If you trust the biographical sketch included on his 1963
LP As Long as the Grass Shall Grow (Folkways
FN 2532, 1963), the folksinger Peter LaFarge hailed from Fountain, Colorado, a
farming and ranching town settled ten miles south of Colorado Springs.If you trust the memory of his own mother,
Peter LaFarge was actually born Oliver Albee LaFarge on April 30th,
1931, in New York City.The
singer-songwriter was the son of the notable anthropologist, author and
historian, Oliver LaFarge.The senior
LaFarge’s 1929 novel documenting life on a Navajo reservation, Laughing Boy, would earn him a Pulitzer
Prize in fiction in 1930.
Though separated early on from his biological father due
to his parent’s divorce in 1935, Peter remained his father’s son in his
studious devotion of America’s indigenous people.His mother, with whom Peter remained, remarried
in 1940 to Alexander Kane, a rancher in aforementioned Fountain, CO.Through his stepfather’s business, LaFarge fell
in love with horses and roping and rodeo life, eventually dropping out of high
school to try his hand at saddle bronc riding.Though he had become a cowboy in vocation - suffering numerous injuries
during his brief association with rodeo life - he remained more absorbed by his
birth father’s scholarship into the folklore, art, history, and customs of the
American Indian.
LaFarge was a restless spirit, tending to drift in and
out of things.He served on the U.S.S.
Boxer during the Korean War, sparred as an amateur pugilist, studied acting at
the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, and wrote several (as of yet) un-produced
plays.Befriending the folksinger Cisco
Houston, an occasional singing partner of and best friend to Woody Guthrie,
LaFarge’s existing interest in folklore ignited his enthusiasm for the folksong
revival of the late 1950s.Upon his
arrival in Greenwich Village with an intention of inaugurating a career in folk
singing, the young LaFarge seemingly burnished his credentials by telling
everyone he was the descendant of the Narragansett Tribe of the Rhode Island-
based Algonquians.One of his stories
was that once the Narragansett’s had been “wiped out,†he found himself adopted
by “the Tewa Tribe of the Hopi Nation, whose reservation is near Santa
Fe.â€This appears to have been the tale
he chose to settle on.He would write in
a 1963 issue of the seminal folk music magazine Sing Out!, “The Pima Indians, whose reservation is just outside of
Phoenix, Arizona, are cousins of my people, the Hopi Indians of the New Mexico
Pueblos.â€
If LaFarge’s assertions of a direct ancestral lineage to
indigenous Americans are suspect - as most music historians now believe - the songwriter
was certainly not alone in such self-mythologizing.Another recent Village transplant from the
Midwest, Bob Dylan, was also telling friends and colleagues a similar fiction.Dylan, ten years LaFarge’s junior, famously suggested
to a doubtful Izzy Young of Greenwich Village’s venerable Folklore Center that
he was of Sioux Indian descent.To be
fair, even Johnny Cash – who is, of course, more or less the central figure in
Antonio D’Ambrosio’s moving 2015 documentary We’re
Still Here: Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited, now available on DVD
courtesy of Kino-Lorber, was not above such mythologizing.In an infamous letter to Billboard (published August 22, 1964), Cash would describe himself
as “almost a half-breed Cherokee-Mohawk,†whatever that means.It’s therefore somewhat perplexing that,
regardless of the best intent and justice-seeking goodwill of all involved, D’Ambrosio’sfilm makes not even a passing mention
to all of these innocent subterfuges.
Does any of this really matter?I suppose not.What does matter is that LaFarge, whether a
full, half or non-fledged ancestor of indigenous Americans, wrote some of the
most poignant, bitter and insightful songs somberly documenting the Indians’
experience in the United States.LaFarge’s
intimate knowledge of Indian customs and folklore were, ultimately, far more schooled
and convincing than either Cash’s or Dylan’s more clumsy appropriations which
were easier to dismiss.While Cash and
Dylan would, of course, both go on to be deserved long-standing totems of the
music industry, LaFarge remained a mostly obscure figure, one very much on the
fringe of the popular music scene.LaFarge
would productively wax new no fewer than six albums between 1962 and 1965, but only
“Ira Hayes†and Other Ballads
(Columbia CL 17995/CS 8595) had been recorded for a major label with pop-music
market distribution.It sold
poorly.His following five albums were
waxed for Moses Asch’s more austere and cerebral Folkways Records, whose eclectic
catalog included everything from educational LPs, to anthropological studies, to
early jazz and blues recordings.LaFarge’s addition to the Folkway’s roster was something of a more
comfortable – if less royalty generating – fit for the artist.Asch, a supportive “fellow traveler†of
left-wing causes, judiciously used his record label to provide an open
microphone to such genuine folk music artists as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly,
Cisco Houston and Pete Seeger.It was a
defiant gesture as well as a pragmatic one.The political climate made most labels in the late 1940s and early 1950s
wary of recording rabble-rousers armed with guitars and 5-string banjos.
