|
|||||||
Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 Related threads: Sis Cunningham research (3) Happy! – Feb 19 (Sis Cunningham) (3) Sis Cunningham--memorial concert Oct 29, New York (2) |
Share Thread
|
Subject: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Suffet Date: 28 Jun 04 - 09:07 PM Greetings: Sad news indeed. Agnes "Sis" Cunningham died within the past few days in New Paltz, New York. She was 95 years old. I do not have any other details at the present time. Sis was one of the giants of folk music in the USA. Of her many accomplishments, two stand out in my mind. She was one of the legendary Almanac Singers along with Pete Seeger, Bess Lomax, Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, and Arthur Stern. And along with her husband Gordon Friesen, she edited and published Broadside magazine and produced Broadside records. Although I hadn't seen Sis since she left New York City a few years ago, I am proud to have been her friend. We will miss her. But I believe Sis would want us to follow Joe Hill's advice: Don't mourn. Organize! --- Steve |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Mark Clark Date: 28 Jun 04 - 09:18 PM Thanks, Steve. As you say, this is very sad news. I hope someone will compose a proper biography. - Mark |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Deckman Date: 28 Jun 04 - 09:23 PM Another legend gone. So sad. Bob |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: GUEST,Art Thieme Date: 29 Jun 04 - 12:39 AM Steve, Thanks for your notice. Her good work lives on. Art |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Joe Offer Date: 29 Jun 04 - 03:56 AM Not a proper obituary, but I thought it would be worthwhile to post this.
"Sis" Cunningham, Gordon Friesen and Broadside Magazine Down a dimly-lit aisle at UNC-Chapel Hill's Southern Folklife Collection, a shelf of frayed, fading reel-to-reel boxes sits unassumingly. It seems like your typical archival jumble of long-lost recordings until you start to look more carefully at the names scrawled in black marker. Paxton. Anderson. Ochs. Seeger. Ian. Dylan. This little local treasure trove of tapes helped bring into being Smithsonian/Folkways' Grammy-nominated box set, The Best of Broadside, 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground From the Pages of Broadside magazine, a lovingly-compiled 5-CD tribute to a tender, mimeographed flower of a publication that helped launch the careers of artists like Bob Dylan, and, more importantly, presented the postwar folk revival in all its gawky, yearning, holy sincerity. "Sis" Cunningham and Gordon Friesen were emigrés to New York from their native Oklahoma, where they engaged in leftist struggles against Great Depression poverty. They founded Broadside magazine in 1962, running 300 copies off on an old mimeograph machine discarded by the American Labor Party and selling them for 35 cents. From their cluttered apartment in the Frederick Douglass Housing Project on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the couple went on to publish topical songs by aspiring songwriters off and on until 1988. Despite their own continual financial struggles, the couple grew famous among young folk-revival musicians for their support--from publication and praise to a sofa to crash on for the night. Seasoned by their bohemian love of labor fostered while organizing unions (Sis sang and played accordion in the labor-connected Almanac Singers, a group that also featured Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger; Gordon was a left-wing journalist and writer), they came to publish Broadside as a labor of love. It was a magazine that lurked on the fringes of popular music for 25 years, an inky cry from the margins, filled with songs, articles and drawings. The magazine's songs, usually transcribed by Sis, eventually led to the release of a number of Broadside albums on Moe Asch's famous Folkways label. Folkways, now administered by the Smithsonian Institution, is the same label that recently reissued Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, an album that, in CD form, regained cult status for its mystical assemblage of old-timey commercial recordings. But while Smith's Anthology is magically creepy, shrouded in a foggy, foggy dew of mystery, Cunningham and Friesen's box set shows a different side of the folk revival. It's the '60s folk movement in full force: faux-dirty and pseudo-scruffy, a bit gawky and pimply, and full of earnest songs. Instead of striking Smith's mystical and unearthly tones, much celebrated on the Anthology box set, the Broadside songs--divided up among topics from anti-nuclear protest to civil rights to Vietnam to black power to feminism--sounds human, fallible, sometimes clichéd, occasionally transcendent, but above all, humble, hopeful, always grappling with realities and social concerns. Where Smith's aims were big, universal, spiritual, thrillingly bizarre, Broadside is less crackpot-brilliant, more courageously straightforward. But no less important, no less moving.
