True Yarns: songs inspired by real events and people Volume 21

TY21

01. Brother Brigham, Brother Young (Corb Lund) Of late, what one confesses and to whom has become a bit of sticky wicket for religious orders that claim confidentiality trumps (pun intended) the law. The Mormons have (as you’d expect) an elaborate theological framework for why confession is essential and good for the soul. But of course, there are certain things, like abusing a child sexually that need not be confessed or at least very loudly.  Even Mr. Brigham Young, the worthy latter-day Saint to whom Brother Lund confesses in this song, had some pretty clear ideas on the extent of spiritual confession.

“Were I to relate here to you my private faults from day to day, it would . . . not strengthen either the speaker or the hearer, and would give the enemy more power. Thus far, I would say, we are justified in what some call dissembling. . . . Many of the brethren chew tobacco . . . If you must use tobacco, put a small portion in your mouth when no person sees you. . . .

But if you have stolen your neighbour’s cattle, own it, and restore the property, fourfold if it is requested. . . . I believe in coming out and being plain and honest with that which should be made public, and in keeping to yourselves that which should be kept. If you have your weaknesses, keep them hid from your brethren as much as you can. . . . Confess your secret sins to your God, and forsake them, and he will forgive them; confess to your brethren your sins against them, and make all right, and they will forgive, and all will be right.

Keep your follies that do not concern others to yourselves.”

2. Bad Man (Loudon Wainwright III) Wainwright asks deep questions in his inimitable ‘aw shucks’ way. Written around the time of the first Bush war in Iraq the focus is on Sadaam Hussein but he also mentions Manuel Noreiga. Remember him?  In this article on media reporting during the Gulf War, the author actually finds the roots of the sophisticated and well managed media space in America’s recent wars in the invasion of Grenada. Remember that? 

The US government has used terms like collateral damage’ to sanitize the war and turn it into TV news and entertainment. Early Pentagon reports said, for example, that when US Marines occupied Noriega’s head- quarters they found ‘a desk stuffed with pornography, a closet containing a portrait of Adolf Hitler, voodoo paraphernalia and 100 Ibs. of cocaine’. Subsequently, less publicized stories revealed the pornography to be Spanish-language copies of Playboy, the picture of Hitler was in a Time-Life photo history of World War 11, while the voodoo implements turned out to be San Blas Indian carvings. The ‘cocaine’ was analysed and found to be tortilla flour, stockpiled for emergency use.

3. The Ballad of John Bonham’s Coke Roadie (TISM/ aka. This Is Serious Mum) Australian alt-rockers TISM offer up a not entirely accurate suggestion that famed and ill-fated Led Zep drummer John Bonham had a coke habit.  Now, I’ve not been able to find any evidence of that other than he was a top rock and roller in the 70s when cocaine was like Tik Tok, everywhere and used by everyone.  And neither have I been able to uncover a coke roadie, though perhaps a certain Rex King, a man with the broad and loose title of ‘Assistant to John Bonham’, might be a candidate.  What is better known and even sadder than the possibility that Bonzo had a toadie/roadie, was the way Bonham committed slow suicide with alcohol.

John Bonham threw his fourth quadruple vodka of the morning down his neck and took a single bite of a ham roll. He grinned at Led Zeppelin’s assistant Rex King, charged with getting one of rock’s most mercurial and hedonistic drummers to rehearsal in a fit state to play. “Breakfast,” he said. So begins the story of Bonham’s last days as reported in The Independent.

4. Long May You Run (The Stills-Young Band) A love song to Neil Young’s 1948 Buick Roadmaster hearse who went by the name of Mort.  One day in 1962, Mort stopped working and Neil sent a postcard home to ‘mummy’ to tell her the bad news! Of course, the story of how Neil and Bruce Palmer managed to bump into Stephen Still and Richie Furay on Sunset Strip is well known and attributed to Stills recognizing the vehicle and its Ontario license plates. But what is often not known is that the death mobile that Stills recognized was not Mort the Buick but Mort II, a Pontiac hearse that Neil bought after the demise of the original.

5. Armstrong (John Stewart) On the day Neil Armstrong took his ‘small step’ on the lunar surface I was 12 years old. Our boarding school in India gave us the day off.  TV was rare in India in those years so I never saw him doing what he did but it seemed every magazine for the next year featured the photos.  A few moon rocks eventually made their way to India for exhibition in some of the major cities. The Prime Minister, Ms. Indira Gandhi hailed the event in a press release that said in part, “Armstrong and Aldrin who walk the moon today are delegates of the irrepressible spirit of man—the spirit which discovered fire and thought, song and silence, the spirit which crosses oceans on a bundle of reeds and leaps from one celestial body to another in a small vehicle of its own making.” This song celebrates the awesome impact that first moon landing had on the world.

6. The Galveston Flood (Tom Rush) The “Night of Horrors” September 8, 1900, begins as a 15-foot storm surge rolls across Galveston, Texas, killing over 8,000. Dawn breaks over a grisly scene of bodies in the streets. The Galveston flood is remembered even to this day as the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.

