![]() Linda headed a choir group called the Evening Birds, made up of boyhood friends from his hometown of Pomeroy. Influenced by the new syncopated music that had been introduced into South Africa from the US during the 1880s, he included it in the Zulu songs he and his friends sang at weddings and feasts. He attended the Gordon Memorial mission school where he learned somewhat about Western musical culture, hymns, and choir contests in which he participated. Was familiar with the traditions of amahubo and izingoma zomtshado (wedding songs) music. Our story begins in South Africa in the 1930s, where Zulu musician Solomon Linda was trying to establish himself in the Ladysmith area of Natal. It also touches on the issue of intellectual property rights – who “owns” the rights to a song, particularly as it crosses from one country to another, or when it can be classified as a folk or traditional song? It provides insight into the way songs are transformed as they move from one culture to another. One who did was Sam Hinton, curator of the Thomas Wayland Vaughan Aquarium Museum at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.Hello there! This edition of Tim’s Cover Story tells the fascinating story of a song that originated as a popular tune in South Africa in the 1930s, then morphed into a folk classic in the 50s and finally emerged as a #1 rock song in 1963. Outside of activists within People's Songs, few people bought Seeger's record. Pete Seeger recorded it in 1948 for Irwin Silber and Brownie McGhee's Encore label. Laced with irony, the song circulated among other singer-songwriters after its appearance as Atomic Talking Blues in the January 1947 People's Songs Bulletin. After interviewing scientists on the consequences of a nuclear war, he wrote Old Man Atom, a talking blues using a musical template Woody Guthrie adapted from the recordings of Chris Bouchillon. When Earl Robinson opened the first People's Songs office on the West Coast, Partlow became one of its earliest members. In the mid-'40s forties he hosted a program covering labor issues for a Los Angeles station. Hired by the Los Angeles Daily News, he became an early supporter of the American Newspaper Guild, formed in 1933. ![]() The organization set up a booking office for its members and encouraged aspiring singer-songwriters and established composers to send sheet music or demos of new topical songs for possible publication in the monthly bulletin.Īlthough some professional composers were among People's Songs' earliest supporters, the most enduring songs to emerge from the movement were penned by non-professionals like Vern Partlow, a Los Angeles journalist and union activist.īorn May 25, 1910, in Bloomington, Illinois, Verneil Partlow moved to California after working for newspapers and radio stations in Wisconsin and Chicago. In October 1947, the organization held its first national convention in Chicago. Within a year's time the People's Songs concept spread to other major North American cities. Committees were established to find office space, set up a corporation, establish a regular newsletter, secure financing and recruit new members. Reaching out to New York's leftist folk, theatrical and literary communities, Seeger invited potential members to attend the December 31, 1945, organizational meeting of People's Songs. Seeger's model was Great Britain's Workers Music Association, founded in 1939 by members of England's Communist Party. With the war over and now back in civilian life, he dreamed of expanding the Almanacs' ideals into a national movement that would unify singers, performers, choral leaders and labor unions into a force for political and social change. Pete Seeger never abandoned the original vision of the Almanac Singers.
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