Saturday, 20 December 2025

Patrick O'Sullivan sings Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre



Patrick O'Sullivan sings Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre

My second contribution to the UK Autoharps Advent Calendar 2025, Day 20, December 20...Patrick O'Sullivan sings Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre
Video link
https://youtu.be/r9YGsW2zZyI

My first contribution went out on December 4...

Christmas Stuff Lyric and Melody by Patrick O'Sullivan
Video link
https://youtu.be/mZPEgtLczQc





1.

The tradition is that I be asked for a second song, if there is a gap in the schedule. And then I look to my song exploration, and at our song heritages - and I try out a song I have been working on. Ideally a song with some sort of Christmas theme...

My second song is Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre.

There is an enormous amount of information online about this song - I do not want to simply try to repeat all that information here. Can I just give the basic information - and come back to this Blog, if it needs rewriting?

Wood Guthrie's song does have a Christmas setting.




2.

UK Autoharps Member Barbara Parkinson has already given us a starting point, on the 2025 Advent Calendar Day 13, when she gave us the Coventry Carol... about the Massacre of the Innocents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Carol
Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.




3.

Ella Reeve Bloor, Mother Bloor, political activist, published her autobiography in 1940.

Ella Reeve Bloor. (1940). We Are Many, International Publishers.

Woody Guthrie read the book...

...and we can all now read the same book, free to download on the Internet Archive,,,
https://archive.org/details/BloorAutobio


The book has also been republished by International Publishers - still in existence, still plodding on...


https://www.intpubnyc.com/browse/we-are-many/


Ella Reeves Bloor Chapter 8 is called 'Calumet and Ludlow - Massacre of the Innocents'.


Events at Calumet are described page 122 onwards.


So, two dreadful incidents in which children died.


Calumet was the 1913 Massacre, and Ludlow was the 1914 Massacre.




4.


And Woody Guthrie wrote two songs, one about Calumet, one about Ludlow...


There are Wikipedia entries about the two songs...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Massacre


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre_(song)


and about the background...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre


The lyrics are available on the Woody Guthrie Center web site...


https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Nineteen_Thirteen_Massacre.htm


https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Ludlow_Massacre.htm
...and there is a background video on YouTube...
The Story Behind "1913 Massacre"
Woody Guthrie Center
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RODyPFmoJc




5.


We can see, and hear, that Woody Guthrie has followed the narrative of Ella Reeves Bloor in the construction of his lyric - sometimes her exact words, details like 'less than a dollar a day...', 'a man pushed the door...', a little girl playing the piano...


The two songs became part of Woody Guthrie's contributions to the 1945 Moses Asch's Folkways project.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Asch


As I say, I will return to this Blog, if we feel it needs more detail. I maybe need to explain my approach to the song - I follow Christy Moore. And in our arrangement we reference the little girl's piano...


And I need to explain my approach to the creation of the video - I look away from the distressing images, pick up the detail of the Christmas Tree, and look at other 1913 Christmas Trees. It turns out that 1913 was, in many places, the start of the tradition of putting up large Christmas Trees in public places.


I was not in good voice on the day of the recording, and my autoharps were not in good voice. In the deep midwinter...


Patrick O'Sullivan
December 20 2025

Posted by at No comments:

Monday, 1 December 2025

Christmas Stuff, Lyric and Melody by Patrick O'Sullivan

Christmas Stuff

Lyric and Melody by Patrick O'Sullivan

UK Autoharps Christmas Advent Calendar, 2025, Day 4

Now on YouTube.


My contribution to the UK Autoharps Christmas Advent Calendar has become something of a family and friends tradition.

And an annual challenge.  Every year, I must come up with a new Christmas song...

1.
There are problems.  Thus, the work always gets done in November, when, in the northern hemisphere, we are all ill.

But there is, by now, a tool bag of solutions, developed through long meditation on the nature of Christmas and its Songs.

In the past this has been - I ackowledge - grim meditation.  (In November...)

To give a flavour...  Two other of my Christmas songs are...

Christmas Guest
here sung by Shannon Marie Harney
on YouTube

Christmas Guest on Amazon

Christmas Guest on Spotify

And on Apple, etc...

And... 

Gifts From The Tree,
Sung by Patrick O'Sullivan
on YouTube

2.
This year, 2025, my new Christmas Song is called...

Christmas Stuff.

So, yes, a further meditation on the nature of Christmas.  And its gifts...  Not grim.

Even the most unwanted Christmas gift is a demonstration of love.  Or, at least, of regard.

From that starting point - is there such a thing as an unwanted gift? - a song lyric that offers a list of possible Christmas gifts.

The lyric then becomes a list of lists.  Christmas is a time for lists?

And the lyric follows the rhymes into comedy.  

And, indeed, into theology.

3.
In the background - please forgive me - there is no doubt a residue of all the theology I have had to read in my academic life, which can lead to other ways of thinking about our Stuff.   A starting point there might be what is called 'Prosperity Theology' - the belief that belief will deliver prosperity and material goods, and possession of such goods is in itself a sign of merit.  So, Christmas Stuff.

The recent academic work has tended to concentrate on the new African Christianities, but the research trail is far deeper.    Kate Bowler,  Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (2013), has become foundational.  Then see, Marvin Harris, on Prosperity Theology and the  'American Dream', Tony Lin, on Prosperity Theology and 'Manifest Destiny'.   'Manifest Destiny' was first suggested by John L. O'Sullivan in 1845.

