Various artists, People Take Warning!: Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938 (Tompkins Square, 2007)
Daddy please don't go down in that hole today,
for my dreams do come true sometimes you know.
Oh, don't leave me daddy, please don't go away.
Something bad sure will happen , do not go.'
- Explosion in the Fairmount Mine, by Alfred Reed
With cable and satellite TV, we can all sit back and watch whatever horrible things catch our eye. Let's face it; we take notice of suffering. Whether it's because our hearts go out to those in troubled times, or for a vicarious thrill, if there's a disastrous event, people know about it. And strain for more. Our recent laundry list of horrors is almost too much to bear, and growing every day. Unlike our brethren of the early 20th Century, however, we're able to check out anything, and at a moment's notice. Don't have cable? Head to YouTube. Or hey, that free paper they pass out on the subway every day? There's gotta be the latest updates of that horrible tragedy somewhere in there. But in the early decades of the last century, you took whatever you could get. And most the most popular medium to get the word out was music -- performed live, or played at home from readily available sheet music -- that described the tragedies. Seventy songs describing disasters of all kinds are collected in People Take Warning!
These songs were originally recorded on 78 rpm records and transferred to CD without really being cleaned up. For the most part, however, that raw scratchy sound draws the listener into a temporary state of time-travel as you hear the songs as they must have sounded to the folks who first listened to those old recordings. As I took a look at the song list in this set, I worried that I'd have to do a crapload of research just to be able to figure out what each song was talking about. Luckily, the folks at Tompkins Square include a booklet that briefly describes each tragedy, along with a stanza or two of each song. I was particularly thankful for the snippets of lyrics, because these old recordings -- as with many other examples of old-time music and acoustic blues -- tend to blur the vocals, causing me to strain in order to understand some sections.
The set is divided into three separate sections; the first disc, "Man V Machine", deals with mechanical disasters, from the sinking of the Titanic to Casey Jones. The first song, "Titanic Blues", by Hi Henry Brown and Charlie Jordan, caught my attention because the song describes the Captain of the Titanic as a man who took care of the children as best he could as the ship went down. This positive portrayal is unlike the generally held view of Captain Smith as the reason the tragedy occurred; a view that seems unlikely at best, and thrust upon him by White Star Lines so they could shift blame at worst. After reading court testimony from the inquest after the wreck, I've always had a soft spot for this Captain, a dead man who couldn't defend himself as blame was passed around.
Track 8, "Fate of Will Rodgers & Wiley Post", was pretty interesting; the only think I'd ever really known about Will Rodgers is the brief bits I've gleaned from his Institute's PSA's shown at movie theaters in the summer. I paused at the idea that just because these two men died they were brave. Seemed like an illogical conclusion; if they're brave, they're brave, but the only reason given for their bravery in this song is that they died. There are other songs like this in this compilation, but that can be easily explained by the fact that not only were these songs was of getting information out to the masses, they were little pictures of morality that painted good and evil with a heavy brush. The next song on Disc 1, "Down With the Old Canoe," tells listeners that they'd better be good with God, or they'll go "...down with that old canoe." Comforting, ain't it? "Kassie Jones" (parts 1 and 2) and "Last Scene of the Titanic" are the most fascinating of the tracks on this disc; "Kassie" is a blusey look at the wreck of The Southern Cannonball, and "Last Scene" is, as the booklet describes, a "stream of consciousness" song that provides an almost too-real glimpse into what it must have been like on that ship, just before and after the disaster.
The next disc deals with "Man V Nature," including fire, flood and flu. The last song on Disc 2, "Flood of 1927" by Elders McEntorsh and Edwards, is practically unintelligible, sadly enough; it sounds like a rip-roarin' good time, and makes me wish I could have heard this one performed live. If there's one song in this entire set that I wish could have been cleaned up more, it would be Charlie Patton's "High Water Everywhere, Part 1." The old-time sound is amazing, but the record's scratch is louder than the song itself, making it tough to listen to, which is a real shame considering Patton's amazing talent. The whole set would benefit from digital remastering, but perhaps these original recordings are already too deteriorated to receive any benefit from further tinkering. Which is a shame, because these songs are part of America's oral history, a link between tales told to family and neighbors and the advent of the phonograph, radio and TV.
Disc 3, "Man V Man (And Woman Too)", is more entertainment value than the first two, probably because it deals with man's inhumanity to man, rather than what man has heaped upon him. So it's kind of like a sound-only extended Jerry Springer or Cops episode. Two songs stuck out for me because I'd heard the name or the tune before. Furry Lewis' "Billy Lyons and Stack O'Lee" sounded familiar because I'd heard Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee" ("Go Stagger Lee!") at a rock 'n' roll revival show back in high school and loved it. "Tom Dooley" made me sit up and hum along a little, at least to the famous "hang down your head and cry" chorus. Man v. Man (And Woman, Too) ends with two great songs, Willie Walker's rockin' "Dupree Blues" and "Poor Ellen Smith" by the Dykes Magic City Trio, a song that stirred up so much raw emotion in its listeners that Forsyth County, North Carolina, made it a crime to sing it to large groups. That power is still evident from this recording, and it's a fitting end to this set.
But the big question is; are there any songs on these discs I'd put in my iPod? Absolutely. "Dupree Blues" will make the cut, as will the Cajun track "Lanse Des Belaires," a song about an unfaithful woman's permanent solution to her marriage woes. "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues" from Disc 2 is a no-brainer (I love acoustic blues), and "Memphis Flu" may squeeze in too because of its amazing 'tonk piano. And Disc 1's "Kassie Jones Part 1" by Furry Lewis? You bet. Guess I'll be making a "Disaster" playlist pretty soon...
The gulf between today's viewpoints and the beliefs of that age are seen plainly in these songs. I had to lay aside my personal beliefs about divine retribution for possible personal wrongdoing, and after I did that I enjoyed the songs more. There's also a disturbing train of thought in a few songs; tales of rape and abuse against women that turn the consequences of an attacker's actions against the victim, sending the woman's "soul to hell" (as the song "Pretty Polly" points out, for example.) But one of the reasons these songs were so popular was the warning they included, and the admonition to straighten up and fly right, so that's just part and parcel of the times in which they were written and recorded. Still, the whole "if something bad happens to you it's because you're not right with The Lord, and if you're good, nothing bad will happen to you" thing rubbed me wrong a time or two. Listening to a slew of tunes with that theme running over and over through 'em will do that to me, apparently.
Still, even with that sticking in my craw, I couldn't put aside the raw power of these songs, partly because of the salacious nature of the issues sung about, partly due to the power of the performers themselves. In the introduction to this set, Tom Waits says these songs are ". . .tragic chronicles of the perils of being human." That statement is dead-on. The plaintive urging of these long-gone performers to listen to their tales and hear their warnings seem like ghosts rattling in the attic; you can ignore them if you will, but it's best to listen and let it sink in. For the past is prologue, and those who don't listen are, in fact, doomed to repeat it. In the case of People Take Warning!, I'm happy to take heed.
