The wonderfully serendipitous nature of the Internet never ceases to amaze. I was thinking of one of my favourite singer-songwriters John Gorka and clicked around to find a video of him singing a beautiful song called “Potter’s Field” by Jack Hardy (left). I must confess I was not familiar with Jack Hardy, so upon some online research got myself educated.
Sadly, he passed away in 2011 at the age of 63 as a result of lung cancer, though not before making his mark.
Mr. Hardy wrote hundreds of songs, protest songs, political talking songs and romantic ballads, his lyrics often consciously literary, his music tinged with a Celtic sound. With a singing voice raspy and yearning, he performed in clubs and coffeehouses in New York and elsewhere and recorded more than a dozen albums, many of them self-produced, though two boxed sets of his work were released by a small, independent label in 2000.
A reference in an obituary I thought most interesting was that since the late 1970s and up until he became too ill Mr. Hardy hosted Monday night songwriting workshops at his Greenwich Village apartment.
Songwriters from as far away as Boston and Philadelphia would come to share a pasta dinner and their brand-new songs. Critiques were expected; the rule was that no song was supposed to be more than a week old, a dictum, Mr. Hardy said, that forced writers to write. Ms. Colvin, Ms. Vega and Mr. Lovett are all alumni.
By providing a setting for emerging artist to develop their craft, and I am sure in many other was, Mr. Hardy was, as the Times put, “perhaps not famous, but he was, in his way, influential.” Nice tribute.
The song by Jack Hardy I discovered recorded by John Gorka was, as I noted above, “Potters’ Field.” Without sounding too obtuse this is the kind of song you wouldn’t understand unless you already knew what it was about. It helps to know that criminals and unidentified persons, usually poor, are buried in potter’s fields, and also that
The original potter’s field takes its name from the Bible, specifically the book of Matthew in the New Testament. In chapter twenty-seven, Judas Isacariot returns the thirty pieces of silver the high priests gave him in exchange for betraying Jesus. The priests did not return the silver to the temple coffers, as it was blood money. They used that money to buy a field to bury paupers in. As the story goes, the field they bought was the area in which potters dug their clay.
We can surmise the song is about bad things having been done for a price, and that it’s not going to end well.
Jack Hardy – sounds like a fascinating guy.