Mickey Newbury
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tw_sFmsuK-4&feature=related
The song he's known for most, though is an arrangement of three songs that were written long ago. Elvis did a cover of this arrangement. I still think Mickeys is more haunting though..
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RiTjElq5Xjs&feature=related
And here's the story. Beautiful, relavent even today, especially the way this country is today...
AN AMERICAN TRILOGY
Reposted to accompany the appearance, today, of
a video clip of Mickey performing An American Trilogy
with Marie Rhines.
Though Mickey wrote hundreds of remarkable songs,
he is best known for one he didn't write.
It was in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. going
into Cambodia in 1970, and the deaths of four
students at Kent State in Ohio. The streets of cities
were filled with tension, conflicts between people
against the war and the National Guard.
Mickey was booked into a club in Los Angeles at
the time. In his book, Crystal & Stone, Joe Ziemer
writes, "Whites in integrated southern schools
were insisting on using Dixie as the school fight
song, while blacks were protesting, as they saw
it as an anthem of white supremacy. The singing
of Dixie had been banned in some Southern states...
"Nothing in the song made it the exclusive property
of bigots or extremists," Newbury protested. He then
advised Paul Colby he was going to sing Dixie, as a
protest against censorship. Fearing a riot, Colby...
pleaded with him not to do it. Mick told him to call
the riot squad.
"...'It was one of those...nights, you know, where
everybody in the business comes in. Joan Baez
was there, and Odetta and Cass Elliott...' and Mick's
wife, Susan. 'Streisand came by,' Susan remembered,
'and tried to talk Kristofferson into leaving with her,
before Mick sang. Kris declined and my admiration
for Kris jumped a notch...'
"The Dixie Mick presented that evening was not the
rousing, rebel yell, battle march version, but the slow,
heartfelt, melodious tune that we know today...
'I got through the Dixie part of the song and I looked
down and Odetta was sitting down in the front row
and she had tears in her eyes...' (Mickey)
"Only when he began singing Dixie did it dawn upon
him to add Battle Hymn Of The Republic and conclude
with the antebellum All My Trials... The impromptu
arrangement just came together... in one moment
of brilliant inspiration.
"...'A lot of people,' Mick explained, 'were not aware
that President Lincoln requested Dixie to be performed
on the steps of the White House the day the Civil War
was over. Historically it goes a long way back...and it
was written by a man (D.D. Emmett) from the North
of the United States. Battle Hymn Of The Republic was
written by a man from the South... and All My Trials
was originally a Jamaican slave song... African American
slaves of the era adopted All My Trials as a song of
sorrow. The Confederacy took Dixie as a marching song,
while the Union identified with Battle Hymn Of The
Republic... so there were the three components of
the Civil War'..."
So there was Newbury, erasing the Mason-Dixon Line
with an arrangement that came through him, on the
spot, later to be known as An American Trilogy...
and Mickey Newbury's most famous song. It was
also a performance that - given the daily battles in
the streets of American cities as opposition to the
war in Vietnam boiled over - somehow managed to
reach across divisions (a bridge instead of a wall) by
pure and heartfelt emotion.
For the whole story of this song and Mickey's life
and music, seek out Joe Ziemer's biography of him,
Crystal & Stone. (see cover photo and link below) Mickey died in late September of 2002. In June of
2003, the third Mickey Newbury Gathering took place
in Austin, Texas. It was the first one without Mickey
being present. Members of his family came. Susan
and the kids from Oregon - Chris, Annaleah, Stephen
and Laura Shayne. Mickey's mother, Mamie, came up
from New Caney, Texas. It was emotional. Friends
of Mickey's were still coming to grips with his death
and, needless to say, so was his family. We were a
little amazed that they'd come to the event at all.
Towards the end of that three-day Gathering, Mick's
youngest daughter, Laura Shayne, after some urging,
took the stage to sing a song. Jeff Stave sat in on
guitar for her. Laura was 18 then. The song she chose
to sing in memory of her daddy was An American Trilogy. When she got to the song of sorrow, All My Trials, her
voice quavered slightly on the lines, "Hush little baby,
don't you cry...you know your daddy is bound to die..."
We were all crying then, and the night would've drowned
us in sorrow had not Laura lifted us up by breaking into
the trademark whistling that her father so loved...