When Johnny Cash was first introduced to LaFarge’s songs
that dramatically and poetically documented the sorrows and travails and
betrayals perpetuated on America’s indigenous people by Washington D.C.
lawmakers, the singer unknowingly abetted LaFarge in his fictions.Cash would generously describe the
singer-songwriter as a “cousin†of Pima Indian and WWII hero Ira Hayes.It was no coincidence that it was LaFarge’s most
memorable and covered song “The Ballad of Ira Hayes†that would bring him to
the attention of record companies and music publishers.The bittersweet ballad recounted the tale of the
true-life Ira Hayes, one of six Marines famously depicted in Joseph Rosenthal’s
Associated Press photograph raising Old Glory on the beaches of Iwo Jima.Though Hayes was briefly celebrated as an
American hero following his role in the planting of the flag atop Mount on Suribachi,
he ultimately died a penniless and broken alcoholic while marginalized on a
reservation.
While the film is gracious in their acknowledgement of
LaFarge’s incalculable contributions to Johnny Cash’s celebrated and
controversial LP Bitter Tears
(Columbia CL 2248/CS 9048, 1964), it oddly and curiously sidesteps the
unheralded folksinger’s sad end.Though details
remain sketchy, the life of this mercurial, searching and profoundly sensitive
artist ended far too early, age thirty-four, in his Greenwich Village
apartment.The official cause of death
was a stroke, but there were accounts that his passing was the sad result of an
accidental – or perhaps intentional - overdose of prescription drugs.Other accounts by colleagues on the Village
folk scene told a more morbid tale of the songwriter’s struggle with depression
and a suicide via wrist-slashing.His
friend Gordon Freisen, a co-publisher of the radical song sheet Broadside, a folio to which LaFarge
contributed often, saw nothing short of government conspiracy in LaFarge’s
death.The F.B.I. having already designed,
in Freisen’s contention, “an elaborate program designed to induce dissidents to
commit suicide.â€
Peter LaFarge’s obscurity was such that his passing did
not even merit a proper obituary in the pages of the New York Times.That is, of
course, unless you count the one-sentence paid notice courtesy of then ASCAP
President Stanley Adams.Even that
notice got the date of his death wrong:“We record with deep sorrow the death of our
beloved member and colleague Peter LaFarge, in N.Y.C. on October 28, 1965.â€LaFarge had actually passed away one day
earlier. Sing Out!more fittingly put
his Stetson-topped photograph as a tribute on the front cover of their January
1966 issue.They also published in
memoriam his plaintive love song “White Girl,†which recounts the tale of a
doomed and controversial relationship between a Caucasian girl and her American
Indian boyfriend. One activist-member of
the magazine’s editorial staff, Julius Lester, angrily railed against “the
audiences that never quite understood†LaFarge’s artful songwriting but also “the
“friends who pitied him.â€â€œNone of them
can hurt him anymore,†Lester wrote bitterly of his sensitive friend. “Their tongues and pens can no longer hurt one
who was too gentle to retaliate and not strong enough to resist.â€
Lovingly produced and conceived, one must concede that Antonio’s
D’Ambrosio’s fifty-three minute documentary film is an essential companion to
both his book A Heartbeat and a Guitar:
Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (Nation Books, 2009) and for the
CD that followed in its wake: Look Again to the Wind:Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited (Sony
Masterworks, 2014).The latter musical
recording was producer Joe Henry’s remarkable reimagining of the original album,
first recorded in Nashville by Johnny Cash in 1964, with five of the album’s
tracks eight songs composed by LaFarge.
Taped in the midst of the civil rights movement in the
United States, it was Johnny Cash’s hope that Bitter Tears, a concept album examining the plight of the
indigenous American people, would arouse the moral sensibilities of the white,
working-class country music fans that were his base.He was wrong. Though the album would enjoy
some short-term success on Billboard’s country
music charts of 1964 - his single of “The Ballad of Ira Hayes†would climb as
high to the #3 spot - the album itself stalled on the LP charts following a
promising start.Surprisingly, when the pre-album
release single of “Ira Hayes†did not fare as well as expected, Cash soon
traded the Bitter Tears he waxed on
vinyl for an angry volley of bitter words.
