I thought this was pertinent with the hatred being directed at migrants at the moment. Our economy depends on immigrant labour. They are brought in and paid poor wages. The bosses exploited them and still do.
In Britain we bring in tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans to pick crops.
In the USA they bosses exploited Mexicans. They paid them poor wages and they toiled in the fields. When the crops were picked they shopped these illegal immigrants to the feds who shipped them back to Mexico as illegal immigrants.
In 1948 a plane carrying a bunch of these immigrants crashed on the way back to Mexico. All the illegal immigrants were killed. All the papers took the stance that they were merely deportees. They didn’t even bother naming them.
It infuriated Woody. He saw them as people – husbands, wives, children – people who had lost their lives trying to gain a living for their families. He wrote a song to recognise that; to name them and give them dignity. He used the disparaging word – deportee!
I thought this was relevant today!
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos
(also known as “Deportee”)
Words by Woody Guthrie
The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They’re flying ’em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees”
My father’s own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees”
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except “deportees”?
The Blurb
I was in conversation with a good friend who, like me, is a Rock Music fanatic. We have both been everywhere, seen everyone and have had our lives hugely affected by music. However it is not who you have seen but what you failed to catch that you dwell on.
I said to him that it would be brilliant if we had a time machine and were able to go back and see all the major events in Rock history; Robert Johnson play in the tavern in Greenwood, Elmore James in Chicago, Elvis Presley in the small theatres, The Beatles in Hamburg, Stones in Richmond, Doors in the Whiskey, Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall…………….. and a thousand more.
Then I realised that I could. I knew it all, had seen much of it first hand, and had the imagination to fill in the gaps. All I needed was a character who worked his way through it, was witness to it, part of it and lived it; someone to tell the story and paint the picture.
I invented my ‘man with no name’ and made a novel out of the History of Rock Music.
This is that novel. It starts in Tutwiler Mississippi in 1903 and finishes in Kingston upon Hull in 1980. On this journey you will breathe the air, taste the sweat and join all the major performers as they create the music that rocked the world and changed history.
Now available in Kindle version:
Against my better judgement I have allowed my impatience to get the better of me. Rather than holding back for a publishing deal I have decided to release the book so that I can have my own copy.
I did not ultimately think that it would detract from a future publishing deal and will be following that up in the near future.
Until then you can get your hands on one of my best books. It is available in kindle version and will soon be available in paperback.
It is the story of Rock Music told through the journey of a man with no name – the blues muse. It lives the whole experience.
The Mississippi Blues trail is a brilliant way to discover Mississippi. It takes you into the back of beyond and to strange parts of town. You pass the fields the slaves used to work in, the dives they used to play in and the street corners they used to busk on. By the time you’ve finished you’ve got a real feel for the place.
I saw Big Joe Williams perform in the late sixties on one of those Blues packages they brought across. He was on the same bill as Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, James Cotton and a few others. He went down so well that they couldn’t get him off stage.
You found the markers out in the middle of nowhere.
Back in the early days the people like Jimmie Rodgers and Woody Guthrie would mix quite freely with the black singers. Musicians seemed free of the evils of apartheid. Jimmie did a lot of blues numbers.
Trumpet records recorded my hero Elmore James (as well as people like Sonny Boy Williamson). I found it quite thrilling to stand where he had recorded a lot of those searing slide guitar riffs that I love so much.
Both Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson performed at the Alamo Theatre. A lot of those places were run down and neglected. But then they ripped the cavern in Liverpool down too. These politicians are fools. We should respect our heritage.
This was close to the place where BB King used to busk and record.
This was the site in Natchez where the Night Club burnt down killing so many people. Howlin’ Wolf sang about it in the song Natchez Burning.
If you like Rock Music you’ll love this! – 195 tributes to Rock Acts of Genius. – Each one a gem of a picture. You’ll find out what makes them so brilliant and a lot more besides! This is the writing of a true passionate obsessive.
These are Ophers tributes to Rock geniuses – loving pen-pictures to all the great artists and bands that have graced the screens, airways, our ears, vinyl grooves and electronic digits – (well a lot of them anyway).
These tributes make you thrill to all the reasons why they were so great.
There will be many in here that you are already familiar with and adore but I bet there are also a number that you’ve never heard of and would love to get to know.
Whether you know them or you don’t this book will give you a fresh insight from a very different slant that will make you think about them again.
I guarantee this will widen your horizons, give you new eyes and make you chuckle and nod your head.
These are the ‘Greats’ – lest we forget.
If you would like to purchase this book or one of my others they are available on Amazon. Or just have a browse.
In the UK:
Opher’s World Tributes to Rock Geniuses :
In the USA:
Opher’s World Tributes to Rock Geniuses :
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Now I idolise Woody Guthrie and I really like Billy Bragg. So when the Woody Guthrie family wanted someone to put some of Woody’s words to music I was delighted. I was not disappointed. The album Mermaid Avenue was brilliant. I play it a lot. Wilco were OK too.
Woody Guthrie left a huge archive of material – apart from his hundreds of songs and his novels, there were thousands of scraps of paper with doodlings, songs, fragments of writing, letters and drawings. Thankfully they are being preserved by the Guthrie Foundation. Woody Guthrie is a major person on the world stage – up there with the very best. He’s a treasure.
This song I love because it really sums up how I feel about myself. There was and hasn’t been anybody like Woody Guthrie. He is a complete law unto himself. He did everything his own way. The result was genius.
I may not have the genius but that is how I approach my life. I do what I do how I want to without regard to whether it makes sense, is good or relates to others. I am my world’s worst enemy. But what you get is always me.
This song resonates with me.
Way over Yonder in the Minor Key – Woody Guthrie/Billy Bragg
I lived in a place called Okfuskee
And I had a little girl in a holler tree
I said, “Little girl, it’s plain to see
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me”
She said, “It’s hard for me to see
How one little boy got so ugly”
Yes, my little girly, that might be
But there ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Way over yonder in the minor key
Way over yonder in the minor key
There ain’t nobody that can sing like me
We walked down by the Buckeye Creek
To see the frog eat the goggle eye bee
To hear that west wind whistle to the east
There ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Oh my little girly, will you let me see
Where over yonder where the wind blows free?
Nobody can see in our holler tree
And there ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Way over yonder in the minor key
Way over yonder in the minor key
There ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Her mama cut a switch from a cherry tree
And laid it on to she and me
It stung lots worse than a hive of bees
But there ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Now I have walked a long long ways
I still look back to my Tanglewood days
I’ve led lots of girlies since then to stray
Saying, “Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me”
Way over yonder in the minor key
Way over yonder in the minor key
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Way over yonder in the minor key
Way over yonder in the minor key
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Ain’t nobody that can sing like me
Read more: Billy Bragg – Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key Lyrics | MetroLyrics
I thought I would start promoting some of my books.
This book is probably my best seller. It is not about Captain Beefheart. It tells the story of my life with Rock Music and search for the most exciting, brilliant and spectacular bands. It is a memoir of a time when music really counted and led the way. It changed politics and society in ways that are almost unimaginable now. It unified youth right across the globe and rocked the establishment.
If you would like to read more it is available on Amazon.
In the UK:
In the USA:
