Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | 920 JAR | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
The dramatic untold story of the Weavers, the hit-making folk-pop quartet destroyed with the aid of the United States government -- and who changed the world, anyway
Following a series of top-ten hits that became instant American standards, the Weavers dissolved at the height of their fame. Wasn't That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America details the remarkable rise of Pete Seeger's unlikely band of folk heroes, from basement hootenannies to the top of the charts, and the harassment campaign that brought them down.
Exploring how a pop group's harmonies might be heard as a threat worthy of decades of investigation by the FBI, Wasn't That a Time turns the black-and-white 1950s into vivid color, using the Weavers to illuminate a dark and complex period of American history. With origins in the radical folk collective the Almanac Singers and the ambitious People's Songs, the singing activists in the Weavers set out to change the world with songs as their weapons, pioneering the use of music as a transformative political organizing tool.
Using previously unseen journals and letters, unreleased recordings, once-secret government documents, and other archival research, Jesse Jarnow uncovers the immense hopes, incredible pressures, and daily struggles of the four distinct and often unharmonious personalities at the heart of the Weavers.
In an era defined by a sharp political divide that feels all too familiar, the Weavers became heroes. With a class -- and race -- conscious global vision that now makes them seem like time travelers from the twenty-first century, the Weavers became a direct influence on a generation of musicians and listeners, teaching the power of eclectic songs and joyous, participatory harmonies.
Author Notes
Jesse Jarnow is the author of Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock and Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America . His writing on music, technology, and culture has appeared in the Times (London), the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork , Wired.com, Relix (contributing editor), Dupree's Diamond News , and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and hosts The Frow Show on the independent Jersey City radio station WFMU. He tweets via @bourgwick and @HeadsNews.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The Weavers, the chart-topping American folk music quartet whose populist politics made them a target for jingoist McCarthyites, are recast as a crucial fulcrum in America's postwar culture battles in this dramatic, raucous account from Jarnow (Big Day Coming). In 1940, Arkansas songwriter and bass singer Lee Hays teamed up with folk scholar and banjo picker Pete Seeger to perform rediscovered folk ditties and protest songs, which they amassed as the Almanac Singers during WWII. Later, the duo added the rich voice of utopian socialist Ronnie Gilbert and the pop-attuned sensibilities of guitarist Fred Hellerman to form the Weavers in 1948. The group built a deep repertoire in New York City's bubbling folk scene, jamming at impromptu "hootenannies" and various political fund-raisers. Jarnow tracks their ascent on the charts with hits such as "Goodnight, Irene" and "Wimoweh" that "would continue to float through the American folk ether" and inspire groups as different as the Kingston Trio and the Grateful Dead. Despite's Seeger forceful stand against HUAC questioning, political harassment forced the members to disband in 1961. Detailed and smartly reported, this work marvelously captures the four voices in a complex era that influenced pop-folk bands that followed. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
The story of the Weavers, "America's most popular folk singers."It's not exactly an untold story, given that one member of the group was Pete Seeger and on the fringes of the tale lurks legendary singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie, not to mention the coverage the group received in the popular 1982 documentary The Weavers: Wasn't that a Time! Nevertheless, longtime music journalist Jarnow (Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, 2016, etc.) delivers a by-the-numbers biography of a band whose popular songs and covers earned them plenty of attention during the Red Scare and a place on the blacklist. Most readers think of folk groups as particularly tightknit, but the author reflects equally on the tensions within the group. "The band was a slow-functioning democracy under the best of circumstances," he writes. On display, too, are the very different personalities of each member: Lee Hays, the contentious bass singer who co-wrote "If I Had a Hammer"; Fred Hellerman, the band's unsung producer and arranger of songs; Seeger, the driven, multitalented banjo picker whose songs would go on to be huge hits for the next generation of artists like Peter, Paul and Mary and The Byrds; and Ronnie Gilbert, so popular at the time she was simply known as "The Voice." The author also ably recounts dramatic scenes in the nation's courtroomse.g., Seeger demanding, "do I have a right to sing these songs? Do I have a right to sing them anywhere?" There are also interesting cameos sprinkled throughout this colorful tale, from Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. organizing for civil rights to Bob Dylanabout whom Hellerman exclaimed, "he can't sing, and he can barely play, and he doesn't know much about music at all."A well-researched music biography best read with some traditional American folk songs playing in the background. