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Wasn't That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America (2018)

por Jesse Jarnow

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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.… (mais)
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This book suffers from a case of sub-title-itis.

The subtitle is "The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America." And, yes, it does talk about that -- or, at least, the musical group The Weavers and the blacklisting they suffered in the 1950s. (I'm not sure how you even describe a "Battle for the Soul of America!") But this is only a part of the book. By the time we're half way through the text, The Weavers are performing again and the book becomes mostly a chronicle of their struggles to function as a performing group.

In a way, the book's confusion over what it covers reflects the group's own confusion over what they were. Were they a folk-preservation group, like band member Pete Seeger's brother's group The New Lost City Ramblers? Were they a pop group that used folk songs, like the Kingston Trio? Or were they a political group, like their forerunner The Almanac Singers?

The truth is, The Weavers weren't really any of these. They sang traditional folk songs, but they messed with them more than a little, and they sang plenty of modern songs, too; they were not preservationists or tradition-bearers. They topped the pop charts in a way no other folk group ever did (that statement requires some footnotes, but you probably don't want to read them...), but they didn't pander the way a true pop group would. And while they were all cutting-edge political leftists, the songs they recorded were generally not extremely leftist.

But Pete Seeger and Lee Hays had both been members of the Communist Almanac Singers before they became Weavers, and the two younger Weavers, Fred Helleman and Ronnie Gilbert, had also been involved in left-wing politics. The FBI had its eyes on them. And hence the blacklist. That is the political message of this book, or at least of its first half, and it is a genuinely frightening reminder of what happens when we let only part of the political spectrum control the conversation. (This should be a warning to both left and right wings!)

But the persecution faded, and the rest of the book becomes almost the story of a family quarrel, as everybody tries to figure out what to do with Old Grand Uncle Lee who is always kvetching, and who to invite to dinner now that Brother Pete has moved out of the house.

Which makes me wonder who this book is really for (I note that one of the other LibraryThing reviews is by someone who didn't even know who The Weavers were). I'm almost sixty, and even so, The Weavers were before my time. I heard their records, yes, since my parents owned one or two. But they never defined my music -- my parents played a lot more Peter Paul and Mary than The Weavers, and by the time I was making my own musical choices, I moved far more toward the folk-preservation end of things. There just aren't that many people left who really had a direct involvement with The Weavers. And with folk music almost dead as a popular form, the attempt at the end to connect The Weavers with Rock and Roll seems almost pathetic -- yes, there were rockers like Jerry Garcia who were folk fans, but as a genre, it didn't derive at all from The Weavers -- indeed, Rock perhaps helped relieve the pressure on all those radical lefty folkies, because Rock became the bigger cultural influence.

None of that makes this a bad book. It reads well. It's well researched. It reminds us of a bad but important time. And I learned a lot that I didn't know about The Weavers, since it is one of the few writings about them compiled after all four of them were dead. People who still know the name of The Weavers will surely benefit from reading it. But I didn't find any particular reason, in this book, to bring their music back to life. ( )
1 vote waltzmn | Nov 22, 2020 |
Marking this one did-not-finish at page 124.

The premise sounded interesting: a very popular musical group whose socialist ideals ran afoul of the government during the Red Scare at the beginning of the Cold War. It’s what I call a ‘social or cultural history.’ Unfortunately this seems to be a borderline-hagiography of The Weavers.

It might not be so bad except it’s clearly written with fans of the group in mind. I knew nothing of them to begin with. I’d heard of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie (I think), but didn’t know anything about them. The book isn’t a good introduction to them (except there seems to be some hero-worship, especially toward Guthrie). In fact, it’s not a good introduction to the topics of folk music or anti-communism either. I wasn’t even exactly sure what constituted “folk music” and had to look it up, and same with “hootenanny,” because neither are ever really defined in the book. But it was the writing style that most turned me off. It pretty much glosses over all the unpalatable aspects of the members of the group, often twisting itself into knots explaining how they “technically” weren’t lying when they made various statements. But when it started mixing in modern terms such as “fake news” and “marginalized,” I decided I’d had enough. It’s just not for me.
  J.Green | Mar 15, 2019 |
We sang the songs in elementary school music classes.

I Ride an Old Paint
Drill Ye Tarriers, Drill
Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Erie Canal
On Top of Old Smokey
Paddy Works on the Railway

And in scouts and church camp.

Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
Kumbaya
If I Had a Hammer
Little Boxes

We heard the songs on the radio and played them on our record players and hi-fis and cassette players and CD players.

This Land is your Land
Good Night, Irene
Turn! Turn! Turn!
Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
Tom Dooley
Guantanamo

Generations of musicians have recorded the songs.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone
Wimoweh
Sloop John B

I sang St. James Infirmary and Leatherwing Bat as bedtime songs.
On family trips we sang to Dangerous Songs, belting out Garbage and Beans in My Ears.
In a live concert at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, Pete Seeger taught the crowd The Garden Song.

The music sang and recorded by Pete Seeger definitely imparted certain values. And that is exactly what Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman intended. "Cultural equity and global harmony" were the suspect values lurking behind the Weaver's music. It doesn't sound dangerous, just mainstream liberal-progressive stuff. Except those values had led Pete and Ronnie and Lee and Fred to join the Communist party and although they had dropped out, they could not escape the association. And being pro-union, anti-war, globalists extolling the common man in those days was just as bad as wearing a big red "S" for Socialist.

Wasn't That a Time by Jesse Jarnow is the story of the Weavers and the early folk music scene, presenting their battles with the House Un-American Committee and Blacklisting.

It was an age of fear. President Eisenhower had denounced Communists as traitors and a threat. Idealists like Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Lee Hayes were attracted to the Communist party for its high ideals of equality. Events in the USSR disquieted American communists and they drifted away from the Party. But they held onto the values which in time became mainstream progressive liberal values.

Meanwhile, the Weaver brought Folk Music from square 'ethnic' music to mainstream, dominating the airwaves and influencing a generation of younger musicians, even while turning it into counter-culture protest music.

Music--Art--was a weapon, Pete Seeger believed. And his goal was to impact how Americans thought, through music, changing our values.

Although not strictly a biography, we learn about the Weaver's personal lives, their demons and struggles, the arc of their careers. We learn how their music changed as they struggled to walk the fine line between commercial success and staying true to their values. Pete left the group and several talented young men replaced Pete, but in the end, the group broke up.

So many folk singer's names appeared: Huddie Ledbetter, Josh White, Malvina Reynolds, Paul Robeson, Oscar Brand, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Alan Lomax, The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Alan Arkin, Will Geer, Holly Near--and of course, Woody Guthrie and his son Arlo.

Seeger became an environmentalist activist with the Clearwater Hudson River restoration. We loved singing with the songs on the Clearwater album--"You can't eat the oysters in New Haven Harbor, you can't eat the oysters that live in the bay, 'cause New Haven sewage is dumping down on 'em, if I were an oyster I'd get out today."

As I read the book I realized how deeply the Weavers music changed America. I remembered the last time we saw Seeger live, thousands under a huge tent along the Delaware River, hanging on his every word, being taught new songs and singing along with his standards. We felt a community of spirit in the singing. How many of us knew or remembered that Seeger had appeared before the House and was convicted of perjury?

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. ( )
  nancyadair | Sep 14, 2018 |
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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.

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