7. God Moves on the Water (Blind Willie Johnson) The disaster of the sinking of the Titanic probably was as significant a culture touchpoint in the first part of the 20^th century as the Apollo moon mission was in the latter part of the century.  In this song the amazing BWJ visits three great disasters of his time, the Titanic, the 1926/27 Arkansas floods and the great fire that destroyed San Francisco of 1851. Each of them is a demonstration of ‘God moving’ presumably to punish the sinful of the land.

8. Atomic Power (The Buchanan Brothers) A couple decades on from the Titanic, God apparently is really pissed off. And he’s done with icebergs, fire and floods.  His latest means of retribution is, as the Buchanan Brothers sing in their 1946 top 10 hit, “Atomic power, atomic power/Was given by the mighty hand of God” to punish the Japs.

“Hiroshima, Nagasaki paid a big price for their sins
When scorched from the face of earth their battles could not win”

9. Happy Blues for John Glenn (Lightnin’ Hopkins) Before Armstrong came Glenn (and before him Gagarin, of course) who more than any other figure brought the space age into the culture of 1960s America. He spent 5 hours orbiting the earth 3 times and then splooshed back into the Atlantic Ocean a bloody hero.  Hopkins captures the excitement and joy Glenn’s flight gave to Americans but he also alludes to a near disaster upon re-entry.  I was too young to be aware of Glenn’s big adventure when it happened and so I thank Mr Hopkins for giving me a few details in his song that I probably would never have known.

10. Fuck Aneta Briant (David Allan Coe) The title pretty much sums up this song. It seems another world when Anita dominated the TV screen with her orange juice commercials and rants against the ‘homosexuals’.  Unknowingly her advocacy against the ‘gay lifestyle’ probably did more to create an opening for public acceptance of that lifestyle than anything the “homos” did by themselves. Coe, who spent time behind bars, points out in his 1978 song, just how important gay men are to surviving prison life.  This ‘progressive’ attitude is discussed by country music scholar Nadine Hubbs in this interesting article. Coe was and is a fringe artist to mainstream America and this song is probably unknown to most. But criticism of Bryant from those smack bad in the middle of your living room during prime time was also part of the broad opposition to her campaign that Bryant inspired.

11. Indian Nation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian) (Billy Thunderkloud & The Chieftones) This song is notorious.  Written by John D. Loudermilk it not only is full of historical inaccuracies but Loudermilk’s claims to how he came to write the song are also false. Wikipedia gives a good summary of that history. It seems that in American popular culture, ‘Cherokee’ is a cipher for ‘native American’ with all things supposedly ‘Indian’ being dumped into the idea of the Cherokee people.  This website is a great resource for the myths surrounding the Cherokee as well as other interesting critiques of how culture has misunderstood their people. One such data point, is that this song is ranked as the 5^th worst song about the Cherokee people ever composed. So what the hell is a Canadian Indian band doing covering this bit of stereotyping? They play the song straight and as Indians themselves it has a bit more gravitas then Paul Revere and some of the others mentioned in the Wikipedia article.  Clearly, from the Chieftones, the song was a statement of pride and identify. Who cares if the actual facts contradict some elements of the narrative. The Chieftones had a small moment in the 70s as a costumed-country band and though they were not as popular as Redbone or as respected as Jesse “Ed” Davis, they were and are beloved by their fans of all backgrounds. 

12. Joaquin Murrieta (The Rowans) Few Mexican-American folk heroes loom as large as Joaquín Murrieta. An outlaw of the California Gold Rush era, Murrieta and his exploits were posthumously fictionalized in The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (sic) by novelist John Rollin Ridge in 1854—one short year after Murrieta was allegedly killed by California rangers in a gunfight in Fresno County. In the years after his death, the legend of Murrieta grew: He was the protagonist of a play by Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, and he’s been credited with inspiring fictional vigilantes from Zorro to Batman.   Like the term ‘Cherokee’ the name ‘Joaquin’ became a catch all phrase of Mexican American bandits that attacked European migrants into California at the time of the Gold Rush.  And interestingly the myth that developed around Murrieta originated in a book written by a Cherokee Indian, John  Rollin Ridge.  I commend the above linked article to you.  Fascinating.

13. The Sinking of Reuben James  (The Chad Mitchell Trio) A Woody Guthrie song.  As the survivors struggled to stay afloat, unsecured depth charges from the Reuben James hit the water as the ship sank. Terrified sailors heard the depth charges arm themselves, and then the charges exploded, hurling debris and men into the air. “If it hadn’t been for those depth charges, we probably would have had another 40 or 50 survivors,” recalled Fireman Second Class George Giehrl. “Some were knocked unconscious. Others were torn apart.”

14. Louis Riel (Willie Dunn) A rousing tribute to Canadian Métis leader, religious guru and politician (and outlaw, according to his European enemies).  I had never heard his name before discovering Willie Dunn’s music but urge you to read this quick but informative piece about this “complicated” historical figure.

15. Bin Laden’s Corpse (Vatican Shadow) Article