English folksinger Ewan MacColl, who was born January 25, 1915, wrote a number of great songs like “Dirty Old Town” and “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face.” One of his most touching songs combines his political work with a personal story about his father, “My Old Man.”
In “My Old Man,” MacColl sings about his father. Socialist parents raised MacColl, who was born with the name James Miller, and their own activism surely influenced their son’s political work.
MacColl’s father was a Scottish foundry worker who was blacklisted by most factories because of his union activity. In “My Old Man,” MacColl uses his song to indict the capitalist system that can destroy human lives.
In “My Old Man,” MacColl also reveals his fondness for the man who helped bring him into the world. But he also reconsiders his father’s life: “He abandoned hope and the will to live / They killed him, my old man.” And he sees the life as a warning that he can pass on to his own son: “And my advice to you, my son,/ Is to fight back while you can.”
“My Old Man” is a tragic story and a touching song about fathers. I first heard the song during a performance by folksinger Charlie King.
MacColl’s performance of “My Old Man” below was made for Grenada Television in 1984. It features MacColl’s usual style of singing while cupping his ear. The recording was made only about four years before MacColl died in October 1989.
On June 15, 1920, residents of Duluth, Minnesota lynched three African-American circus workers: Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton and Elmer Jackson. An 8-year-old child named Abraham Zimmerman lived in Duluth at the time. And he grew up to have a son named Robert, who would later become famous with the name Bob Dylan. So, the lynching that Zimmerman witnessed eventually played a role in what American Songwriter has called Dylan’s sixth greatest song of all time.
Abe Zimmerman reportedly taught his son about the lynching. The lesson was similar to the way Woody Guthrie’s father told him about a lynching he had witnessed (that similarly inspired Guthrie to write an excellent song). Zimmerman’s story of the lynching in Minnesota and its aftermath eventually provided the imagery for the opening of Dylan’s “Desolation Row.”
The Crime and Arrests
In 1920, McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson worked with the John Robinson Circus as cooks or laborers. On the morning of June 15, James Sullivan called the police. He told them that one night earlier his eighteen-year-old son and his son’s nineteen-year-old companion Irene Tusken had been held at gunpoint. Sullivan reported that his son told him that Tusken had been raped.
Reportedly, there was no physical evidence of the rape. But the Duluth police rounded up around 150 circus workers. Then, the police asked the teens to identify the attackers among the circus workers.
Six African-American men were arrested — including McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson. Then, tensions rose in the community. Newspapers reported on the arrests and rumors spread around town.
The Lynchings
Eventually, a mob of 6,000-10,000 stormed into the jail. They met little or no resistance from the police. They broke into the cells where they could, and they took McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson.
First, the mob beat and hanged Isaac McGhie from a lamp post, despite the objections of a priest. Then, they similarly beat and hanged Elmer Jackson and Elias Clayton.
The Minnesota National Guard arrived the next day to protect the three remaining prisoners. But they were too late to help McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson.
Three men in the mob were convicted of rioting. Each served less than 15 months in prison. Nobody was convicted of murder.
Seven of the remaining circus laborers were indicted for rape, and one man was convicted. Further, eventually it came out that Sullivan’s teen-aged son had made up the story of the rape that had set everything in motion.
As was the case with many lynchings of African-Americans during the early twentieth century, photos of the lynching were taken and sent as postcards. The photo features Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, both shirtless, hanging from the street light with Elias Clayton’s body on the sidewalk,. Members of the mob lean in to be part of the photo. Part of the photo is at the top of this post, but you may see the entire photo postcard here (warning: graphic image).
Desolation Row
Bob Dylan was born only 21 years after the lynching, and so he may have seen the photo postcards that circulated in the area. Thus, he begins his epic song “Desolation Row” with a reference to these photographs.
They’re selling postcards of the hanging; They’re painting the passports brown; The beauty parlor is filled with sailors; The circus is in town.
The song continues, perhaps with “the blind commissioner” being a reference to the failures of the police to protect the three men. Of course, it is generally impossible to interpret every line of a Dylan song.
Yet, it is clear that the lynching is the jumping off point as Dylan delves into a number of themes. “Desolation Row” continues with references to the circus imagery that provided the setting for the Duluth lynching.
