FOLK ROT: Something is happening, but you don't know what it is

As I chop my way through YET ANOTHER Bob Dylan biography, this time by his longtime cheerleader/groupie/apologist Robert Shelton, the going is thicker and sludgier than last year's oatmeal left crusted in the pot. Still I make my way, relentlessly, because the book helps me go to sleep better than taking a couple of Seroquel, and there's no hangover the next day because I've forgotten what I've read. 

What interests me, aside from the fact that Shelton inserts himself into practically every paragraph (it's written in the first person, so that Shelton is the subject of the book and Dylan merely the object) are the bits and pieces out of the folk archives of those early times, when no one quite knew what to make of the skinny little kid from Minnesota who had a voice like a howling coyote and a fast-slashing wit that slipped unnoticed between the ribs of pundits and critics, creating bafflement, confusion, resentment, and even a degree of fear.

The way these indignant, insulted, obviously threatened stuffed shirts blathered on and on about how Dylan knew nothing and was stomping all over the folk tradition with muddy work boots makes for mighty embarrassing reading today. Which is why this is the most enjoyable part of this lumpy, bumpy, really-not-very-well-written-at-all biography-cum-memoir. Shelton knew Dylan like Dick Cavett knew Groucho and does not let us forget that fact for a moment, which nearly sinks the book in a sea of pretentious tedium. He also commits the most unforgiveable sin for a Dylan purist, or even a casual fan: HE GETS THE TITLE OF HIS MOST ICONIC MOVIE WRONG, spelling it "Don't Look Back" - when the filmmaker purposely left out the apostrophe. It is on every poster, in every review, and in the film itself, which makes you wonder if he even watched it.

But the sycophantic Shelton DOES provide us with, very likely, the last remaining documentation of one of the most stupid-ass periods in folk music history. Nobody else kept any of those shitty old copies of Sing Out! anyway, did they? But like back issues of TV guide piling up in an old boomer's attic, Shelton kept every issue and obsessively quotes from them for the book's entire 573 pages.

So I transcribed some of the juicier bits, which reflect just how CLUELESS these folkie pundits were, how stodgily encrusted their beliefs, and what a freaking strait-jacket they wanted to put Dylan in, probably because he scared the hell out of them:

Since 1950, when the folk audience was small, Sing Out!, under editor Irwin Silber, had laid down the "correct line" on folk song. Trumpeted by these men, the folk aesthetic denounced show business and mass culture, and advocated that Leftist, humanist views always be reflected in folk song. Deviation from belief in "art as a weapon in the social and class struggle" meant a sellout to commercial forces. Small wonder that Dylan's freewheeling exploration was apostasy.

Silber's "Open Letter to Bob Dylan", published in Sing Out! in November 1964, was particularly sharp: "I saw at Newport how you had somehow lost contact with people. . . some of the paraphernalia of fame were getting in your way." Dylan was outraged that Silber was telling him in public how to write and behave. Why didn't he telephone or write a personal letter? Silber was just using him to sell his magazine.

In September 1965, singer Ewan MacColl scourged Dylan again in Sing Out!:
“. . . our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists, working inside disciplines formulated over time. . . the present crop of contemporary American songs has been made by writers who are either unaware or incapable of working inside the disciplines, or are at pains to destroy them. ‘But what of Bobby Dylan?’ scream the outraged teenagers of all ages. . . a youth of mediocre talent. Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel. ‘But the poetry?’ What poetry? The cultivated illiteracy of his topical songs or the embarrassing fourth-grade schoolboy attempts at free verse? The latter reminds me of elderly female schoolteachers clad in Greek tunics rolling hoops across lawns at weekend theatre school. . .”

Izzy Young’s Sing Out! column for November 1965: “Dylan has settled for a liaison with the music trade’s Top-Forty Hit Parade. . . the charts require him to write rock-and-roll and he does. . . Next year, he’ll be writing rhythm and blues songs. . . the Polish polka will make it, and then he’ll write them, too. . .”

Animosity reached its high-water mark in the Sing Out! of January 1966. Tom Paxton lashed out in a column headed “Folk Rot” “. . . it isn’t folk, and if Dylan hadn’t led, fed and bred it, no one would ever have dreamed of confusing it with folk music.” Josh Dunson complained: “There is more protest and guts in one minute of good ‘race music’ than in two hours of folk-rock. . .”

