If people know anything from the late singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997), it’s this song. Van Zandt first recorded “Pancho and Lefty” for his 1972 album The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. It’s been widely covered including in a duet by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard where it got a fair bit of notice, reaching No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart in July of 1983. That same year there was a music video with Nelson as Pancho, and Haggard as Lefty. Van Zandt appeared briefly in it was well.
In broad stroke, the song is about a Mexican bandit named Pancho and his friendship with Lefty, the man who ultimately betrays him. It has been noted that some details in the lyrics mirror the life of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who was, in 1923, killed by unknown assassins. Van Zandt always said, sure, but it’s more complicated than that.
In any case, it is by many accounts one of the best story songs ever written, certainly a classic.
The final scene of the series finale of “The Newsroom” includes Jeff Daniels and a few others singing the Tom T. Hall classic “That’s How I Got to Memphis.” I was not familiar with it, which isn’t surprising because I know precious little about country music, but that is entirely my loss. A great song that is now considered a standard.
Thomas T. Hall (1936 – 2021) was an American county music star. He wrote 12 No. 1 hit songs, with 26 more that reached the Top 10. He wrote “Harper Valley PTA ,” which was a No. 1 international crossover hit, and “I Love” which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. He is included in Rolling Stone‘s list of 100 Greatest Songwriters.
A quick refresher on the Newsroom: It was an American political drama about life in a newsroom. The television series was created and principally written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame. It premiered on HBO on June 24, 2012, and concluded on December 14, 2014, consisting of 25 episodes over three seasons.
If you didn’t know, actor Jeff Daniels is pretty serious about his music, as you can read about here.
As with so many country songs of the classic variety, “That’s How I Got to Memphis” is a sad tale in this case of a man who comes to Memphis to find an old lover who would likely be just as happy if he failed in the attempt. The song first appeared on Hall’s 1969 album Ballads of Forty Dollars: His Other Great Songs and has been covered by many other since.
First the classic version by Tom T. Hall and then the Newsroom cover.
Is “A World Without Love” a roots/folk tune? I don’t know, but if some duo got up at a folk festival and sang it, no one would blink. Sixty years later it sounds pretty folkie to me, certainly folk-rock, or maybe just pop.
There is some adorable folklore out there about the song, credited to Paul McCartney and John Lennon, having to do with the fact that the song was deemed either too lightweight for The Beatles to record or so silly, especially the first line (“Please lock me away”), that it induced giggles from a certain members of the Fab Four (hint: the smart one) whenever they took a run at it.
One thing to note is that McCartney wrote it when he was just 16 years old – not an awful effort for such a pup. It appears, too, that though the Lennon-McCartney stamp is it, it was written by McCartney along. It does seems odd that a band that shot to stardom with poetic nuggets like “she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah,” would find this one so lightweight and hilarious.
As for where the song ended up, the story goes that in 1963 Paul had a girlfriend by the name of Jane Asher. Jane had a brother by the name of Peter Asher who happened to be a musician. Peter asked Paul if he could use the song after Peter and Gordon Waller signed a record contract as Peter and Gordon. Whatever one thinks of it, it must have been pretty sweet to be in a position to ask McCartney for one of his throw-always.
“A World Without Love” was in fact released as Peter and Gordon’s first single in February 1964. It was then released on their debut album in both the UK and the U.S. It proceeded to reach No.1 in the U.K. and reached the top of both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Cashbox Top 100 in the U.S., as well as charting in countries around the world.
I would guess The Beatles were too busy being the most successful rock and roll band in history to regret one lost opportunity, but it is worth noting that “A World Without Love” has been listed as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
I am well past trying to figure out whether every song I loved as a kid and still love is really that good or just hard-wired to my personal pleasure zone. Don’t care. This one is a classic.
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.
I’ve got a book on my shelf that I have rarely considered. It’s called “Singing Soldiers: A History of the Civil War in Song.” Selections and historical commentary are by Paul Glass. Musical arrangements for piano and guitar are by Louis C. Singer.
One of the grand things about the information age in which we we live is that one can pick up a book like this, go to pretty much any song within, and quickly find a YouTube video of someone singing it. I randomly chose this ditty, “We’ll Fight for Uncle Abe,” originally written in 1863 – words by C.E. Pratt, music by Frederick Buckley. (The 1987 date above is of course the year it was recorded it). I then did a bit of computer searching and clicking and found Bobby Horton “a bluegrass musician, music historian, songwriter and arranger, best known for his extensive discography of Civil-era music and his long-time collaboration with documentarian Ken Burns.”
Horton is a member of Three on a String, which performs frequently in the Birmingham (Alabama) area, and has recorded and released fourteen volumes of Civil War songs on his own label. He is best known for providing period music for documentaries created by Ken Burns, including “Mark Twain,” “Lewis & Clark,” “Baseball,” “The Civil War,” “Thomas Jefferson,” “Frank Lloyd Wright”, “Horatio’s Drive” and “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”. Horton has also provided music for sixteen National Park Service films and has performed educational songs for the “Lyrical Learning” series.
