogerty 's 'Fortunate Son' is most often described as "anti-establishment". It was and remains a celebration of 'blue collar pride', a musical 'flip-off' of ruling elites, the sole beneficiaries of the Viet Nam war. These 'ruling elites' are correctly identified with the Washington 'establishment' --an entrenched axis of K-street and the 'Military-Industrial Complex'!

Recall a time when Richard Nixon was President! Essential CCR personnel --John Fogerty and Doug Clifford --were drafted in 1966 but discharged in 1967. Fogerty was no fan of Nixon; he believed that Nixon's cronies received preferential treatment. He was most surely correct!

As more recent events have proven, the song was prescient; the words 'fortunate son' seem now to describe a President who was, in fact, the son of a former President, a former President who had been head of the CIA --George H.W. Bush! His 'fortunate son' would himself become President as a result of a questionable, if not crooked, SCOTUS decision following what was most surely a stolen election in Florida. It is a 'fortunate son', indeed, who rises to the nation's top office at the end of a suspicious vote recount leading to an equally crooked decision of the Supreme Court, a decision that is remembered as much for the meaningless verbal circumlocutions of one A. Scalia as it is for some eight years each of which may be described as 'annus horribillis'!

The song by CCR was, in fact, supportive of soldiers in the field but forcibly makes the point that those serving in Viet Nam did so because they were the sons of working class people --not Senators. They were the sons of ordinary Americans --not well-connected right wing politicians or justices of a court that is now forever tainted!

Credence performed 'Fortunate Son' on the Ed Sullivan Show. Back in the sixties, the producers of the Ed Sullivan show had not yet figured out that CCR's song was a pointed damnation of an unfair war in Viet Nam! Had they figured that out in advance, CCR might never have gotten the exposure.

Just as Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The U.S.A." is a pointed protest, so too is 'Fortunate Son' though many have thought both to be 'patriotic anthems! The opposite is true! Consider the lines: "And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief" Ooh, they're pointin' the cannon at you...!"

Fogerty is often asked what inspired him to write 'Fortunate Son'! His response:

"Julie Nixon was hanging around with David Eisenhower, and you just had the feeling that none of these people were going to be involved with the war. In 1969, the majority of the country thought morale was great among the troops, and like eighty percent of them were in favor of the war. But to some of us who were watching closely, we just knew we were headed for trouble.

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Beans, Biscuits, and Blues

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Since posting my modest tribute to E. L. Doctorow's novel, Ragtime, and his take on the US Constitution, I have been thinking more about Ragtime as a musical idiom. In fact, I have been thinking about music, in general --how it makes lasting impressions, how it shapes our early lives, how political it can be, how interwoven it is with with all levels of culture. Music is essential to the art of being human. I can't promise to deal adequately with any or all of those still half-formed ideas. But I will share with you some music that I like and would not like to be without.

Anything written about Ragtime must begin, of course, with Scott Joplin. The son of a former slave, Scott Joplin was born around 1868 in the little town of Linden, TX. The precise date is in dispute. It fair to say, however, that by the time he sold Maple Leaf Rag to John Stark and Son music publishers of Sedalia, MO, he had already absorbed a classical music education from a German classical musician --Julius Weiss --and a study of theory, harmony, and composition at George R. Smith College in Sedalia. By that time, he had heard the John Philip Sousa band. It would have made an impression.

Joplin had ambitions for his new syncopated music that he and perhaps one or two other "professors" invented. Professor, of course, was the term used to designate parlor piano players in houses of ill repute.

Like rock, disco, and rap, Ragtime swept the nation but not without opposition from "high brows" who never lacked a derogatory or racist epithet to describe it. Nevertheless, Joplin crafted a new, energetic music that typified even more than Sousa the nervous energy that was America at that time.

