chimesfreedom

Today in History: John Brown’s Body

On the morning of December 2 in 1859, the abolitionist John Brown was hanged in Virginia for treason and for inciting a slave insurrection.

That fall, Brown led 21 men on a raid of Harpers Ferry Armory in what is now West Virginia with the hope that others would join and there would be a slave uprising. That day, a baggage master who was a free black man became the first man killed by Brown’s group in their attempt to free the nation’s slaves.

Brown was an interesting person. Assessments indicate he was part demented and part prophet, part terrorist and part patriot, part genius and part failure, part hero and part villain, part powerful and part powerless. How do you classify a man who was so right in his cause? He died for what he believed, and he was right in his goal. As for his means . . . ?

John Brown's Grave (jlk) — Where John Brown\’s Body lies a\’mouldering.

The first shots fired at Harpers Ferry were the first shots of the Civil War. There were many connections between Brown and the upcoming war. At Harpers Ferry, Colonel Robert E. Lee led the U.S soldiers against Brown, and an army lieutenant named J.E.B. Stuart first talked to the raiders in negotiation attempts. In the audience for Brown’s December execution were John Wilkes Booth and Thomas Jonathan Jackson, who less than two years later would earn the nickname “Stonewall” on the battlefield.

Then, there is the song. Although the Pete Seeger version is more famous, here is an older version of “John Brown’s Body” by J.W. Myers in 1913. According to some accounts, the song started out as a fun song created by soldiers singing about a comrade named “John Brown,” and when others heard the song they assumed it was about John Brown the abolitionist and added verses to that effect. Then, of course, Julia Ward Howe created new lyrics for the music to create another song for the Union that you know from school: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

John Brown’s Body by J.W. Myers

Photos: John Brown (public domain); John Brown’s Grave (by Chimesfreedom)

“The Abolitionists”: A PBS Series That Makes Things Personal (Short Review)

Anniv. of Civil War’s Start: Elvis’s American Trilogy

Lee’s Surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House in April 1895

General John Sedgwick and His Last Words

Harriet Tubman and the $20 Bill

Gettysburg in Four Minutes

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Lonely Street: The Sad Story Behind “Heartbreak Hotel”

On December 9, 1955, Elvis Presley performed “Heartbreak Hotel” for the first time, although he would not record the song until a month later in January 1956. The song would eventually become a hit, but many listeners did not know that the song came from a tragic story.

“It’s gonna be my first hit.”

According to Ernst Jorgensen’s Elvis Presley: A Life in Music, the performance on Dec. 9 was at a club near Swifton, Arkansas before a full house of 250 people. The 20-year-old Elvis was already a regional star but he had yet to appear on national television. Having just moved from Sun Records to RCA, he sensed he was on the brink of something big.

That night in the Arkansas club, he played the songs he’d recorded for Sun and a few covers. Then, he introduced the new song, “I”ve got this brand new song and it’s gonna be my first hit.”

He was right. “Heartbreak Hotel” became Elvis Presley’s first Gold Record, selling more than a million copies. Rolling Stone Magazine has it listed as one of the greatest fifty songs of all-time. And when then presidential candidate Bill Clinton made his famous appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, he chose “Heartbreak Hotel” to play on his sax.

There’s something joyous about the way the song sounds, despite its sad lyrics. But there’s an even darker story underneath the inspiration for the song.

The Suicide That Inspired “Heartbreak Hotel”

Mae Boren Axton wrote the lyrics for “Heartbreak Hotel.” At the time, she was a schoolteacher and songwriter who would later be the mother of country singer and actor Hoyt Axton. The son would grow up to star in Gremlins and write “Joy the the World” (“Jeremiah was a bullfrog…”) as well as another song that Elvis would later sing, “Never Been to Spain.”

One day in 1955, Mae Axton and her friend Tommy Durden read a story in the Miami Herald about a man who had committed suicide. The man had no identification, and he only left a note with a few words on it: “I walk a lonely street.”

Axton, inspired by the note, sat down and wrote the lyrics to “Heartbreak Hotel,” locating the hotel of heartbreak on the street where the man walked. Tommy Durden wrote the music, and the song was complete in only one hour.

Nobody remembers the name or the life of the unfortunate man who wrote the suicide note. And of course, he never got to see that his final act of great agony led to poetry — and to millions of people screaming joyously and dancing to his final words of despair.

I bet he would have liked to have seen it.

And that is the story behind the song.

[July 2015 Update: See the comments below about a forthcoming book featuring new research on the story behind “Heartbreak Hotel.”]

Johnny Cash Imitating Elvis

How a Bull Moose, a Bear, and a Beetle Gave Elvis a Hit Song

Anniv. of Civil War’s Start: Elvis’s American Trilogy

Longing for the Freedom of My Chains: Dobie Gray’s “Loving Arms”

Chuck Jackson Was There Before Elvis: “Any Day Now”

Lisa Marie Presley and Elvis: “I Love You Because”

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts)

Missed Movies: Amelia

If you avoided the movie Amelia (2009) in the theater because of the bad reviews, you might want to check it out on DVD/Blu Ray/HBO. The movie about Amelia Earhart may not be a great movie, but it is an entertaining story about one of the most interesting people from the early twentieth century.