May I say at this point that Josh, Tom, Izzy, Ewan and Irwin are so full of shit they are overflowing, and can in fact "sit on this and rotate" through all eternity. Most of them are dead now anyway, and weren`t particularly alive even while they were walking the planet. Meantime, 80-year-old Dylan lounges on the porch with his dogs on his property in Key West, sipping a glass of Heaven`s Door whiskey and quietly working on the lyrics for his next album.

CODA. Yes, Dylan DID answer his critics. The song is legendary enough that anyone remotely a fan of Dylan will know it. But I want to say it for him again, this time DIRECTLY to "that other Bob", Robert Shelton, and all the hangers-on as well as the detractors who wound up being SO WRONG about the whole thing, and dissed a man who would later go on to win the Nobel Prize while they sat around turning into alcoholic wanna-be/has-beens-who-never-were in some dingy 4th Street bar.

Positively 4th Street

You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'

You say I let you down, you know it’s not like that
If you're so hurt, why then don't you show it?
You say you've lost your faith, but that's not where it’s at
You have no faith to lose, and you know it

I know the reason that you talked behind my back
I used to be among the crowd you're in with
Do you take me for such a fool, to think I'd make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with?

You see me on the street, you always act surprised
You say "how are you?", "good luck", but you don't mean it
When you know as well as me, you'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once and scream it

No, I do not feel that good when I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief perhaps I'd rob them
And now I know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place
Don't you understand, it’s not my problem?

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you

It's all come back too clearly (Diamonds and Rust)

Well I'll be damned

Here comes your ghost again

But that's not unusual

It's just that the moon is full

And you happened to call

And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest

Ten years ago

I bought you some cufflinks

You brought me something

we both know what memories can bring

They bring               diamonds and rust

Well you burst on the scene

Already a legend

           The unwashed phenomenon

                                                                                                   The original vagabond
                                   
                           You strayed into my arms

and there you stayed

      Temporarily          lost at sea 

The Madonna was yours for free

Yes the girl on the half-shell       Would keep you 

                         unharmed

Now I see you standing

With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square

Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

Now you're telling me     You're not nostalgic      Then give me 

another word for it               You who are so good with words        And at keeping things 
vague

Because I need some of that                         vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly                                                                 yes I loved you dearly

And if you're offering me diamonds and rust

I've already paid

Run, run from the little folk

When you're in the Little Land

You watch the wee folk play,

You see them through a game or two,

You come out old and gray.

When you're in the Little Land

They fill your hands with gold,

You think you stay for just a day,

You come out bent and old.

Dead leaves in your pockets

O my enchanted, have a care

Run, run from the little folk

Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets

And snowflakes in your hair

Lights shine in the Little Land

From diamonds on the wall,

But when you're back on the brown hill side

It's cold pebbles after all.

Music in the little land

Makes the heart rejoice.

It charms your ear so you can not hear

The sound of your true love’s voice

Dead leaves in your pockets

O my enchanted, have a care

Run, run from the little folk

Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets

And snowflakes in your hair

When you’re in the Little Land

You watch the wee folk play,

You see them through a game or two,

You come out old and gray.

Dead leaves in your pockets

O my enchanted, have a care

Run, run from the little folk

Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets

And snowflakes in your hair

Why did this leap into my head today, and where did it come from? Until this morning, damned if I knew. I remember my brother singing it in the '60s when he came home from university. Everyone was singing and playing the guitar and going to hootenannys, whatever they were, and most of us sucked our songs off record albums, often with wrong words and crazy chords.

It took me quite a while to find any semblance of this song, except for a very Irish version of it on YouTube. His didn't much resemble mine. It spoke of leprechauns, which gave me a clue as to what the song was about. But my version was one of those cobbled-together-from-memory things. I was only 9 or 10 years old and impressionable. I had NO IDEA what this song meant or even where it came from: I remember finding it weird and disturbing, which it still is.

So today, thanks to the good graces of YouTube, I more or less hunted it down, but it wasn't easy. This was originally written by Malvina Reynolds, an eccentric folk genius who wrote Little Boxes (on the hillside) and What Have they Done to the Rain? This was one of her more obscure numbers and sounds like it's based on folk poetry. One false lead took me to a poem called The Little Land by Robert Louis Stevenson (ph?), but it was one of those "How Would you Like to Go Up in a Swing" kind-of things, echoes of childhood, etc. Not threatening enough.

