I had the pleasure of being guest presenter on my son-in-law, Martin Myles's radio programme, The Kitchen Sink. Guest presenter on episode168, to be pedantic (as each of us is). My pleasant role was to select three tracks, and to introduce them to the listening audience (and to Martin).
Martin's programme, aired in the evening on community radio, presented music from Martin's personal collection accompanied by his expert commentary. An indication of the flavour of The Kitchen Sink can be gotten from the names of the artists who performed the first few tracks that night - Big Dish, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Weather Report, World Party, Adrian Belew, Dream Academy. Anything that a virgo septuagenarian (as I then was) might choose to play would inevitably be a cuckoo in that nest. But we all survived; and so did the broadcast - Martin had installed a recording device...........
Thanks, Martin. The first track is from Charles Trenet, French singer and songwriter. I suppose he ought to be called Sharle Trenet. Trenet lived from 1913 through into the 21st Century, into February 2001; so he died aged 88 - a long and successful career. He was probably the most prominent of all the French popular singers. He wrote his own songs and is said to have written close to a thousand. His policy was to record only his own songs, so any Trenet recording you hear will be featuring a song that he composed.
His most famous song, the one that we're going to hear tonight, is La Mer, The Sea. He was said to have composed it while riding on a train in 1943 but put it in a bottom drawer because he thought it was not suitable to the sort of swing-type popular music of the time; but he did record it in 1946.
There are more than 400 cover versions of La Mer, including a whole bunch of them based on a re-written version of the song, called Beyond the Sea, which was made famous by Bobby Darrin, I guess in the '60s or the '70s.
The version we're going to hear is, I should have thought, the 1946 original version, that's the one that I grew up with and was played on the radio back in the '40s and '50s. But I've discovered another version, which seems to be much older than the one we're going to play; and it's a totally different song, in the sense that it's played at a sort of dance-band beat, dancing music. At the time Trenet's voice was much lighter - totally different effect. Anyway, we're playing the version that is famous and you'll hear that the voice is much deeper and more mature, and I should have expected a much older man than he apparently was when the recording was made. So La Mer.........
La Mer - Charles Trenet
I think that that's a very sweet song, and it's surprising that he thought at the outset that it wouldn't be a seller or a goer. And I think it was only when he slowed it down a little, and dropped his voice a little, and with different orchestration, that it became a world hit, really a world hit.
Now we're going to hear the song Joe Hill. We're going to hear it twice, two different versions; and I wanted to do that by way of contrasting how a song has a traditional way of being presented, and how it's changed by subsequent generations and different interpreters.
Joe Hill, as a person, was an American labour activist early in the twentieth century, in the early 1900s, a hundred years ago. In those days many trades unions were banned, or at least in many States trades unions were banned then. They weren't as progressive as we - as we had become - in Australia, and Joe Hill was one of those people who was regarded as a sort of professional agitator, and who went from mine site to mine site "causing trouble".
The reason for the song is that in a small town there was a grocer and his son who were murdered by intruders, and Joe Hill on the very same day appeared in hospital with a gunshot wound; and he said it was through a lover's quarrel, and nobody believed him. And he wouldn't reveal the name of the woman involved, and her other lover, and he was tried and executed by firing squad. The story goes that at the end of the day Joe Hill didn't spill the beans because he thought he'd be more useful to the labour movement as a dead martyr than he would be as a live activist.
That's how it came about. Some years later (he was executed in 1915)......it wasn't until 1936 that this song was written, and it took off as a song of protest, something that was subscribed to by members of the union movement and those who were happy to proclaim that Joe Hill was a martyr.
Now the principal exponent of the song was Paul Robeson. Robeson was an Afro-American; and I'm happy to quote a line I read somewhere: "He was one of the most accomplished human beings in history." This is a pretty bold statement. He was the son of a clergyman. He was born, fortunately for him, in one of the northern states of the United States, so he wasn't in the south. He grew up in the north, not exactly rich, but certainly not suffering terrible hardship.
He won a scholarship: his brains got him into Rutgers University, only the third ever black person to be admitted to that university, and the only one there at the time. He was not only academically brilliant but he was a star of track and field, and basketball, and baseball, and he was in the football team - the American football team - as an all-American. His sporting prowess was second to none.
He went on to Columbia law school, got a law degree; but it was the theatre that got him in. He acted in plays. It turned out he had a voice as well, and this voice is one of the most profoundly beautiful voices of the twentieth century. He was on Broadway. He acted in first performances of Eugene O'Neill plays. He spent time in London. He played Othello: he played Othello on Broadway for more than 200 performances, the longest ever season of a Shakespearian play.