Paying out of his own pocket for a full-page ad in the
recording industry trade paper Billboard,
Cash lashed out at radio stations for their “restrictions of airplay†on the
controversial single.He also railed
against DJs for their catering to “teenage girls and Beatle record buyers [who]
don’t want to hear this sad story of Ira Hayes.†He even suggested a conspiracy, alleging sales
of his “Ira Hayes†single were actually “double†of what the Billboard charts were reporting.Though the stodgy country music audiences
that were his bread and butter did not rush out in droves to buy the album,
Cash would find a fresh, young, and enthusiastic audience amongst folk music
aficionados.These were the musical and
activist children of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, those most likely to be impressed
by Cash’s obvious and heartfelt commitment to social justice issues.
In this sense I suppose it’s fitting that the only
footage of Cash performing any of the songs from Bitter Tears is sourced from Pete Seeger’s short-lived Newark, New
Jersey based music program Rainbow Quest.We’re treated to a 1965 clip of Cash, his
face ghastly drawn and in obvious ill-health, performing LaFarge’s “As Long as
the Grass Shall Grow†on Seeger’s borrowed 12-string guitar.The filmmakers masterfully blend this rickety
monochrome performance of the song with a far more sensitive rendition of the
same by Americana artists Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.It’s probably best that the filmmakers chose
not to include more of Cash’s appearance on the Seeger program.Those who have access to it can plainly see
that Cash was in a bad state both mentally and physically.
Similarly, there is practically no extant film footage of
LaFarge aside from an excerpt gleaned from the grainy, black and white 16mm
documentary Ballads, Blues and Bluegrass
(1961).Photographed in a Greenwich
Village apartment under the aegis of folklorist Alan Lomax, we’re treated to a
minute or so of LaFarge singing “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.†With his long black hair slicked back,
playing an acoustic guitar in a very rudimentary style, and emoting in what can
be best described in an overly melodramatic manner, it’s partly understandable
why LaFarge enjoyed little success as a stage performer, even at a time when
folk-style protest songs were very much in vogue.LaFarge was a vigorous, theatrical performer,
possessing none of the detached cool of his more celebrated protest-song
colleagues of the early 1960s.Roseanne
Cash recalls a time when, in an unsuccessful attempt to raise his public
profile, her father optimistically brought LaFarge along on a few shows to help
“introduce†him to his audience.“It didn’t
really happen,†Cash’s daughter recalls with no sense of understatement.
There is, as one would expect, an awful lot of beautiful
music being crafted before our eyes in the studio as D’Ambrosio’s camera rolls
during Joe Henry’s re-recording sessions of the Bitter Tears tracks.The
cast is a who’s who of contemporary Americana, with musical contributions from
Steve Earle (LaFarge’s “Custerâ€), the Milk Carton Kids (LaFarge’s “White
Girlâ€), Bill Miller (LaFarge’s “Look Again to the Windâ€), Rhiannon Giddens
(Johnny Horton’s “The Vanishing Breedâ€), Emmylou Harris (Cash’s “Apache Tearsâ€),
and Norman and Nancy Blake’s twin takes on Cash’s “Talking Leaves†and
LaFarge’s “Drumsâ€.Norman Blake is most
senior member of the recording.He’s not
only a contributor to the new album, but also the only surviving musician present
at the original Cash recording of Bitter
Tears, having served as one of three guitarists on the sessions.
The film is, ultimately, a love letter to Johnny Cash, a
man who stood up for others even when there was no reward for him to do so. Perhaps
the most insightful comment regarding the legacy of Johnny Cash’s seminal Bitter Tears comes courtesy of Doug
George-Kanentiio, the Vice President of the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge,
himself a respected lecturer and Native American author in his own right.“Every
home that I’ve been to from that era, any native person that had an LP had
Bitter Tears.[Cash] was so beloved by
native people because of what he did.He
used his standing in the music world and took a chance and actually did this
recording - giving a voice to […] Peter LaFarge’s songs.He took a great risk.He paid a high price for it.But that’s the essence of art.â€
The Kino-Lorber DVD of We’re Still Here: Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited is presented
here in 1.78:1 16X9 with a 2.0 stereo soundtrack, and ten chapter stops.Included as bonus supplements are the
original trailer for the film and what is described as “Bonus Interviews.â€These consist primarily of extended excerpts
of commentaries made throughout the film’s fifty-three minute running time.