Somewhere I found a reference to the Limelighters, a folk group we listened to a lot back then. It featured Glen Yarbrough (borough? Who has time to check?), a tenor with a voice that would cut through barbed wire. I remember quite a few of their songs, but not this one.

So it was still pretty obscure when I finally tracked down the available fragments and pieced them together with my bits of memory: hey, folk singers do that all the time. (I left out one line: someone's version said "Deadly in your pocket," which is completely nonsensical. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy.) But somewhere else, someone made a comment that actually made sense: Reynolds had a sense of social satire which could be quite biting (see Little Boxes). Perhaps the song was about another kind of "enchantment", not by leprechauns, faeries or other "little folk", but by the seductiveness of riches and fame.

It actually works. First you're just looking in from the outside, watching all these charming people at play, and it looks harmless enough, so you stay around for "a game or two". But then, bizarrely, you wake up and realize that decades have passed in a flash. The gold pouring through your hands eventually runs out and disappears. As in those alien encounters where people mysteriously lose time, the lurch ahead into old age is frightening: suddenly you're a has-been who never was.

The dead leaves in your pockets that I took so literally as a child could be the deadened browned scorched currency of false fame, crumbling away into nothing. And I don't need to explain those snowflakes. Bright lights, white hair, cold stones. To enchant, literally, means to gain magical power over someone by chanting, usually in song. Soon the sound of enchantment becomes so strong that we can no longer make out the voice of the one we truly love, the only one whose love is not based on greed.

It's a kind of evil reverse fairy-tale where the victim quickly shrivels under forces he or she can't comprehend. So much for cute little leprechauns, Lucky Charms and Kiss Me, I'm Irish.

As you can see, this is pretty close to the version at the beginning of this post, without those few lines about the leprechauns. The possible meaning of the lyric (being bedazzled by wealth and fame, while at the same time seduced and sucked dry) is made more clear by the line, "They'll dazzle you and promise you, and lead you by the hand". It couldn't be more clear, in fact. The Limelighters version leaves that verse out, so it starts in the middle, kind of. But we still get the message. 'Tis luck to catch a leprechaun. Except when it isn't.

Shenandoah

I first heard this truly exquisite version of one of my favorite folk tunes many years ago on the radio, and tried to track it down for years. Finding it again was one of those VERY rare occasions of joyful rediscovery that happen on the internet. It is like a distillation of all the finest movie scores from those classic Westerns which idealized everything about America's tawdry, bloody, unforgiveable history. The music has a golden, shimmering translucence, and holds up a lens to view an America that never was, but which Americans still yearn for as "what might have been". But in itself, it is stunning and unabashedly glorious, and I get prickles and goose-bumps and my hair stands on end whenever I hear it. So I share it here. I'm trying my best now to put out a certain energy which runs counter to everything I feel, because I do not want to feed a dragon which could all too easily defeat me for good.

One eternal chord: the legacy of Soeur Sourire

(BLOGGER'S NOTE. Though I wrote this post days ago, and have been gestating it for weeks or perhaps years, I just happened on the fact that this is Soeur Sourire's death-day. She chose it, a grim fact, but though she loved God, she definitely had a will of her own.

March 29, 1985 was the day she chose to set herself free from despair, fulfilling a suicide pact with her longtime companion, Annie Pecher.)

"Am I a failure? I try to stay honest with myself. To look for the truth, and try to question everything in my life...
Ten years ago I would have said I was a loser.
Now I don't think in terms of losing or winning...
Life is a continuum. You're constantly on your way. One day I feel good, the next I feel bad. Altogether it's bearable.
Would I do it all over again? That's not a good question. You can't.
You can't do it all over again. Voila"

- - Jeanine Deckers

"Jeanine... is in constant depression and only lives for me. I live for her. That can't go on. 

"We do suffer really too much... We have no more place in life, no ideal except God, but we can't eat that.

"We go to eternity in peace.
We trust God will forgive us.
He saw us both suffer and he won't let us down.

"It would please Jeanine not to die for the world.
She had a hard time on earth.
She deserves to live in the minds of people."

