Back Where I Come From

It was hard at first for me to imagine but in this program, Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie had equal footing. We all know Alan Lomax did a lot of field recordings. Most of them are presently in the Library of Congress. But he also did radio programs. One of them was a nightly program for CBS called Back Where I Come From.

Lomax was involved in several programs over the years like School of the Air, on CBS, and Ballad Man on the Mutual Network in 1948. In 1940 he also did a series called American Folk Songs and Wellsprings of Music. In 1950 he was blackballed in America after he was accused of being a commie, he fled to England and brought his programming ideas to the BBC. In all these programs Lomax may have been a producer or a host but he always came to the mic to sing a little as well. More here. Damn you Joe McCarthy!

But Back Where I Come From was the first of his programs that went prime-time. It featured folk tales, proverbs, prose, and sermons, as well as songs. Burl Ives, Aunt Molly Jackson, The Golden Gate Quartet, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Pete Seeger all performed regularly on the program. This was the program that really introduced city-dwelling Americans to old-time music, folk music and world music. Sadly it was short-lived. I have found a very concise tale of the etymology of the program name and quote it here unabridged.

"The show’s title came from an incident they had observed at Barney Josephson’s Greenwich Village nightclub, Café Society, in which a tourist loudly objected to the club’s inter-racial atmosphere, saying that such things were unheard of “back where I come from.” It stressed the America is, on the contrary, a multi-cultural mosaic of people from different ethnicities and backgrounds; guests swapped stories and anecdotes as well as music."

In 1984 Ronald Regan awarded Lomax the national medal of Arts. In 1995 Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award, in 1995 an honorary doctorate in philosophy from Tulane... the list goes on. He retired in 1996 and died in July 2002.

Burl Ives is the Antichrist

100000watts.com informs me that there are 427 radio staitons playing all-xmas today. Inside radio tells me that thsi is slightly less than last year which came in at a total of 431. Music tracking companies like BDS and Mediaguide tell me that Burl Ives classic song "Holly Jolly Christmas" is the most played Christmas song in radio... again.

I do not like Christmas music. Most of it ranges from cheesy to schmaltzy. There are a few punk rock songs that manage to enter the arena mockingly and exit cleanly, but they are few. But worse than laying off your DJs for 6 weeks is trying to do the 50/50 split. Modern pop and rock music does not blend with Christmas classics. I actually heard a CHR/Pop station play the Dean martin version of "Silent Night" immediately after Fergie's original version of "My Humps." I actually heard the Irving Berlin version of "what Christmas" followed by "Freaky Gurl" by some dude named Gucci Mane. It's atrocious. Please stop.

The only upside of Burl is that he's an ex-radio man. He dropped out of school to travel across America in the 1930s like Woody Guthrie; unemployed and unwashed. He did whatever day labor came his way but also played banjo wherever possible. He was actually jailed in Utah for playing a slightly naughty song named Foggy Dew. He took it as a sign and went back to school.

It was 1931 and he enrolled at Indiana State Teachers College (now Indiana State University) in Terre Haute. He worked at a drug store and played a few gigs. Later that year he landed a show on 640 WBOW-AM. It was an affiliate of the ABS Network owned by Samuel Insull. Jay Stewart of American bandstand also spent some time on WBOW. The radio gig didn't last for Burl and he blew town to attend Juliard.

Ten years later after a little fame and growing fortune he returned to radio. Ives began his own radio show on the CBS network called The Wayfaring Stranger. It was named for a popular folk song. he also used the title for his first book, published in 1948. More here.
But, Burl did not write "Holly Jolly Christmas." That "honor" goes to Johnny Marks who also cursed us with "Silver and Gold", "Jingle, Jingle, Jingle," "The Most Wonderful Day of the Year", and "We are Santa’s Elves". Burl was not even the first Troglodyte to record it. That class act was the Quinto sisters. More here.