I may have a lower standard for biography movies than fictional movies because biopics have the added bonus of teaching me about events that actually happened while I also realize that the director and writer are restrained by true-life events. For example, because we don’t have the information, the movie rightfully avoids showing the actual crash that ended Earhart’s life in her 1937 attempt to circle the world, although it follows her up until the moment radio contact was lost. A fictional story would have been able to dramatize the crash. Further, biopics often are restrained to a certain formula to try to cover a large number of years in a person’s life and to make it a cohesive story. That’s one of the reasons that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was able to do such a funny send-up of otherwise excellent biopics like Ray and Walk the Line.

Amelia Earhart’s life was so ground-breaking it’s difficult to convey how important she was for aviation and women’s rights in less than two hours. But the movie does a good job in telling the story, with excellent acting from Hillary Swank as Earhart and Richard Gere as her husband, George Putnam.

One small piece of history I learned was that when Gore Vidal was a child, he knew Amelia Earhart because his father had a relationship with her. Gore has seen a lot of American history.

Earhart was an amazing person and aviation pioneer: first woman across the Atlantic as part of a crew in 1928, first woman and second person to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932, first person to fly solo across the Pacific between Hawaii and California, as well as a leadership role in several organizations promoting aviation. The movie does a decent job of telling the story, and it’s worth a rental.

Bonus History Tidbit: Who was the second person to fly an airplane non-stop across the Atlantic after Lindbergh? Clarence Chamberlin, although he carried a passenger. He was in the competition for the Orteig Prize money with Charles Lindbergh and others to be the first to fly an airplane across the Atlantic. He would have beaten Lindbergh, but a former navigator sued him and kept him grounded for awhile, which allowed Lindbergh to beat Chamberlin.

Chamberlin flew across the Atlantic on June 4-6, 1927. Lindbergh made his flight on May 20-21, 1927, winning by just two weeks. Had Chamberlin beaten Lindbergh, would Lindbergh still have been the national hero? It’s possible, as his was the first solo flight, but the media focus was on on being the first non-stop flight and winning the $25,000 Orteig prize, and Chamberlin would have won the prize if he were first. If Chamberlin had been the national hero, would that have spared Lindbergh the tragedy of his son being kidnapped and killed? Would it have spared America of seeing its national hero accused of being pro-Nazi? Few have heard of Chamberlin because Lindbergh beat him, and Chamberlin may have been the lucky one after all.

Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

Why Wasn’t Conviction a Best Picture Nominee? (Missed Movies)

Nicolas Cage Shines In Modest But Surprising “Pig” (Short Review)

Is “Captain Fantastic” Fantastic?

Runaway Train (Missed Movies)

Tommy Lee Jones and “The Homesman” (Missed Movies)

A Balance Between Culture and Fun: “In Bruges” (Missed Movies)

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Amelia

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you are traveling this holiday, put on some Ray Charles and enjoy the trip — just like these guys in the best Thanksgiving Day movie.

Even if you decide to “Mess Around,” have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

That Time Willie Nelson Got a Little Emotional Singing with Leon Russell and Ray Charles

Ray Charles & Barbra Streisand: “Crying Time” (Duet of the Day)

Full Concert of Ray Charles in 1981

Mary Gauthier’s Thanksgiving at the Prison

Billy on the Street Thanksgiving Parade

“I Thought Turkeys Could Fly”

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Bob Dylan and the Fine Line Between Love and Hate

The two Bob Dylan songs below, “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “Idiot Wind,” show a drastic range of human emotions. Like several of Dylan’s songs, these two were inspired by his first wife, Sara Lownds, who is also the mother of Jakob Dylan of the Wallflowers. The songs reflect the vast divide between being in love and being angry at one you once loved.

The first is “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” released as the final song on Blonde on Blonde in 1966, early in his 1965-1977 marriage to Lownds. (“Lowlands”/Lownds, get it?) The song is used to great effect in the movie “about” Bob Dylan, I’m Not There.

Although the lyrics are not a clear narrative, the poetry and the music convey pure affection: “With your silhouette when the sunlight dims / Into your eyes where the moonlight swims / And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns.”

The second song, is “Idiot Wind,” written almost a decade later in 1974 and released on Blood on the Tracks as the Dylan-Lownds relationship was crumbling. The performance below from the 1976 Rolling Thunder Tour is amazing for its intensity and venom. It’s Bob Dylan punk.

To Dylan’s surprise, Sara showed up at the concert, and he is performing it for her. You can see what he is feeling. This blog post title’s reference to “hate” is not really accurate, as I should describe it more as pain and anguish covered to seem like anger. But one may only guess her feelings hearing this song.

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You’re an idiot, babe.
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

There is some debate about how much of the song is really about Lownds and how much is about other things going on in Dylan’s life at the time. Dylan being Dylan, he leaves it ambiguous, as it is for the artist to let the listeners hear for themselves.

Below is the angry live performance during the Rolling Thunder Tour with Lownds in the audience. The performance, which is also available on the Hard Rain live album, is worth seeking out. If you’ve ever been angry at someone, put it on full screen and crank it up loud.

One of the brilliant touches is the final chorus where the angry finger-pointing evolves into a more understanding and humble “we’re idiots, babe. . . .” That line sounds more convincing in a slower and sadder version of the song he initially recorded for Blood on the Tracks before rerecording the song and replacing it with the angrier version that ended up on the album.

That alternate version is worth seeking out. It is available on the first official “Bootleg” series his record label released in 1991, and it is also available on various unofficial bootlegs of the New York City Sessions version of Blood on the Tracks. Check out this alternate slower and sadder version of “Idiot Wind” from the New York Sessions below.