Joplin himself took his music seriously. As if to declare his belief to the world, he wrote a Ragtime opera: Treemonisha. Sadly, it was not performed in his lifetime cut short by his death from syphilis. It was left to the Houston Grand Opera to become the first opera company in America to present Scott Joplin's Treemonisha. Building upon its success, HGO would become the first major opera company to produce the most faithful version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. HGO boasts that it is the only opera company in the world to win a Tony, two Grammy and two Emmy Awards. The New York Times calls the Houston Grand Opera "the jewel in the cultural crown." The Tony, as I recall was for Treemonisha.

There is a dearth of real Ragtime music to be found on the internet. Ragtime is not a music to be tossed off as an afterthought. Too many would-be players of Ragtime fail to play the music; they punish the music and the poor piano they bang it out on. Serious, talented musicians often completely miss the point by playing rags too fast, too loud, or jazzed up. I wish the would just show a little respect.

A great rag doesn't need jazzing up. It doesn't need to be made sophisticated. It doesn't need to be played too loud or too fast. As Mozart said of his own music, there are just as many notes in a Joplin rag as the rag requires. A great Joplin rag, like the Maple Leaf Rag, can carry the player, if only he/she will but surrender to it.

If you overlook the sound quality, the following is one of the best that I've found on the net.

Ragtime was played in what are euphemistically called "Houses of Ill Repute". The pianists were called "professors" and competitions between them were called "cutting contests".

Growing up in Odessa, TX, I was, naturally, exposed to Honky Tonk music. At that place and time, there was, in fact, no hope of escaping it. This was a time when C&W stars like Hank Williams began incorporating some swing and blues into what had been a strictly "bluegrass" genre. However, if you listen closely to Bill Monroe, you will hear notes as blue as any played by Louis Armstrong. As a tribute to the many "Honky Tonk" musicians whose juke box lullabies on Second St lulled me to sleep each night, here are Hank Williams and Patsy Cline:

Hank Williams - Honky tonk blues
Uploaded by Roselyne14

Patsy Cline - Lovesick Blues
Uploaded by soulpatrol

Barely a teenager in Odessa, I met, at a block party, a musician who was destined to make rock history. You may have heard of him. The musician who would one day be a legend was Roy Orbison. The video that follows was recorded in Los Angeles for HBO in September 1988. Sadly, Roy passed away on December 6, 1988. Orbison is a rock legend admired by the Beatles who held him in awe. Watch this clip from Black and White Night. Count the number of superstars --Springsteen, Jennifer Warnes, Elvis Costello, K.D.Lang et al. They were not merely content but honored to have been playing on the same stage with this ol' country boy from Wink, TX.

In those days, Orbison's band was called the Teen Kings. They could be seen and heard every Saturday afternoon on the local TV station - KOSA-TV. Here is a link to one of the better histories that I have been able to find about Roy Orbison, especially his days in Odessa, TX.

Much later, Roy comes back in what seems in retrospect to have been if not another life, at least, a rebirth. He is seen here teamed up with K.D. Lang to perform one of his legendary hits: Cryin'

It was only fitting that I conclude this loosely connected collection of American music with a Patsy Cline standard. The following clip is from the movie "Sweet Dreams" with Jessica Lange as Patsy Cline. Lange admitted that she couldn't sing. She most certainly lip-synced Cline's unmistakable voice.

Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in 1963. She was only 30 at the height of her fame and career. Nevertheless, she is remembered and recognized to have been one of the most influential female vocalists of her era.

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Of Rock, Protest, and Golden Ages

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In response to my previous article in which the sixties were mentioned with some nostalgia, I got this email from Dr. John H. Lienhard of the University of Houston:

During the '60s I looked around at the complexity of life and dreamt about my simpler world of the '30s.

Lienhard hosts the nationally syndicated The Engines of Our Ingenuity, a radio series about how our culture is formed by human creativity. His program must be listed among all those things that are right and good about American culture. Check your local NPR radio outlet. There is a good chance that you can tune in --as we were urged to do in the sixties.

The point Dr. Lienhard made about nostalgia is timely. Like the sixties, these are times of great disillusionment. In the sixties, we were as frustrated with the course of war and politics as many are today. Perhaps the "soundtrack" was better but that's my subjective opinion honed upon the timeless classics like Blowin' in the Wind, The Eve of Destruction, and, from Woodstock, the infamous:

I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag

Hey Jude, White Room, and, of course, Joan Baez:

And, of course, Bob Dylan, who became the conscience not just of our generation, but, as Johnson said of Shakespeare, "he was not of an age, but for all time."