We can read on...  From recent reading, see Charles Devellennes, The Macron Régime:  The Ideology of the New Right in France (2023).  Devellennes Chapter 3 is called simply 'Merit', and moves swiftly through Luther, Calvin and Weber to the  ‘luck egalitarianism’ that is such a feature of ideologies in our own time.

'Prosperity Theology' tends to be regarded as heresy by the more established religions, but its logical twin - which we can call 'Disaster Theology' - has its own long and a comparatively respectable history.  It might be summarised as:  Yes, you suffer - and you deserve to suffer.  The key text from my academic work is Peter Gray, Famine, Land, and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-1850, Irish Academic Press (1999) - Peter Gray studied the history of the Irish Famine from within the archives of the British  state, and found himself reading not economic theory but theology.

4.
The tradition is that my contribution to the UK Autoharps Christmas Advent Calendar should be illustrated with a little video on YouTube, using what documentary film makers now call 'the Ken Burns effect'.

By this stage, in November, I need to not to get bogged down in technicalities, technologies, and just have a little bit of fun, using illustrations to add commentary to the lyric.  And, in the documentary film tradition, edit to the beat.  Though, in the past, the President of UK Autoharps, Derik Palmer, has complained that my video editing did make him feel nauseous.  Derik, I WAS editing to the beat.  But this year I have calmed things down.

So, to the close connection between Autoharp traditions, the Appalachian Mountains, and the Sears, Roebuck Catalogue.

Earlier this year UK Autoharps hosted an online performance by John & Kathie Hollandsworth.  I have met John in person, when he has visited England and Scotland - and have sat in on his lessons.  Lovely man, lovely musician.

John Hollandsworth comes from that one part of the world where the autoharp escaped from the parlour, and became a folk instrument...

And this happened because, John reminds us, the Autoharp could be bought cheaply from Sears, Roebuck and Co.

A number of issues of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue are available online.  I have gone with the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Consumers Guide: Catalogue No. 104: Spring 1897, from the Internet Archive....


Yes, it is called 'Consumers Guide'.  

A little bit of software twiddling to take images of the pages into video...

1897 is a significant date.  In 1890 the U.S. Census Bureau declared that the American frontier had disappeared - there was no longer a frontier line to measure.  (See above, 'Manifest Destiny'.)   In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner published 'The Significance of the Frontier in American History', which has become a foundation document in American historiography.  Sears Roebuck give us, yes, a Catalogue of what the archaeologists call the 'material culture' of the period.  And we can see the Autoharp taking its place within that 'material culture'.

Two vast areas of the Catalogue I have not explored here, guns and horse tackle.  But it is weird to see pictured in the Catalogue all the pieces of kit so familiar to us from the Western movies that have so influenced world culture.  Pages 717-718 for a Surrey, with a Fringe on Top.

I have prowled around the musical instrument section of the Catalogue, to see the Autoharp amongst its companions and competitors.  The cheapest 8 chord Autoharp was $2.75.  I have flagged up one competitor, the Apollo Harp, which takes the same flat zither box idea and attaches a piano keyboard structure on top.  I have had difficulty finding other pictures of the Apollo Harp, and have never seen one in real life.

And now...   Back to the Video
Patrick O'Sullivan
November 2025

Christmas Stuff

Lyric and Melody by Patrick O'Sullivan

Text and Chords as PDF file...


Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, 25 January 2025

Denis Johnston, James Quick, Emile Du Bois, Buchenwald

On a day when we are thinking about the discovery and liberation of the camps in Nazi Germany...

In 2022, I gave a presentation at The BBC at 100 Symposium, National Science & Media Museum, Bradford, Yorkshire...

About the Irish writer, Denis Johnston, a Diaspora Studies approach, focussing on his time as War Correspondent for the BBC, and his unwieldy memoir...

Johnston, Denis. (1953) Nine Rivers from Jordan: The Chronicle of a Journey and a Search. London: Derek Verschoyle.

Most probably his masterpiece, but difficult to absorb without also absorbing the tropes of Irish Modernism.  The memoir presents a long complex meditation - in essence, all internal debate, about Irish neutrality, journalistic balance, violence and guns, ends when he reaches Buchenwald...

More detail on my blog below...

https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-bbc-at-100-symposium.html

In his memoir Johnston writes - very clearly - about the liberation of Buchenwald, and being shown round by two imprisoned Channel Islanders, James Quick and Emile Dubois.

I have now shared notes with Gilly Carr, Professor in Conflict Archaeology and Holocaust Heritage.

https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/

James Quick and Emile Dubois/Du Bois are in her archive...

https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/people/emile-harry-aristide-du-bois/

Emile ‘Harry’ Aristide Du Bois

Date of birth 2 October 1899

Place of birth Jersey

Deported from Jersey

Deportation date 1 March 1944

Deported to:

Cherche-Midi Prison

Buchenwald Concentration Camp

WARNING: CONTAINS DISTRESSING DETAIL OF TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT


https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/people/james-thomas-william-quick/

James Thomas William Quick

Date of birth 3 October 1910

Place of birth Guernsey

Deported from Guernsey

Deportation date 18 November 1942

Buchenwald Concentration Camp


And see Johnston, Denis. (1953) Nine Rivers from Jordan, pages 392-397.

The added detail now, I suppose, is that clearly Denis Johnston was a very careful war correspondent - in the midst of the horrors of Buchenwald, 1945, which he describes so movingly, he took careful note of the names of his informants.

And he carefully recorded their names in his 1953 memoir.


The Dictionary of Irish Biography entry

Johnston, (William) Denis

is by Maume, Patrick

https://www.dib.ie/biography/johnston-william-denis-a4313


Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)