So he was profoundly gifted. Unfortunately for him he was also involved in the human rights movement, and he fell foul of the establishment and fell foul of important people; and he found that other countries did better things for their workers than did America at the time.
He spent a lot of time in England, made ten movies there. Indeed he could speak twenty languages. He also spent a lot of time in Russia, and unfortunately he was a bit bewitched by Stalin and what the Communist system was doing at the time, and thought it was the way to freedom for the workers, and he didn't see that one man's freedom can be another man's despotism. And that's what was going on in Russia - he didn't see that.
But he caused such a lot of trouble at home that he was in grave difficulty with the FBI and ultimately, in the 1940s, they took away his passport and he couldn't leave his own country for ten years. During that time his health declined. He died at the age of 77; with a bit of a comeback towards the end in his fortunes and reputation.
You can't take away the voice though, and that's what we're going to be hearing tonight. A brilliant singer.
Now at one time, towards the end of his career, he came to Sydney, and he actually went to the Sydney Opera House while it was under construction, pulled up his car, and sang to the workers, and they all came down, sat on the scaffolding. There's a film of that, you can see it on YouTube; and one of the songs he sang there was Joe Hill, the song we're going to hear tonight.
Now the second version of this is by John McCutcheon. John McCutcheon is an American folk singer, currently aged 61. He was born in 1952. He also focusses on singing socially conscious songs, and this performance is recorded at a performing arts centre called Wolftrap, which is just out of Washington DC. Wolftrap was bequeathed to the nation, a theatre was built into it, and it holds all sorts of functions - including John McCutcheon.
John McCutcheon sings Joe Hill with quite an extensive introduction as to how he came to be singing it. A lot of it is boloney, actually. For instance he tells us that Paul Robeson was an opera singer, which he never was. Nevertheless it's a very affectionate introduction to his revival if you like of the song and the revival of interest in Paul Robeson. Here we go, Joe Hill.............
Joe Hill - John McCutcheon
Joe Hill - Paul Robeson
Martin: Pretty unmistakeable voice, there.
Gary: Yes it is. I could listen to it forever.
Martin: I was just reflecting on your mini-bio of his, and how he seems like one of these gifted individuals who could have taken his life in all sorts of directions, but presumably chose his first love although he was no doubt capable of so many other things.
Gary: Well, I suppose it's because his life was framed in a situation of underprivileged black America. There were occasions when he went to perform and couldn't get into the hotel in the town. That sort of thing. There was one hotel apparently on the west coast where it was the only hotel in town that would admit him, and so he sang in their foyer every day for two hours to pay them back for their - their farsightedness, I suppose. All the time it was full on, all those years of his life he was fighting the good fight as he saw it. In the end it brought him undone, he lost his mind, really; had lots of breakdowns; and in the last ten years of his life he was really housebound, and unable to do any of the things that he really loved to do.
Martin: And the John McCutcheon version. As you said, a quite different version, much more in the folk tradition I suppose. How did you come by John McCutcheon in general?
Gary: Actually I heard that track played on the radio, that was all. I thought, that's so good I have to have that.
Martin: And it came complete with the introduction on the radio as well?
Gary: Yes.
Martin: I did like the story, although as you said it's a little flawed, not necessarily apocryphal, but loosely based on fact you might say.
Gary: Well, it was entertaining for the audience.
Martin: It was entertaining for the audience, exactly right.
********************
La Mer
[English version]
We see dancing along the shores of clear bays,
Shimmers with silver
The sea
Changing shimmers
Under the rain
The sea
With the summer sky
Mix up her white horses
With the angels so pure
The infinite azure shepherdess
Sea
Sea
By the ponds
Those big wet reeds
See
Those white birds
And those rusty houses
The sea
Has cradled them
Along the shores of clear bays
And with a love song
The sea
Has rocked my heart for life
Joe Hill
[per John McCutcheon]
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you or me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead",
"I never died", said he.
"I never died", said he.
The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe", says I.
"It takes more than guns to kill a man".
Says Joe, "I didn't die".
Says Joe, "I didn't die".
And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes,
says Joe, "What they could never kill
went on to organize."
"Went on to organize."
From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where workers fight to win their rights,
it's there you find Joe Hill.
It's there you find Joe Hill.
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead".
"I never died", says he.
"I never died", says he.
[Additional verses]
"In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
Him standing by my bed,
"They framed you on a murder charge,"
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,"
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."
"Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
"Joe Hill ain't never died.
Where working men are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side."
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