Here comes the blind commissioner, They’ve got him in a trance; One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, The other is in his pants; And the riot squad they’re restless, They need somewhere to go; As Lady and I look out tonight From Desolation Row.
“Desolation Row” features some of Dylan’s greatest images, including the opening about the postcards of the hanging. In the book Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager describes the song as “science fiction noir where mythology and history’s heroes and heels lurk in the shadows of every alleyway.” He concludes that the song “is perhaps the the most nightmarish vision in Dylan’s canon.”
Legacy
It remains a mystery whether the three lynched men had committed any crime or whether the story was completely fabricated by the teen-aged boy. Race played a significant role in the lynching, and even today in typical criminal cases we know that eyewitness testimony is generally unreliable.
The 1920 lynching, either way, was certainly a tragedy. Mob mentality and racial animosity took the lives of the three men.
Historically, lynchings occurred most often in the South against African-American men. But it was not unusual for lynchings to take place in the North. There were at least 219 people lynched in northern states from 1889 to 1918. Although times have changed, we still see echoes of these acts of racial violence in the news today.
The Duluth lynching, in particular, has haunted those connected to it in various ways. The great-grandson of one of the Duluth lynchers wrote a book several years ago called The Lyncher In Me.
And Dylan’s “Desolation Row” is another kind of postcard of the hanging. In the song, the lynching image mingles with other pictures that continue to haunt old and new listeners.
Partial photo of lynching via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.
The shooting early this morning in an Orlando nightclub became the deadliest single-day mass shooting in the history of the United States. There are no words for the tragedy, even while the media tries to sort through the gunman’s motivations when he singled out the Florida gay nightclub for his horrible act.
The politicians will have many words in the upcoming weeks, connecting the shooting to their issues, rightly or wrongly. We will hear more about the shooter’s affiliations and we will again debate a killer’s ability to gain access to weapons. And most likely, they will fail to agree on a solution.
At times like this one, it can sometimes be helpful to turn off the TVs and seek comfort in music. Maybe eventually there will be some hope that will lead us to songs like Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” But today, we can only think about the victims.
Along those lines, one of the sweetest songs about losing someone comes from Bruce Springsteen’s “The Last Carnival.” While the song was written about the loss of E Street Band member Danny Federici, it still seems appropriate for a wider meaning.
Moon rise, moon rise, the light that was in your eyes is gone away; Daybreak, daybreak, the thing in you that made me ache has gone to stay; We’ll be riding the train without you tonight, The train that keeps on moving.
It’s black smoke scorching the evening sky; A million stars shining above us like every soul living and dead Has been gathered together by God to sing a hymn Over the old bones.
Photo by Chimesfreedom. What is your favorite song of comfort? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On June 12, 1920, Republicans at their National Convention in Chicago nominated Warren Gamaliel Harding for president. Harding’s career continues to divide commentators, with much of the debate on whether he was a horrible president or a president who did some okay things. In addition to those debates about Harding’s career, recent stories about Harding have focused on scandals from his personal life.
A Compromise Candidate at the Convention
Before the convention in 1920, Ohio Senator Harding earlier had been a favorite for the nomination. But by the time the convention started, there were a number of other strong candidates.
Through eight ballots, other candidates received more votes than Harding. Finally, Harding took the lead in the ninth ballot as a compromise between divided voters. Then, the man who was born in Blooming Grove, Ohio on November 2, 1865 won the nomination on the tenth ballot.
A Landside Win
In the fall, Harding and his vice-president candidate Calvin Coolidge won in a landslide, stressing a campaign promise of a return to normalcy. Harding defeated the Democrat ticket of James M. Cox, who like Harding was from Ohio.
Cox was the only person of the 1920 major presidential and vice-presidential candidates who would never sit in the White House. Cox’s vice-presidential candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would be diagnosed with polio less than a year after the election, became president for more than a decade starting in 1933.
Harding’s tenure in the White House was much shorter than Roosevelt’s. In a little more than two years after Harding took office on March 4, 1921, he became ill. And he died from a cerebral hemorrhage on August 2, 1923. Coolidge then became president.
One of the Worst Presidents of All Time?
Despite his short term in office, Harding is largely regarded as one of the worst presidents of all time. For example, U.S. News & World Report has him as the second-worst president of all time.
