Johnny Cash, who passed away in September 2003, recorded a moving duet with his daughter Rosanne Cash on “September When It Comes.”
I plan to crawl outside these walls, Close my eyes and see. And fall into the heart and arms, Of those who wait for me.
The month makes me think of the lovely duet between Johnny Cash and his daughter Rosanne Cash on “September When It Comes.” The song appeared on Rosanne’s excellent album, Rules of Travel (2003), and she wrote it with her husband and producer John Leventhal. The song is a reflection on mortality, and it is given extra gravitas by the voice of the ailing Johnny, who passed away on September 12, 2003, just months after the CD was released.
A video of the song was shown at the Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute concert held in November 2003 at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Rosanne Cash’s website explains that many of the photos in the montage came from the family’s private photo collection and had never been seen by the public before this tribute.
The tribute concert is no longer on YouTube, but the following seems to be the same video used at the tribute concert. This official video from Rosanne Cash features amazing family photos.
I particularly love the song’s beautiful lines about aging and remembering one’s youth and recognizing that maybe it was not quite as one remembers it.
I cannot move a mountain now; I can no longer run. I cannot be who I was then: In a way, I never was.
I often do not remember the dates that people died for various reasons. But because of Johnny Cash’s duet on “September When It Comes,” I cannot help remembering that he passed away during the month of September. Of course, September will always be a month that our generation of Americans associate with mortality because of the terrorist attacks that occurred in 2001. So, in honor of Johnny and others who passed away in Septembers past, lets resolve to enjoy these September days because you never know how many more will come.
What is your favorite photo in the montage of the “September When It Comes” tribute? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On October 6, 2008 at Eastern Michigan University, as the U.S. faced a deep financial crisis, one of the country’s biggest living rock stars took the stage to sing on behalf of a United States presidential candidate. As Bruce Springsteen began strumming his guitar, the candidate stood in a tent behind the scenes with his family. The candidate, who would be elected the country’s first African-American president a month later, sang to his children and danced to the chorus of “This Land Is Your Land.”
“This Land Is Your Land,” along with “America the Beautiful,” is an unofficial national anthem. But this song that presidents sing — and that sometimes is sung in response to presidents’ actions — began as something different. It was written by a non-conforming down-and-out American troubadour more than seventy-five years earlier.
The Origins of “This Land Is Your Land”
Before “This Land Is Your Land” became a beloved American standard, it was a protest song. According to Joe Klein’s book Woody Guthrie: A Life, the 27-year-old Woody Guthrie began writing the song in 1940 out of anger and frustration.
At the time, Guthrie was living alone in a run-down hotel called Hanover House near Times Square in New York. He had moved there after wearing out his welcome as a house guest with singer-actor Will Geer and his wife Herta.
Having seen the struggles of common people across America, Guthrie turned his frustration on Irving Berlin’s portrayal of a perfect America in “God Bless America.” Radio disc jockeys repeatedly played Berlin’s song on the radio in the 1930s. In response, Guthrie began writing a song with the sarcastic title “God Blessed America”:
This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to Staten Island, From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters, God Blessed America for Me.
Guthrie wrote five more verses ending with the refrain “God Blessed America for me.” And one verse reported on the men and women standing in lines for food.
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple, By the relief office I saw my people — As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me.
Guthrie continued to work on the song. He soon changed “Staten Island” in the refrain to “New York Island.” And he put the lyrics to the tune of the Carter Family’s “Little Darlin’, Pal of Mine.”
The Carter Family, though, did not originally write the music. They took the tune of “Little Darlin’, Pal of Mine” from the Baptist hymn, “Oh My Lovin’ Brother.”
After Guthrie finished “God Blessed America for Me” on February 23, 1940, he put the song away. The song then sat untouched for several years.
Then, in April 1944, Guthrie began recording a large number of songs for record executive Moe Asch. During the last recording session that month, Guthrie pulled out the old protest song. By now, it had a new tag line and a new title, “This Land Is Your Land.”
The recorded version of “This Land Is Your Land” did not include the verse about the relief office. One may speculate about the reasons, but Guthrie may have made the changes for a nation at war. Or perhaps he no longer saw a need to respond to “God Bless America.”
The artist and the producers did not treat “This Land Is Your Land” any differently than the other songs recorded at the sessions. Asch did not have the money to release any of the songs. So, once again the song sat in limbo. Asch, however, later claimed he recognized something important in the song. (p. 285.)
By December of that year, Guthrie had started using “This Land” as the theme song for his weekly radio show on WNEW. And the Weavers recorded the song too.