- - Annie Pécher, from Jeanine and Annie's suicide note, 1985

Dominique

Dominique, nique nique
o'er the land he plods along
and sings a little song
Never asking for reward
He just talks about the Lord
He just talks about the Lord

At a time when Johnny Lackland
over England was the King, Dominique
was in the backland,
fighting sin like anything

Chorus

Now a heretic, one day
Among the thorns forced him to crawl
Dominiqu' with just one prayer,
Made him hear the good Lord's call

Without horse or fancy wagon,
He crossed Europe up and down
Poverty was his companion,
As he walked from town to town

To bring back the straying liars
and the lost sheep to the fold
He brought forth the Preaching Friars,
Heaven's soldiers, brave and bold

One day in the budding order,
There was nothing left to eat,
Suddenly two angels walked in
With a load of bread and meat

Dominique once in his slumber
Saw the Virgin's coat unfurled
Over friars without number
Preaching all around the world

Grant us now oh Dominique
The grace of love and simple mirth
That we all may help to quicken
Godly life and truth on earth

Je Voudrais

I'd like to be just like the wind,
singing everywhere
I'd like to be just like the wind
dancing everywhere
Like the wind that praises the Lord
Like the wind

I'd like to be like the white cloud,
Sailing in the sky
I'd like to be like the white cloud
In the sun
Like the cloud that searches for the Lord
Facing You....

I'd like to be like the flame
from a wood fire
I'd like to be like the flame
from a wood fire
Just like the flame that rises, Lord
Dancing for You

I'd like to be like a guitar
A singing heart
I'd like to be like a quitar
A vibrant heart
Like a guitar that You fill with the strength
Of Your song


Tout Les Chemins

Every road through hills and valleys
Leads to heaven by and by
And the wind that sweeps the alleys
Points a finger to the sky

A song on my lips, a song in my heart
I go my merry way
The sun in my eyes, The sun in my heart,
Lights up my step day to day

Many friends are on the highway,
And they're waiting for a smile
Walk along my friend on my way
Holding hands a little while

There are times of storm and sorrow
When the goal drifts out of sight
But the road leads on tomorrow
To the land of peace and light

Then we'll all be reunited
Singing one eternal chord
For we know we've been invited
To the mansion of the Lord

Soeur Adele

Here is my guitar from Barcelona
Full of the soul of ancient Spain
Born of a tree in Catalonia
And of that mainly rainy plain

You'll like her form, gracious and slender
The sunny color of her skin.
You'll love her voice, mellow and tender
Her fiery beat will make you spin

I well remember when I met her
Hung in a showcase upside down
Right then and there I had to get her
From that old shop in Brussels town
Adios Espania and seguidillas
Adios toreros full of flame
No more sombreros and mantillas
Sister Adele shall be her name

One shiny day I heard God's calling
Oh yes, my Lord if You say so!
I packed my bags without much stalling
Took my quitar and said, Let's go!
Ever since then through every weather
Sister Adele stays at my side
Day in, day out, we sing together
Praising the Lord far and wide.

Sister Adele is never lonely
She helps me keep my hope up high
God is her love, her one and only
I know he voice can reach the sky
Someday up there God be willing
I'll be a guest in the great hall.
And for the dance won't it be thrilling
Sister Adele will lead the ball!

Une fleure

With a flower on the tip of my
muddy shoes I'm walking toward
God, happily singing.
With a flower on the tip of my muddy shoes
I go my way with a light heart
I've picked a flower of hope
Among the budding wheat
Among the evanescence
Of winter evenings

I've picked the flower of hope
In the love of the Lord
Toward Him I am advancing
With a heartful of songs
I found along my way
A flower in the sunshine
It chased away
My desperate tears
In my heart,
The wealth of a sea of eternity
Carries me with happiness

Petit bateau

I found our God on the shore
I found our God in the white seashells

Little boat on the waters
Drifting, drifting
Little boat on the waters
Take my soul to the sky

I found the Lord in the breeze
I found the Lord
In the misty wind

I found our God in the sand
I found our God
in the dreamy swellls

I found the Lord in the mist
I found the Lord
In the sunset on the dunes

Alleluia

Like an autumn leaf that is drifitng

Through a chilly November day
I was restless and drifting
Never happy,never gay

Hallelujah, for Your grace has saved me
For Your love makes its home in my heart
For the happiness You gave me
Hallelujah
the wind that sings
in the mountain
For the sunshine that lights up the sky
For the water in the fountain, Hallelujah!