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Anyone who has ever belted out If I Had Hammer on a bus or crooned Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) around a campfire has sung a Weavers song. Drawing on rich folk, traditional, and global musical influences, songs created or recreated by Pete Seeger and his fellow musicians Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert made their way into the American musical lexicon through often controversial routes. These were the original modern protest songs, advocating for workers' rights and other progressive themes at a time when the country was mired in the Red Scare. Indeed, all four members appeared before the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and the increased public scrutiny took its toll, leading to the group's break up. Fortunately, they reunited in time to influence a new generation of Americans concerned with civil rights and the escalating war in Vietnam. Extensively researched, Jarnow's deep and accomplished portrait of these iconic musicians reverberates with a mastery that will appeal to both fans and everyone interested in the history of music.--Carol Haggas Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ON AUG. 18,1955, the folk singer Pete Seeger was interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about his affiliation with the American Communist Party, which he had joined a decade and a half earlier, although drifting away from active involvement by the early 1950s. Refusing to answer questions about his political associations, and doing so on First Amendment grounds (rather than taking the Fifth, which would have offered legal immunity), Seeger spent years under the threat of imprisonment for, in essence, singing the wrong songs to the wrong people. His conviction for contempt of Congress was finally voided in appeals court in 1962. Recounting Seeger's experience with HUAC in "Wasn't That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America," Jesse Jarnow observes that both the red-hunting committee members and their victim "shared a common interest and belief in the power of song" - a belief also shared by the author. A journalist, disc jockey and musician, Jarnow has written an engaging account of the rise, fall, resurrection and legacy of the Weavers, the Greenwich Village-based quartet of left-leaning musicians founded near the end of 1948 that included Seeger as well as Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman. Hellerman had been a teenage member of the Young Communist League and Gilbert was the daughter of a Communist activist; Hays was a cranky, independent radical. All shared the belief that music could be put to use, in the words of "If I Had a Hammer," an early Weavers song written by Hays and Seeger, to "sing out danger," warning and love. The group's vocal repertoire, accompanied by Seeger's banjo and Hellerman's guitar, mixed folk, political and commercial influences. Improbably, and to their own surprise, they wound up releasing a string of hit recordings in the darkest days of McCarthyism, including "Goodnight Irene" and "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena," and with "Wimoweh" they had an enduring classic. As a solo performer, and as a member of the left-wing Almanac Singers in the early 1940s, Seeger had performed mostly at political or labor gatherings. But starting in late 1949, the newly formed Weavers began performing nightly at the Village Vanguard nightclub in Greenwich Village, for a weekly payment of $200 split equally among them, plus all the hamburgers they could eat. Wildly popular in the bohemian circles of Lower Manhattan, they acquired a competent professional manager, Harold Leventhal. (Leventhal would go on to manage such folk stars as Joan Baez and Mary Travers, both of whom, like countless others, traced their interest in folk music to Weavers concerts.) Arecord contract, television appearances and a national tour followed. The work-shirted outfits the Weavers wore in the Village Vanguard were replaced by tuxedos for the men, and an evening gown for Gilbert. And, with some qualms, they toned down the overtly political aspects of the act ("On Top of Old Smoky" was a regular feature of their set-list in nightclub appearances; "If I Had a Hammer" soon wasn't). Jarnow employs