Most early recordings by Guthrie and other artists omitted one of the more controversial verses. The verse criticized capitalism and private property. It evoked a time when Guthrie and other Okies were turned away at the California border:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me; Sign was painted, it said private property; But on the back side it didn’t say nothing; This land was made for you and me.
I like the way this version starts with Woody, and then it transitions into his son Arlo Guthrie and other singers. The song stays understated before becoming a joyous hoedown with John Mellencamp.
Bruce Springsteen has performed “This Land Is Your Land” for decades. He included it on his Live 1975-1985 box set. And he also performed it with Guthrie’s friend Pete Seeger at a special concert in Washington to celebrate Pres. Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.
More recently, on February 5, 2017, Lada Gaga included “This Land Is Your Land” in her Super Bowl halftime performance. As the country seemed divided in recent weeks following the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, Lady Gaga began with “God Bless America” and then went into “This Land Is Your Land.” Knowing that Guthrie wrote his song in response to “God Bless America” gives one a deeper understanding of Lady Gaga’s message that this land is for you and me.
Yet, I suspect many people who came of age around the 1960s first heard “This Land Is Your Land” sung by Peter, Paul & Mary. The trio, like many other artists, recognized that the song works best when everyone sings along.
The Legacy of “This Land Is Your Land”
“This Land is Your Land” took on a life of its own. And it no longer belongs to one person. For example, it can be used for discussion and criticized for its failure to connect the land to the Native Americans (although other artists have altered the song to do so). As noted in previous posts on Woody Guthrie, his work and his songs remain relevant today. Like Guthrie’s other songs, his most famous and timeless song, “This Land Is Your Land,” remains relevant too.
If Woody Guthrie had done nothing else besides write “This Land Is Your Land,” we would still honor him. “This Land Is Your Land” is the first song you think of when you think of the singer-songwriter. It is the song that ends every Guthrie tribute show. “This Land Is Your Land” is the song that David Carradine sings on top of a box car in the final scene of the Guthrie bio-pic Bound for Glory (1976). Also, it is the first song listed in Guthrie’s Wikipedia entry.
Additionally, “This Land Is Your Land” is the first Guthrie song you learned in school. And it is the song that Presidents dance to.
It all started with a relatively unknown drifter in the 1940s venting his anger and frustration in his lonely fleabag room. In that room, thinking about what he had seen traveling from California to the New York Island, Woody Guthrie wrote one of the country’s most beautiful songs.
{Woody at 100 is our continuing series celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of American singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie on July 14, 1912. Check out our other posts on Guthrie and the Woody Guthrie Centennial too. }
What is your favorite version of “This Land is Your Land”? Leave your two cents in the comments. Photo via public domain.
In 1889, a Pennsylvania dam collapsed causing what would be known as the Johnstown Flood, a disaster referenced in a fake song in a real Bruce Springsteen song.
On May 31 in 1889, a western Pennsylvania dam collapsed, flooding the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania and killing more than 2,200 people. Many today know about the flood through a Bruce Springsteen song that references another “song” about the Johnstown flood. But in the late 1800s, people knew about the devastation of the flood and the socio-economic forces behind it.
The Story of The Johnstown Flood
The South Fork Dam was built on the Little Conemaugh River fourteen miles upstream from Johnstown. In the late 1800s, it constituted the largest earth dam in the United States.
Wealthy men from the Pittsburgh area created the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and owned the dam that created Lake Conemaugh. Rich people from the area enjoyed the fishing lake stocked with black bass. For example, Andrew Carnegie was one of the members of the club.
A steady heavy rain on May 30, 1889, however, weakened the dam. The next morning, the president of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club noticed that the dam was under great pressure from the water. A number of men rushed to work to try to save the dam.
As the water pushed against the dam, an engineer tried to warn the residents of nearby Johnstown, a town of 30,000 people about fourteen miles away. But the message did not get to the town in time.
At 3:10 p.m. on May 31, the dam collapsed and around 20 million tons of water rushed at 40 mph toward the town. As the water headed toward the town, it picked up debris along the way.
The water crushed buildings, and whirlpools took down some of the taller structures. A bridge captured much of the debris. Then the debris in the bridge caught fire, causing more casualties (see image above). All together, 2,209 people died.
After the devastation, relief efforts, including one of the first by the Red Cross, came to the town’s aid. The rebuilding of the town took five years. Below is a documentary about the flood that was created by Charles Guggenheim and introduced by David McCullough.
