Ramblin' with Roger

So, I always chuckle inside when Columbus Day and John Lennon’s birthday coincide. Columbus Day as the second Monday in October took effect in 1971. The two events coincided in 1972, 1978, 1989 – thus missing my entire tenure (1980-1988) at the store – 1995, and 2000, and will happen again in 2017, 2023, 2028, 2034, 2045, 2051, 2056, 2062, 2073, and 2079.

Ironically, I suppose, I was inspired to get a CD version of this album by the release of We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions by Bruce Springsteen – now available in the American Land Edition that people either love or feel gouged by. (I’ll probably just download the extra tunes.)

Anyway, when I got We Shall Overcome: Complete Carnegie Hall Concert, it totally confounded me. A piece of music I knew note-for-note, I didn’t know at all. All the things on the LP are there, but in radically different order, in a different context. Many of the LP cuts were truncated.

Here’s the playlist of the 2 CD set. The numbers in parentheses are the cut numbers of the original album (8 songs on one side, 5 on the other)

Disc: 1
1. Audience
2. Banjo Medley: Cripple Creek/Old Joe Clark/Leather Britches
3. Lady Margaret
4. Mrs. McGrath
5. Mail Myself to You (10)
6. My Rambling Boy
7. A Little Brand New Baby
8. What Did You Learn in School Today? (5)
9. Little Boxes (6)
10. Mrs. Clara Sullivan’s Letter
11. Who Killed Norma Jean? (7)
12. Who Killed Davey Moore? (8)
13. Farewell
14. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (9)
15. Didn’t He Ramble (Fragment)
16. Keep Your Eyes On The Prize (2)
17. If You Miss Me At The Back Of The Bus (1)
18. I Ain’t Scared Of Your Jail (3)
19. Oh Freedom (4)
Disc: 2
1. Audience
2. Skip To My Lou
3. Sweet Potatoes
4. Deep Blue Sea
5. Sea Of Mercy (Fragment)
6. Oh Louisiana
7. (The Ring on My Finger Is) Johnny Give Me
8. Oh What A Beautiful City
9. Lua Do Sertao (Moon Of The Backland)
10. The Miserlou
11. Polyushke Polye (Meadowlands)
12. Genbaku O Yurusumagi (Never Again The A-Bomb)
13. Schtille Di Nacht (Quiet Is The Night)
14. Viva La Quince Brigada (Long Live The Fifteenth Brigade)
15. Tshotsholosa (Road Song) (12)
16. This Land Is Your Land
17. From Way Up Here
18. We Shall Overcome (13)
19. Mister Tom Hughes’s Town
20. Bring Me Li’l’ Water Silvy
21. Guantanamera (11)

The concert as performed had a series of themes. After a couple introductory tunes, disc one has a group of new tunes by songwriters such as Tom Paxton and Bob Dylan, mentioned by name on the CD, but not the LP. On “Who Killed Davey Moore?” Pete says, “This is a different kind of elegy,” then misfingers his guitar before starting, which gives it a greater power; this is all missing on the LP. In fact, a couple other little gaffes are edited out, unnecessarily, I think.

The four songs from the Southern section are there, albeit in a different order. I suppose I understand removing references to upcoming concerts, but it was only on the CD that I realized that members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee were present on stage.

The next segment, the first half of the second CD, is comprised of familiar songs, missing entirely from the LP; perhaps they had appeared on then-recent Seeger albums. Then there was the “world” segment, represented only by “Tshotsholosa”. Out of context -i.e., on the album, you miss the fact that Pete had gotten people to actually rehearse the stirring response, which is still a highlight of the album.

About two minutes of dialogue is removed from the final song before the encore, “We Shall Overcome”. Again, some announcement of a coming concert is gone, but other conversation had been unnecessarily cut out.

Then the CD concludes with three encore songs, the last of which, “Guantanamera”, was stuck in the middle of the second side of the LP.

Which is only peripherally related to my weekly queries:

1. What famous people have you met for long enough to actually have a decent conversation?
Earl Warren, Rod Serling, Anita Baker. (Is Alex Trebek famous?)

2. What famous people have you had an unexpected brief encounter?
Randy Newman, Stanley Tucci, Pete Seeger, Mark Lane (Dick Gregory’s VP candidate in 1968, who was in some legal trouble mentioned on the front page of the NY Times on the very day I saw him).

3. What famous people have you had an expected brief encounter with?
Nelson Rockefeller.

That could have been the end of the story. Guess not. Friday evening, I got THIS e-mail from the copy editor:
I just wanted to get back to you about the people item you e-mailed us about. Thanks for letting us know about it. The string of briefs was written by The Associated Press, so, on Thursday, I called them in New York to try to track down any complaints on this item. So far, they say, yours is the first comment. They wanted to research the story further and contacted the London bureau — who actually – because of the time difference, AP says they haven’t gotten any clear answers on a possible clarification. When they do come up with something, I’d like to run a correction on both points of your e-mail.

Thanks again for letting us know about this.

Well, even though he did find what he needed, this e-mail sent me on a quest. When, exactly, DID Introducing the Beatles come out?

The source the copy editor found was the Beatles discography, a generally useful tool. But it says that Introducing the Beatles came out on January 10, 1964. This simply can’t be right, can it? The Wikipedia listing says January 6, 1964. But I looked here and here and here and here, and they all say July 1963, which makes much more sense.

So, I looked at what I consider the authoritative source, Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Albums 1955-1996, put out by Record Research, a VERY definitive source and authorized by Billboard, which says:
“Vee-Jay released above title in July 1963 and included ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘P.S. I Love You’ which were replaced in 1964 with ‘Please Please Me’ and ‘Ask Me Why’; original release is valued at $6,000-$8,000.”
Those incorrect sources undoubtedly picked up on a re-release date.

FDR’s first Vice-President, John Nance Garner, a/k/a “Cactus Jack”, is famously noted for saying the vice presidency wasn’t worth “a warm bucket of spit,” although reporters allegedly changed the spelling of the last word for print. I note this because when I was on JEOPARDY! some years back, my opponents and I could not remember his name.

For the Friends, I am supposed to work on the quarterly mailing, but that’s more difficult since they take place during the day AND I’m working further from downtown.