A wide spectrum of experts and writers are critical of Harding, who was born on November 2, 1865. A recent poll of scholars ranked the twenty-ninth president among the worst presidents.
I remember one of my favorite miniseries from the 1970s, Centennial, about the settling of Colorado, invoked Harding’s name in a non-flattering way. In the final episode, Paul Garrett (David Janssen) referred to Warren G. Harding as one of the “most useful Americans who ever lived.” Garrett explains that Harding created a benchmark for how bad politicians could be. Thus, whenever a politician takes office, they should think of Harding and say, “I will never allow myself to be that bad.”
Harding’s bad reputation largely centers on his lack of leadership while appointing friends who used their offices for financial gain. The most famous example is the Teapot Dome scandal that occurred under his presidency.
Reassessing Harding’s Presidency
Not everybody hates Harding, though. The Warren Harding Home and Museum in Marion, Ohio shows visitors a video that focuses more on the positive aspects of Harding’s life and career.
Similarly, some recently have argued that we should reassess Warren G. Harding’s presidency as pretty good. They claim he stabilized the country, and they argue that his legacy should not be destroyed by scandals where he had no direct involvement. Yet, most still assert that Harding was under-qualified and his actions and in-actions created problems and allowed for the corruption.
Personal Scandals
Beyond the political scandals, there is another side of Harding involving personal scandals. It is these scandals that have garnered Harding more attention in recent years.
Historians have long known Harding was a womanizer, but in 2014 the Library of Congress unsealed some of Harding’s letters that showed a little more of Harding’s personality. The letters, written before and during his tenure as a U.S. senator, were to his lover Carrie Fulton Phillips, who was the wife of a Marion, Ohio, store owner.
In the following segment, John Oliver from Last Week Tonight, gives a brief recap of some of the juicy parts, including Harding’s preference for referring to a certain part of his anatomy as “Jerry.”
Harding was married for 33 years until his death in 1923, but Phillips was not Harding’s only other lover. In 2015, DNA testing confirmed that Harding had fathered a child with Nan Britton during the same period in which he was writing the love letters to Phillips.
Why do we care about Harding’s love life? One may make the case that we should not dig around the private lives of politicians. But when it comes to history, perhaps understanding a little more about Harding may help us understand him as a flawed human being instead of just a ranking on worst presidents lists.
Photo via Library of Congress. Who do you think was the worst president of all time? Leave your two cents in the comments.
A lot of folks are excited about the forthcoming album from Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle that is produced by Buddy Miller. The teaming of three of my favorite artists should make for some great music, hopefully. From a project with three outstanding songwriters, it is interesting that the album includes four cover songs, including a cover of The Rolling Stones’s classic “Ruby Tuesday.”
In a recent interview, Earle noted that he brought “Ruby Tuesday” to Colvin, and the two had sung it previously on tour. He explained that although the song is so well known, their version is new: “it has a reason to exist is because we sing in harmony all the way through it.”
On the song on the album, Colvin plays the guitar while Earle plays an octave mandolin. As he explains, “I get to be Mick and Keith. I sing the melody on the verses and Keith’s part on the choruses and I get to be Brian Jones because I’m playing the weird instrument.”
Below is a live performance of Colvin & Earle singing “Ruby Tuesday” live from earlier this year. Check it out.
The album Colvin & Earle will hit stores and the Internet on June 10, 2016.
What do you think of the “Ruby Tuesday” cover by Colvin & Earle? Leave your two cents in the comments.
As was the case with many lynchings of African-Americans during the early twentieth century, photos of the lynching were taken and sent as postcards. The photo features Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, both shirtless, hanging from the street light with Elias Clayton’s body on the sidewalk,. Members of the mob lean in to be part of the photo. Part of the photo is at the top of this post, but you may see the entire photo postcard 
.
Below is an early live version from 1965.
, Oliver Trager describes the song as “science fiction noir where mythology and history’s heroes and heels lurk in the shadows of every alleyway.” He concludes that the song “is perhaps the the most nightmarish vision in Dylan’s canon.”
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The shooting early this morning in an Orlando nightclub became the 
On June 12, 1920, Republicans at 
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will hit stores and the Internet on June 10, 2016.