Several years ago, I visited the Johnstown Flood National Memorial and the Johnstown Flood Museum, and they are worth a visit if you are in the area. I first heard of the Johnstown Flood and became interested in visiting the area because it is mentioned in Bruce Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman” from the Nebraska (1982) album.
Springsteen and “Night of the Johnstown Flood”
The Highway Patrolman of Springsteen’s song, Joe Roberts, tells how he struggles with his loyalties when his brother Franky breaks the law. In the song, Roberts remembers a carefree time dancing with his future wife Maria to a song about the Johnstown Flood.
Yea we’re laughin’ and drinkin’, nothin’ feels better than blood on blood; Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria as the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood;” I catch him when he’s strayin’, teach him how to walk that line; Man turns his back on his family he ain’t no friend of mine.
Although in “Highway Patrolman” Springsteen mentions a song called “Night of the Johnstown Flood,” from what I can tell, there was no song with that title. But eventually, after Springsteen’s song, some bands have performed a song with that name.
Artists who have subsequently recorded songs named “Night of the Johnstown Flood” include The Rock Creek Jug Band (from their CD Simpler Times (2010)), Rustwater, Chicken Little (below and free download on the band’s site), and Pygmylush. The epic nature of the flood deserves its own song, but it is interesting how Springsteen’s fictional song title inspired other writers.
Legacy of the Johnstown Flood
Some blamed the Johnstown Flood on the wealthy men who used Lake Conemaugh for their recreation. Their lake created a hazard that killed thousands of working people.
The aftermath of the flood led to some early expressions of outrage during the U.S. Industrial Age against corporate powers and the wealthy. We see some of the same concerns being raised today.
Other things stay the same too. Although the 1889 flood is one of the most famous floods in U.S. history, the town of Johnstown again faced deadly floods in 1936 and 1977.
Painting of “The Great Conemaugh Valley Disaster” via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.
With Governor Dannel Malloy’s signature in April 2012, Connecticut became the fifth state in five years to abolish the death penalty. Connecticut makes seventeen states that do not have capital punishment, along with the District of Columbia, as more states are realizing that the death penalty is expensive, unfair, arbitrary, unnecessary, and risks executing the innocent.
Similarly, recently the man who wrote California’s death penalty law and the man who led the drive for that state to adopt capital punishment have changed their position and said that life without parole is a better option than the death penalty. For various reasons, the civilizing trend around the country is leading to more states abolishing the death penalty.
Capital punishment is still used as a political issue, though. Even as Connecticut abolished the death penalty for future cases, it did not overturn the death sentences of the few people currently on death row in the state.
Johnny Cash’s Last Song: “Hangman”
Speaking of executioners, in this video, Marty Stuart tells about his final meeting with Johnny Cash. Stuart recalls how Cash helped him write the song, “Hangman.”
Stuart was inspired to start writing the song after visiting Folsom Prison and seeing where Cash had performed for the inmates. While working on the song, he told Cash about the song, and Cash gave Stuart some help.
As Stuart explains before he performs the song in the video below, it was probably the last song Cash helped write. Four days after they worked on “Hangman,” Cash passed away on September 12, 2003.
“Hangman” later appeared on Stuart’s album, Ghost Train: The Studio B Sessions (2010).
The song begins with the singer talking about killing another man: “I’ve lost count at thirty, and I’ve grown too numb to grieve.” After he tells how alcohol and dope helps him get by, the chorus comes in to reveal the twist. The song is not about a serial killer but the hangman.
Hangman, Hangman, That’s my stock and trade. Hangman, Hangman, Sending bad men to their grave. But who killed who? I ask myself, Time and time again. God have mercy on the soul, Of this Hangman.
In the video, Stuart tells how Johnny Cash helped him with the chorus and the poetic line, “But who killed who? I ask myself.” The line, and the song evoke the concerns of the Connecticut legislature.
Both the legislature and Gov. Malloy realized that the death penalty is not about what we do to convicted murderers. Capital punishment is about what it does to us when our government kills people already in prison for the rest of their lives. Connecticut is saving the hangman, not the prisoners. What do you think of “Hangman”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Unfortunately, some of the biggest pop culture news recently has been about the deaths of Mike Wallace, Dick Clark and Levon Helm. But in case you missed some of the other recent news, check out the following.
Finally, Levon Helm passed away last week. In Marc Coh’s song about Helm, he sings “I was was lost/ I was gone/ Listening to Levon/ I was looking at the girl/ But I was listening to Levon.” -Marc Cohn.
I plan to crawl outside these walls,
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