Bob Dylan - Hard Rain A Gonna Fall par karim-75011
A Hard Rain A-Gonna Fall
envoyé par karim-sarroub. - Clip, interview et concert.

I was born just days before Adolph Hitler took his own life in the bunker. About four months later, the US would drop two nuclear devices on two cities in Japan. I have vague, near infantile recollections of hearing a "pop" song about "the" bomb on the radio. In the early 70's the distinguished scholar, Jacob Bronouski, in Science and Human Values would, likewise, associate a pop song with the end of a "Golden Age" that nuclear weaponry portends. That song was "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?". Bronouski was touring Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the head of the British team sent to assess the damage:

I had blundered into this desolate landscape as instantly as one might wake among the craters of the moon. The moment of recognition when I realized that I was already in Nagasaki is present to me as I write, as vividly as when I lived it. I see the warm night and the meaningless shapes; I can even remember the tune that was coming from the ship. It was a dance tune which had been popular in 1945, and it was called “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby…?” The power of science for good and for evil has troubled other minds than ours…. Nothing happened in 1945 except that we changed the scale of our indifference to man; and conscience, in revenge, for an instant became immediate to us…civilization face to face with its own implications. The implications are both the industrial slum which Nagasaki was before it was bombed, and the ashy desolation which the bomb made of the slum. And civilization asks of both ruins, “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby?”

-Jacob Bronouski, Science and Human Values

Johnny Mercer wrote a 1943 version of Is You is or is You Ain't My Baby. I am inclined to believe that the recording Bronouski heard was by Louis Jordan, an American Rhythm and Blues pioneer who was born July 08, 1908 in Brinkley, Arkansas and died Feb 04, 1975 in Los Angeles. An Answer.com entry lists a "Representative Song" as Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby

The concept of the "Golden Age" is brought to mind. Moderns may discount this ancient idea, but it is nevertheless ingrained in the human psyche. Europeans and Americans will most probably associate the concept with the Greek spectrum of Iron, Bronze, Silver and Gold. In western tradition a "Golden Age" often ends in disaster, a flaming Götterdämerung. Ancient Vedic texts often interpret history in terms of alternating dark and golden ages.

Then there are the very arcane concepts that may be found in the relatively obscure work of former MIT professor of history, Giorgio de Santillana, not to be confused with Georges Santayana who wrote: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it." Santillana, rather, dealt with myths, legends, story as all related to human culture. In his book, Hamlet's Mill, he posits a zodiacal precession caused by a verifiable tilting of the equator. Thus for ancient peoples, he wrote, time and the cycles of change "came into being".

The "untuning of the sky" was, in fact, an actual event. It requires a momentary suspension of our modern mentality to allow that ancients might have found in this event a beginning of time and, eventually, a re-alignment of the heavens that would usher in a new "Golden Age". Walter Cruttenden, author of Lost Star of Myth and Time, believes the cycle of the ages has a basis in fact indirectly due to the motion of the solar system around another star. The point, rather, is not whether ancients were right or wrong. The point is that the idea of a Golden Age seems ingrained. At worst, golden ages are depicted in myth and art as primitive Arcadia.

The loss of Golden Age seems always associated or caused by those things associated with civilization such as war. A return to Arcadia seems always to beckon just below the wakeful human consciousness. Is it ingrained or learned? Is "Arcadia" lost upon achieving civilization. Was Rousseau correct? Was Voltaire wrong?

I recall an infant dream in which I floated effortlessly down a wide but gentle river. The trees on either side grew taller, denser, darker as I drifted. At last the branches overhead met and merged, forming a lovely intricate, crystalline lattice. The woods on either side were, to borrow a phrase from Robert Frost, "lovely, dark and deep". Had I tapped into the human, sub-concious desire to return to a gentle, golden age?

A closing thought in video:

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