"It was a feeling of being part of something," singer-songwriter Tom Paxton reminisces. "It made us feel part of the larger struggle for human rights being waged at the time." Paxton's "Ain't That News?" and a number of other compositions appear on the Broadside box set, alongside songs by Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Eric Anderson and many others--some famous, some not. One hears Nina Simone crack bitter jokes as she swings her band through a protest against "Mississippi, Goddamn." Pete Seeger emerges as the calypsonian toaster of the folk movement, plucking out gentle rhythms on his 12-string guitar or banjo as he rhymes about how we should "Do as the Doukhobors Do," telling the story (put into song by Malvina Reynolds) of an ethnic group in Canada whose women protested at a government meeting by appearing in the nude. Dispelling the notion that Broadside was exclusively for acoustic folks, the Fugs present a warped garage-rock protest against Vietnam, "Kill For Peace." El Teatro Campesino sings about "El Picket Sign" and the efforts to organize migrant farm workers. Louisiana's Lucinda Williams asserts her roots in "Lafayette." And then there is Phil Ochs, who emerges as the symbolic voice of Broadside. In songs such as "Links on the Chain," his sharp lyrical skill, but even more his bright, bell-like, inquisitive tone, rings with urgency about the need for a passionate, meaningful protest movement on the left. Yet despite the many treats on the Broadside set--and there are many more, including artists whose songs are good, but whose names are not as well known--it is Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen who emerge as the guiding spirits of this collection. "When I started talking to all of the artists," co-producer Jeff Place explains of the development of the Broadside box set, "they were all really enthusiastic about this story--Broadside, the apartment (where they often had musical gatherings), Sis and Gordon, and what it meant to them." "They were the pater and mater familias," says Tom Paxton. "They were so supportive, not just supportive but encouraging. They helped bring the songs out of us." So it is perhaps most important that a number of Sis Cunningham's own songs grace The Best of Broadside, including her tribute to fellow female protest singer Aunt Molly Jackson. This song contains what may be the best testimonial to the lasting legacy of this small, ephemeral magazine and its embattled, marginal progressive politics: Have you ever written a folk song? I have, I have. Have you ever lived something and wrote it true? I have, I have. Have you seen hell and wrote it through? I have, I have. But it seems I've stayed around too long, All they remember is my song, And no one thought to wonder whose, Here it was for them to use. With the Grammy-nominated Best of Broadside entombing the magazine's story in a spiral-bound book filled with copious notes, photos, reprints and discographical information, perhaps we will not forget Broadside so quickly. But we would do well to remind ourselves that the righteous political spirit of Broadside magazine has faded. A pretty song by Elaine White, who now works in the data-processing field, closes the collection with the hope that "The Time Will Come."
It hasn't yet. source: http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2001-02-14/volume5.html |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Deckman Date: 29 Jun 04 - 06:49 AM Thanks Joe. Bob |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Rasener Date: 29 Jun 04 - 07:14 AM For those who are interested, if you go to this website and scroll down about 2/3rds of the scroll bar you will eventually find a picture of the Almanac Singers with Sis Cunningham on. http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/almanac.html |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Charley Noble Date: 29 Jun 04 - 10:01 AM This is weird. I haven't thought about Sis Cunningham in years, since I spent a quiet evening with her and Gordon 20 years ago in their NYC apartment discussing tenant organizing songs. This morning I was thinking of her and wondering what she was up to, and that maybe I should start a thread and ask. She and Gordon deserve a lot of recognition for the way they provided a wide range of political singsongwriters a forum for releasing their work in the 1960's. And for their lifetime commitment to the struggle of working people all over the world for basic rights. Charley Noble |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Scabby Douglas Date: 30 Jun 04 - 07:30 AM I was minded only last week to look out the song that Ry Cooder sang "How Can You Keep On Moving?". After a little digging around, it emereged that it was by someone called Agnes Cunningham, although Mr Cooder failed to credit her with it. And I then went on to read about her and her work. It's often the way with people who work to achieve things, and not for glory or celebrity, that they can be passed over and passed by. But, then, they are doing it because they have to, and because it needs done, not for tangible rewards. Which is just as well... |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: GUEST,Sloop Date: 30 Jun 04 - 08:35 AM Very sad to hear that. She was certainly among the greats in authentic folk music but unfortunately not among the most well known. Her recording of her own composition "Sundown" is one of my favourites . Sloop |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Suffet Date: 30 Jun 04 - 08:49 AM Greetings The error of failing to credit Sis Cunningham was not Ry Cooder's, but Moe Asch's and the New Lost City Ramblers'. In 1959, Moe Asch had the NLCR record an album Songs from the Depression for his Folkways label. On it was a song the NCLR called Keep Moving, and to which they ascribed no credit, not even anon or trad. The song was, of course, Sis Cunningham's How Can You Keep Moving?, first published in 1945, but likely written around 1940 when Sis was performing with the Red Dust Players in Oklahoma. Ry Cooder learned the song from the NLCR record and presumed the author was unknown. --- Steve |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Peter T. Date: 30 Jun 04 - 12:58 PM I remember asking Rick Fielding if he knew of any accordion players who accompanied folk songs in the American tradition, and Sis Cunningham was his reply! (Rick's mother was a major accordion player). As a result, I tracked down