Can't Always Get What You Want

The first camp song I ever learned was Eddie Koochie-Kachie-Kama. The second camp song I learned was The Cat Came Back. (I know, I know. . . and yet somehow, years later, I don't detest music at all.) The third camp song I learned was Bread & Roses, except by "learned," I mean "had jack-hammered into my brain." It was our group's contribution to a camp-wide cultural event -- we were pretty young, and most of us were hearing the song for the first time, and I guess our staff wanted to make sure we had it solid. So they drilled it into us. We rehearsed it a bunch of times. We got the standard apocryphal history lesson on the Lawrence strike. We even went over some of the vocabulary (I definitely remember having trouble visualizing the "sudden sun" disclosing). Anyway, we learned it proper. And to this day, it's still one of my all-time K-Land faves.

What I liked about it as a camper was how, compared to other camp songs, it resonated as poetry (the Sisyphean tragedy of the cat coming back notwithstanding). What I've come to like about it as an adult is how exquisite the song itself is. How its call for creative and emotional sustenance is perfectly encapsulated when sung as a gentle ballad. Look. . . tunes like Hold the Fort and Solidarity Forever are great. They're loud and boisterous and really fun to sing. Meanwhile, Bread & Roses is practically a lullaby, yet it's no less powerful than any other song found in the slices. It reminds us not only that strength and determination are far more than just shock and awe, but that fighting the good fight requires a plurality of ideas and experiences and tactics. In this way, it's the perfect yang to Union Maid's yin.

So no problem, right? I loves me some bread and I loves me some roses and I seem to have a pretty good handle on why I dig it so much. Except that repeated camp music sessions over the years have left me predisposed to only like that version of the song. Any deviation from that perfect "gentle ballad" model unnerves the hell out of me. Even worse, that version isn't based on a standard (folksinger Mimi Fariña wrote the melody in the mid 1970s but never recorded a studio version herself) as much as it is a reflection of my own imbalanced mania. Judy Collins and John Denver have each recorded it; both artists swap out its understated elegance with a blaring triumphalism that makes it sound tacky. Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips do an unfortunate version that includes a backbeat? Really? And don't even get me started on all the choral arrangements floating around out there. 

The point here (besides that I can be a total ass about stuff like this) is that it would be great to have a studio recording of Bread & Roses that hews a little closer to the spirit of how we sing it in Tolland. I would absolutely love a cover version by Marla Hansen or Gillian Welch or Thao Nguyen, all of who employ a very restrained performance style without sacrificing an iota of character or potency. Or a new interpretation by a veteran singer who can bring her own history to the song without overwhelming it -- maybe Bettye LaVette, or Sally Timms of the Mekons.

Until then, I give you an a cappella duet by Mimi Fariña and older sister Joan Baez. Not sure if this is exactly what I'm looking for, but I definitely prefer the stripped-down approach. And it goes without saying that their voices are amazing. As far as I know, this is the only recorded version of Fariña singing Bread & Roses. From a compilation album in support of her Bread & Roses charity, which sponsors musical performances in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons.

Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña: Bread & Roses

Next week -- bring your dancing shoes.

Peace & Vinyl,

The KassaNostra

Sholem Aleichem!

Hey all you swingin' kinderlach. . . welcome to Kinderslice Music -- the blog dedicated to spreading the sounds of the Tolland campground underground. I am your humble host, the KassaNostra, and you can expect weekly posts from me with the latest and greatest tunes from the Kinderland glory days, which, I'm happy to report, are still going strong! (And are still going Strong!)

Now, you may ask, "Mr. KassaNostra, why only now are you so generously gracing us with these groovy tunes?" Or perhaps you may ask, "Damn, KassaNostra, what the hell took you so long?" Well my friends, I'll tell you. Recently there was a bunch of chatter on these intertubes about how we might go about sharing camp music amongst ourselves. And there were a lot of good ideas bandied about: a CD of a camp chorus performing Kinderland's greatest hits, a massive (albeit potentially illegal) online database of mp3 files, some sort of top-secret UNCOR project. . . like I said, all solid stuff. But you'll notice that, since said chatter commenced a few months ago, your own personal collection of camp songs has not been fattened.

Well, I was sitting at home one evening, with my butt on my living-room sofa, but my heart and soul cruising the backroads of the greater Berkshires community. And just as I start musing on all these possibilities, what should come wafting over my radio than Sixteen Tons by the legendary Tennessee Ernie Ford. And I says to myself, "KassaNostra, it's gotta be a sign! The best way to get the music to the masses is through painstaking labor with no discernible reward in sight!" If I was Ira, I'd put us all on the schedule for a giant music circle sing-along. If I was Alice, I'd pick me a doozy of a song, and painstakingly teach it to you an eighth of a stanza at a time. If I was Maddy, you'd hear me belting out the chorus right now (doesn't matter where you live). But I am the KassaNostra, and this is what I do.

So without further adieu, let's get to the music! I figure in honor of my little epiphany, let's start off with a miner's trifecta. Legend has it that Merle Travis wrote both Sixteen Tons and Dark as a Dungeon in a single night, drawing on the experiences of his father, a coal miner in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. The songs were released in 1947 as part of "Folk Songs of the Hills," a sort-of prototype boxed set (four 78 rpm discs packaged together) issued by Capitol Records.

Merle Travis: Dark as a Dungeon

For his efforts, Travis was immediately branded as a communist sympathizer. Maybe that's not all that surprising for a bunch of pro-labor songs (no matter how benign) in the late 1940s. But then how do you explain the unbelievably phenomenal success of Sixteen Tons when Ernie Ford cut it as a 45 for Capitol in 1955? The song sold a million copies in its first month, becoming the fastest-selling single in the label's history. Must've been that cah-raaaaazy clarinet arrangement, man!

Tennessee Ernie Ford: Sixteen Tons

Dark as a Dungeon and Sixteen Tons are standards in Ira's repertoire, but a lesser-known tune -- and the perfect number to end this post on -- is John Prine's Paradise, off his self-titled 1971 debut album (a song that I can personally attest has been sung in camp before). Whereas Travis wrote about the toll that coal mining took on the average miner, Prine's focus was on the ecological costs. Much like Travis, Prine's inspiration came in part from his father, also a Kentucky miner:

"I wrote it for my father, mainly so he would know I was a songwriter. Paradise was a real place in Kentucky, and while I was away in the army in Germany, my father sent me a newspaper article telling how the coal company had bought the place out. It was a real Disney-looking town. It sat on a river, had two stores, and there was one black man in town, Bubba Short, who looked like Uncle Remus and hung out with my Granddaddy Hamm, my mom's dad, all day, fishing for catfish. Then the bulldozers came and wiped it all off the map."

John Prine: Paradise

That's enough rambling for one post. Be sure to check back weekly for new updates. Please pass this URL around to camp friends and non-camp friends alike. Definitely leave comments and email me requests. And if anybody's got a copy of the Kindertones performing the Hymn at Share circa the mid-1980s. . .

Ah, well. . . dare to dream.

Peace & Vinyl,

The KassaNostra