I walked in sadness
and my song was troubled
I walked in sadness
Seeking peace and happiness everywhere

By chance in my adventures
One evening God I found
To God I give my solitude
And His friendship saved my soul
Hallelujah!

Mets Ton Joli Jupon

Put on your pretty skirt my soul
Prepare a joyful rendezvous
Put on your pretty skirt my soul
The Lord you love is waiting for you

In the early morning hours
When the dew is on the rose
A small gift of Your love
And I am satisfied!

When noon is full of wonder
It`s a joy to be alive
I feel golden in the sun
from a friendship close and warm

Among the twilight stars
When You are all around
You make me fall asleep
In the peace of your arms

CODA. I don't want to write about the cost of fame, the despair, the turbulence, or any of it. Jeanine Deckers (also known as the Singing Nun) left us this music, songs that are quirky, fragile, ideosyncratic. I don't think she played the guitar any better than I do, and her voice, though vibrant and sincere, was not outstanding. 

It was her life she gave us. 

Someone wrote a horrible musical about her life, sending it up, the little girl from Belgium entering a convent, then by accident making a hit record. Leaving the convent to live with a woman and try to make her way as a painter and club singer. Falling into alcoholism along the way. Drunken nun - it's hysterical!

Except it isn't. She and her companion made a suicide pact, and acted on it. They weren't just broke but desperately in debt due to the criminal actions of her former convent, and saw no liveable future.

The Catholic church did not approve of their way out, and buried her silently. Bad enough to be a suicide, but a heretic/lesbian in the bargain? 

Though biographical material is scant, Soeur Sourire pops up surprisingly often on YouTube. When I first began to read up on her life, years ago, I was shocked to find there was only one biography, self-published and badly-written. I am about to read it for the second time, because it's all I have.

I would have liked to have known Jeanine Deckers, a thistle of a woman with a soft centre, who evidently made the best of her good periods. I am convinced she was bipolar, and I know what a hard road that is, even at the best of times.

She was never meant to be world-famous, harassed, cheated this way, owing a mammoth amount of back taxes on song royalties that all went to the convent. But that wasn't the only reason she gave up, or gave in. 

When I hear that clear, candid voice, the voice that seems to be speaking to me directly through time, it brings back a lot of things. My brother Arthur used to sing her songs in French, and they were beautiful. Everyone listened to the album, and no one had the first idea what the words meant. 

I present translations of a few of them here (and a video of a portion of her first album: it was all I could find). The lyrics are slight enough for a breeze to stir them, but the tunes are simply lovely, full of sun and shadow. Of course the original words lose a lot: the French syllables are inherently beautiful, the English bulky and too-literal. I've taken the liberty of amending a few lines: "prepare a joyful rendezvous" was originally "we have a date, we have a date".

Most people are completely unaware of the fact that the celebrated Dominique is a sly satire on the veneration of saints, those exalted figures who invariably turn out to have feet of clay. Verse by verse she builds up his legend until he appears to be wearing a cape and an S on his chest. Yet almost everyone, even the nuns at the convent, took it literally. No one in the listening public was remotely interested in a translation, but just whistled or sang along. It is said Dominique shot to the top of the charts because it came out just after the Kennedy assassination. Could be true; the pop version of the Lord's Prayer was released hard on the heels of The Exorcist, and it sold like crazy.

What more do I have to say? I wasn't going to say any of this.  I know how it feels to want to die. I know how it is to actually plan it, to choose the method. I used to be religious, I was part of the United Church for 15 years and left in bitter and abject pain, completely alone, and feeling mortally wounded by disillusionment. But it serves me right for having illusions in the first place.

Or so it would seem.

P. S. I have found three spellings of her name. Her biographer D. A. Chadwick spells it Jeannine. The quote at the top of this post says Jeanine. Wikipedia claims her name was Jeanne-Paule-Marie Deckers. I have no idea if these shifting versions had anything to do with her choice. I am reminded of the saying, "It doesn't matter what people say about you, so long as they spell your name right." Her suicide was treated as a joke by many: my God, the Singing Nun killed herself! But she died long before that, mauled by celebrity, then virtually forgotten.