the old Almanac records, and got some tips. yours, Peter T. |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: babypix Date: 30 Jun 04 - 01:15 PM The passing of this wonderful treasure of a woman is just one example of the importance of our television series, "Where Have All The Folkies Gone?" now in production. We are working at breakneck speed to identify and interview on-camera all those important (and especially elder)performers, experts, educators, etc. in the realm of the history of American Folk Music. In our view, these are people the likes of whom will never come again-- pioneers, perpetuators, and encouragers, whose contributions are immeasurable, and whose legacies are deserving of our study and gratitude! Deborah Robins Nut Hill Productions, Inc. Producer, "Where Have All The Folkies Gone?" nuthillproductions@sbcglobal.net |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Rasener Date: 30 Jun 04 - 03:17 PM Deborah What about doing something in England then. |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: babypix Date: 30 Jun 04 - 03:44 PM villan-- of course, that's where our story begins! ; ) |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Rasener Date: 30 Jun 04 - 05:09 PM Wow tell me more. |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Janice in NJ Date: 30 Jun 04 - 06:45 PM Let us not forget that in addition to everything else that's been said, Sis Cunningham was a doer. She didn't just write and sing songs about what should be done; she went out and did it! She was many things that should not be forgotten -- a Communist, a "premature anti-Fascist," a voice for labor unions, for democracy, for the liberation of oppressed people, for peace, and for women's rights. She showed us what a strong, independent, and proud woman could be. She stood up to the goons, to the union busters, to the racists, to the blacklisters, and to the people who would consign women only to the kitchen and bedroom. And let us not forget that legacy of songs Sis left for all of us to take up and sing. Forgive me for the many I will leave out, but here are the ones I recall: Jack Ash Society Sundown Mr. Congressman Strange Things Happening in This Land Belt Line Girl My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away) How Can You Keep Moving? (The Migration Song) Fayette County Oil Derrick Out by West Tulsa Rest in peace, dear sister and beloved comrade. We will not mourn. We will organize -- and sing! |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Mark Clark Date: 30 Jun 04 - 11:45 PM NPR's Robert Siegel talked about Sis on All Things Considered today and spoke with Pete Seeger on the phone. The interview is here. CBC's As It Happens was going to do a piece tonight as well but I didn't get to hear it. - Mark |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Big Al Whittle Date: 01 Jul 04 - 06:19 AM Read the obituary in The Times this morning and found it extaordinarily moving. America was blessed in having a citizen of such talent, dedication and energy. I was reminded of all the work that Peggy and Ewan did with New City Songster and wondered if we had anything comparable in England. |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: open mike Date: 01 Jul 04 - 01:13 PM how can we keep from singing? how can we keep from moving on? in my ears her songs are ringing let us continue her work, now that she's gone! |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Charley Noble Date: 01 Jul 04 - 05:18 PM I was pleased to catch the NPR tribute to Sis, and surprised that anyone there had even heard of her or cared enough to do a story. Charley Noble |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: Suffet Date: 01 Jul 04 - 09:28 PM Greetings: Here's a Sis Cunningham story. About five years ago I and a close friend of mine visited Sis in her apartment on the West Side of Manhattan. We just sat around for a couple of hours, talking and singing songs, mostly old union songs. At one point Sis asked if I knew Boom Town Bill, a song Woody Guthrie had written for the Oil Workers' Union around 1942, just before the Almanac Singers broke up. I said that I did, and I played it for her as she sang along in a quiet but steady voice. As soon as I had finished, Sis said that she had something to show me and my friend. She went into her own room and soon emerged with an old 9 by 12 inch manilla envelope. In it was the typewritten manuscript of a short story written by Woody Guthrie when he was serving in the Merchant Marine, along with a short rejection slip from The Daily Worker, the Communist newspaper at the time. It was one of those "Sorry, but this submission does not meet our current needs" form letters. Sis explained that after receiving the rejection slip, Woody was so pissed off that he tossed the manuscript to her and told her, "Here, you keep it. It's yours." And so it was for more than half a century. I thumbed through the pages and saw it was some rollicking adventure set in Sicily. I said to Sis that I'm sure what Woody meant was for her to keep the manuscript, but he would have wanted the pblic to see the story itself. I offered to take the manuscript downstairs to a place that had a photocopier. Then I would make a copy to send to Nora Guthrie at the Woody Guthrie Archives, and I would return the original to Sis immediately. Well, Sis responded, "No way! Woody said I can have the story, so it's mine to do with as I please." End of story. But just maybe Sis's daughter Jane Friesen has the manuscript. If so, wouldn't it be wonderful if she would make a copy for the Woody Guthrie Archives? And wouldn't it be even more wonderful if the Archives then published that story? --- Steve |
Subject: RE: Obit: Sis Cunningham 1909-2004 From: emjay Date: 26 Oct 04 - 03:21 PM There is a very good essay in the October issue of Sojourners titled "Cultural Channeling." It begins by talking about the passing of Agnes Cunningham, but goes on to say some interesting and insightful things about the music it calls "old-time country music" and authenticity in music. The piece concludes with these sentences; "Or is it really the sound of something human and real struggling to emerge from the virtual? Maybe old music -- and perhaps old religion -- is all we have left from which to concoct a new way of life." Yes! And there is a picture of the Alamanac Singers. |
Share Thread: |
Subject: | Help |
From: | |
Preview Automatic Linebreaks Make a link ("blue clicky") |