an engaging, colloquial tone that captures the distinctive personalities and the intertwining voices that made up the Weavers. He describes Lee Hays's "ominous bass parts rumbling as if an underground freedom train had gotten loose in the subway system." On "Wimoweh," Seeger, standing behind the other three singers with his long banjo, let loose "with his most elongated falsetto, a swooping curling ghost of a transmission from someplace far away." Listen to a Weavers performance on YouTtibe - you'll see what Jarnow means. Unfortunately, Jarnow's feel for the Weavers' music is not matched by his grasp of the left-wing political milieu from which they emerged. He suggests that the Communist Party U.S.A. changed its name to the Communist Political Association following World War II (the name change occurred during the war and was reversed before the war ended); he describes the black Communist leader Ben Davis as a "congressman from Harlem, the sole elected Communist in the House of Representatives" (Davis was a city councilman from Harlem, and no open Communist ever served in Congress); and he asserts that there was never a case of Soviet espionage that "bore any connection to the American Communist Party" (something no serious history of the party maintains after three decades of post-Cold War revelations from archives in Moscow and Washington). The Weavers' dizzying early success drew the attention of professional redbaiters, the F.B.I. and eventually HUAC. By the end of 1952, the group was effectively blacklisted. Bookings outside of New York, television appearances and record contracts disappeared. Thinking their moment had passed, the Weavers unraveled. But in 1955, Leventhal organized a reunion concert at Carnegie Hall on Christmas Eve that sold out, and led to the release of a hit album, "The Weavers at Carnegie Hall," plus a wave of bookings on the growing college folk-music circuit. The Silent Generation of the 1950s was beginning to acquire a voice by the end of the decade, and it carried some Weavers-inspired inflections. For a broader consideration of the historical impact of political songwriting and performance, the journalist James Sullivan offers a useful overview in "Which Side Are You On? 20th Century American History in 100 Protest Songs." The subtitle is misleading, for he includes a number of songs from earlier moments in American protest, including an 18th-century women's rights hymn, 19th-century black freedom songs and a rousing labor anthem that begins "Storm the Fort / Ye Knights of Labor," also from the late 19 th century. Nor does Sullivan restrict himself to overtly political music. His chapter on women's rights songs begins with 18-year-old Lesley Gore, a "prim young lady in heels and a wool skirt," stepping up to a microphone at a teenage music concert in 1964 and defiantly belting out, "You don't own me / I'm not just one of your many toys." Although the song was ostensibly a pop confection of girl-with-bad-boyfriend problems, Sullivan notes, "You Don't Own Me" became an enduring feminist anthem. There's more than one way to sing out danger, warning and the love between your brothers and your sisters. MAURICE ISSERMAN teaches American history at Hamilton College and is the author of, among other books, "If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left."
Library Journal Review
As with founding Weaver Ronnie Gilbert's recent memoir, A Radical Life in Song, this book structures itself after the folk quartet it profiles. There is no single thread winding its way through Jarnow's (Heads: A -Biography of Psychedelic America) study of the Weavers, but many. The author examines the evolution of American folk music from prior to World War II through the advent of rock and roll and beyond. Jarnow also explores the evolving understanding of what it meant to collect and rework traditional songs (methods deemed acceptable back then would likely now be considered appropriative) and the creative, idiosyncratic, difficult personalities who briefly bottled lightning and subsequently transformed American music from Bob Dylan's output to schoolhouse sing-alongs. One of the most powerful themes is the anticommunist paranoia that seized the United States during the 1950s and the consequences of the blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee on the Weavers' visibility and careers. VERDICT For fans of the Weavers and those they influenced, as well as lovers of 20th-century American folk music.-Genevieve Williams, Pacific Lutheran Univ. Lib., Tacoma © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Prologue: The Loathsome Traveler | p. 1 |
1 The New Situations | p. 7 |
2 People's Songs | p. 27 |
3 Warp and Woof | p. 53 |
4 Irene, Goodnight | p. 81 |
5 Ballad for Un-American Blues | p. 115 |
6 This Land Is Your Land | p. 145 |
7 Twelve Gates to the City | p. 175 |
8 Hammer Songs | p. 203 |
9 This Too Shall Pass | p. 223 |
Acknowledgments | p. 239 |
Sources | p. 241 |
Notes | p. 245 |
Index | p. 285 |