Ramblin' with Roger

I grew up hearing the LP version of Pete Seeger’s “We Shall Overcome” album “recorded live at his historic Carnegie Hall Concert, June 8, 1963”. In the mid 1960s, I listened to it as much as I listened to the Beatles’ Second Album or Beatles ’65, which is to say, a LOT. It was an album my father enjoyed as well.

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.

I’m enjoying the CD, but it was as though the Beatles had intended to put out an album called Yesterday and Today, and you knew that album cold, but what you later discover is that the original was really comprised of the second side of the British album Help, the songs We Can Work It Out and Day Tripper, the entire British Rubber Soul album, the songs Paperback Writer and Rain, and the entire British Revolver album. All the songs are there, but there’s SO much more, and with an entirely different feel.

There was an anti-war rally in NYC in May of 1972, which a bunch of us from New Paltz, about 90 miles away, attended. We left after a few hours of none-too-pleasant weather. We were VERY disappointed to learn that, shortly after our departure, John & Yoko showed up unexpectedly at the rally. In fact, we considered turning around, for their words were being carried live on the radio.

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.

4. What famous people have you seen unexpectedly, but didn’t talk with? I’m not talking about seeing someone at a concert, unless they were in the audience and seemingly unrelated to the artist.
Mike Tyson with Jack Nicholson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Fred is happy that the Mets are up two games to none.. I’m happy because I actually picked the Mets and the Tigers (up two games to one against the YANKEES) to go to the World Series. Of course, I don’t think I’ve picked both participants in a World Series since the Subway Series of 2000; I usually get one right. Didn’t pick the Red Sox or the White Sox, that’s for certain. And Oakland dispatched the Twins mighty easily, which makes me nervous.
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Kelly is being weird again. She is taking words and, through the magic of Google, is turning those words into images. Sadly, I find myself wanting to enable this weirdness. Her husband has strange thoughts, too. And curse GayProf for making me remember that I actually used to watch Chico and the Man.

As I mentioned last month, I wrote to the local paper over this wire story about Beatles stamps on a Wednesday. A copy editor from the paper called me Friday, and the paper printed a correction on Saturday. The guy I spoke to for 20 minutes; he must be near my age, because the first album he ever bought was Meet the Beatles. He wondered how I knew all about the Beatles discography. (At some point, I noted that ‘Yesterday’…and Today was comprised of 2 tracks from the British Help album, 4 from the British Rubber Soul album, 3 from the not yet released British Revolver album, plus the two-sided single.) I probably said, “I don’t know; it’s a sickness.”

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.

In the meantime, can you recommend a good source to check this information? An authoritative history? An accurate discography? The official Beatles site starts with the Capital catalog, so that’s not much help. I want to research this in case The AP falls through.

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.

The successor Whitburn book, covering 1955-2001, also says July 1963. What I noted, however, is that the NEWEST book, covering up to 2005, and now called The Billboard Albums, doesn’t give a release date at all, only that Introducing…the Beatles first charted on February 8, 1964, a week after Meet the Beatles. This means I need to hold on to at least one of the older books. As I’ve described before about the Brooks and Marsh television book, I HATE having to hold on to an old reference book because the new one has gotten rid of important information, but that’s what happened here. AGAIN.

I was elected as Vice-President of the Friends of the Albany Public Library last May. Being vice-president of most organizations is a peculiar thing; there’s nothing one is really mandated to do in that capacity, except to run the meeting if the president is absent.

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.

So, what to do? Well, if you’re me, you start a blog. So I did. Back in July, I showed a couple people how easy is it would be to do one. Then I promptly forgot about it until shortly before the September monthly meeting. Now, I’ve found a rhythm to the thing and plan to update it regularly.
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Scooter answers my questions.
Lefty discusses the mixed CD he sent me. And disses me AGAIN (see Fiona Apple).
Gordon discusses the mixed CD he sent me. And DOESN’T diss me. But he does offer tarot readings.

The newsletter SUNY Watch solicited short articles, no more than 75 words, I think, about “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” or “My Favorite Hobby”.

Dutifully, I wrote:

Three trips to hometown Binghamton in July. #1 took place right after the flooding in the area, yet a scheduled party near the convergence of two rivers took place, with one sister coming from San Diego, mom, another sister, her daughter niece from Charlotte, and cousins from NYC. #2 was an annual reunion of my wife’s family (http://olinfamilysociety.org/); my daughter is 11th generation from John Olin. #3 was my high school reunion, described here.

The editor wrote back last week and said: “Unfortunately, yours was the only summer vacation response we received so we ultimately decided against putting together the feature we had been planning. It does sound like you had a good summer, though!”

Yes, it was.

But she got a “good response” on the hobbies question. Which makes me wonder: is it that people are traumatized about writing those summer vacation essays, or am I an iconoclast?
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Carol & I went to friend Mary’s wedding to Rick on Saturday morning. It was a lovely affair, even though we only knew the bride, her son, and one other person. My favorite moment during the service was during the lighting of the candles. The musical citation in the program was Hunter/Garcia. Indeed, the organist had suggested, and the couple agreed, to have a church organ version of the the Grateful Dead song “Ripple” playing at that moment.
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Alan David Doane wants you to know about:
*Comic Book Galaxy and Houghton Mifflin’s giveaway of a copy of THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2006, “an excellent new collection edited by Harvey Pekar.”
*Paperback swap. “Free books! Post books you don’t want by their ISBN code…and get credit to order your own stuff. All is costs is media mail for shipping, usually less than two bucks for a single book.”
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After two books about the GWB administration that Karl Rove probably has on his bookshelf, Bob Woodward has put out State of Denial, reportedly a scathing indictment of our Iraq War policy. I haven’t gotten it yet, but it seems from the reviews that it’s not that it’s saying anything I hadn’t read or, at least believed, before. Its importance is that it’s from a writer with great access to the administration, and thus may have more credibility with the fence-sitters. I wonder if this book will sway the elections next month? Lefty has something to say about this here. In fact, he has a number of good pieces in his new Page 3 section, about George Allen of Virginia and global warming.
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SOMEBODY has to answer Greg’s quiz, so it might as well be me.
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Just two degrees of separation between me and Ben Pershing, who commented on disgraced ex-Congressman Mark Foley for PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
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Got this e-mail yesterday:
Have you heard anything about Social Security Numbers and African-Americans and the 5th digit in your SS#? Supposedly, if you are an African American or a Minority the 5th digit in your SS# is EVEN, and ODD if you are White???
It has been said if you take a poll most African Americans will have an EVEN 5th digit. Rumor has it some companies are looking at potential employee’s SS#s to discriminate.
Why not send this email to every African American and Minority that you know!! Mine was even, what’s yours?
TAVIS SMILEY
THIS RUMOR IS FALSE, and I doubt Tavis Smiley has anything to do with it. And yes, my middle SSN digit is even.
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Don’t expect any TV reviews here. I’m constantly behind on my viewing. Last night didn’t help; while we taped Gilmore Girls (for both of us) and Dancing with the Stars (for my wife), I actually WATCHED baseball. The DVR operates anywhere from 70% to 80% full. So, go read Tosy about Gilmore Girls, Jaquandor about Studio 60 (still seen one day early) and Tom the Dog about everything else.