As a guitar player and occasional clawhammer banjo picker, and someone with a mild in interest in Civil War music, I sometimes threaten to learn more about the songs of the period. I have now apparently tripped on the motherlode. Good for me.
A picture I took several years ago at an outdoor gig in Aurora, Ontario with the Borealis Big Band. This is the way trombones look when they’re not being used, which I call “Bones at Rest.”
I’m about half-way through Ronald D. Cohen‘s excellent book on folk music in the mid-20th century entitled “Rainbow Quest: The Folk Revival & American Society, 1040-1970.” It’s well-written, well-organized, and well-researched and an excellent introduction to these important years in the development of folk music. In the early going, it covers subjects like the work of ethnomusicologists to undercover the tradition, the political uses of folk songs, and the always thorny issue of commercialization.
Many of the performers mentioned in these books, like Guthrie, Seeger, Burl Ives, Josh White, Big Bill Broonzy, and Lead Belly are better known. One performer who comes up fairly often, though, and about whom I know virtually nothing is Richard Dyer-Bennet.
Bennet was born in 1913 and died in 1991. He was English-born though made His career in the United States. He is usually classified as a folk singer, though he, rather quaintly, preferred the term “minstrel.” At this peak, he gave 50 concerts a year and recorded extensively. His discography lists recordings from 1949 to 1964, not counting re-releases. There is a biography by Paul Jenkins – Richard Dyer-Bennet: The Last Minstrel– published in December 2009 by the University Press of Mississippi.
His New York Times obituary states that he “appeared at the Village Vanguard and other Manhattan clubs in the early 1940’s with such modern pioneers in folk music as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger and Josh White.” Notably, he was the first in his genre to be booked for a major solo concert, which happened in 1944 to a sold-out audience.
His repertoire comes in at about 600 songs, including more than 100 of his own compositions. As for what he sang, the list includes “English sea chanteys, French love ballads, spirituals, cowboy music and Swedish shepherd tunes.”
Critics praised the scholarship of his selections and arrangements as well as his performing skills. His high lyric tenor was not the strongest or richest voice, some critics noted. But they were struck by the clarity of his diction, the precision of his phrasing and the delicacy and feeling of his delivery.
Not to my tastes, if the truth be known, but he certainly played a role.
In September, Billboard magazine ran a piece announcing that Gordon Lightfoot will be among the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame (FARHOF) inaugural class of inductees – an obvious though fantastic choice for the first class. This original group will consist of 29 inductees chosen by a nominating committee of industry luminaries as well as the FARHOF board of directors. This class consists of 10 solo artists, 11 legacy artists, 4 groups or duos, and three non-performers. To honour the long-standing connection of folk/roots music to social justice issues, there will also be one recipient of the Paul Robeson Artist/Activist Award.
For a full list of those to be enshrined at a ceremony in April of 2024, click here.
As for the origins and mandate of FARHOF:
In 2019, the Boch Center expanded and launched the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame (FARHOF), Boston’s newest cultural and educational initiative. It celebrates the lifeblood of America’s musical and cultural heritage.
Led by legendary musicians and music executives including Keb Mo’, Joan Baez and Noel Paul Stookey and curated by Deana McCloud and Bob Santelli of the Museum Collective, the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame (FARHOF) is dedicated to honoring history, while also building the foundation of the next generation of Folk, Americana, and Roots musicians. Housed in the Wang Theatre, the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame (FARHOF) celebrates Folk, Americana and Roots music through displays, memorabilia, artifacts, events, lectures, exhibits and concerts.
Many years ago someone gave me a boxed trading card set called “Heroes of the Blues.” It contains 36 cards, each a cartoon rendering of a legend of the early blues: Blind Lemon Jefferson, John Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy; Memphis Minnie, Charley Patton, Jaybird Coleman, Barbecue Bob and many others. Historian Stephen Calt provides a biography of the artist on the back of each card. And each musician or group is beautifully drawn in full color by underground comix legend R. Crumb. As for Mr. Crumb, according to Denis Kitchen’s archives:
The life of Robert Crumb, the most famous of the underground cartoonists, is an open book. He draws and writes unashamedly about the most intimate aspects of his existence in his comics and sketchbooks. He has been documented by the BBC, and several filmmakers, including Terry Zwigoff, whose remarkable Crumb won a Sundance Award. He’s also an accomplished musician and collector of vintage 78 rpm records.
Crumb has also done some terrific album cover art work, notably for Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Frank Stokes is card -5- in the set, about whom Stephen Calt writes that his playing career started at the beginning of the 20th century and was centred around Memphis where he was one of the that cities most popular entertainers. He recorded 28 sides between 1927 and 1929, usually accompanied by Dan Shane.
His best known recording was something called “Mr. Crump Don’t Like It,” which apparently had a national association with W.C. Handy.
