Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Those Three Are on My Mind (Pete Seeger)
From:
Ken Liss
Date: 29 Oct 16 - 03:21 PM
This song was unknown to me until a few weeks ago when my sister saw a mention of it in an article about Many Rivers to Cross: A Festival of Music, Art & Justice held in Atlanta at the beginning of October. The article (on the online site The Root) said that Harry Belafonte performed the song, which it called a "new song." When my sister looked it up she found, of course, that it was an old song with music by Pete Seeger. The lyrics were attributed in various places to Frances Taylor, Frances Fink Taylor, or Frances Parker. My sister couldn't find information about her, and that set me off on a quest to learn more. After several weeks and help from a number of sources, here is what I found.
Frances Fink Taylor was a music critic and later a film critic for the Long Island Press in New York in the 1960s and 70s. She interviewed Bob Dylan in the office of his manager, Albert Grossman, in August 1965. Her column about the interview. published in the Long Island Press in October, is often cited in writings about Dylan. In it he disavowed his early folk and protest songs.
Broadside: The National Topical Song Magazine published "Those Three Are on My Mind" and two other songs with lyrics by Taylor in 1966. "In the process of interviewing young singer-songwriters (including Bob Dylan) for her column," the editor wrote, "she became interested in songwriting herself."
The music and lyrics to "Those Three…" appeared in the October 1966 issue of Broadside. Here's what the editor's note said:
"Frances Taylor first write [sic] the original lyrics of this song in the form of a poem about a year ago. Last summer Pete Seeger composed a tune for the words, which underwent some revision in the process, and this is the result. Pete introduced the song on the David Susskind T-V show, October 2, 1966. Harry Belafonte is recording it and plans to use it it as the title song of his forthcoming new L-P album."
That episode of The David Susskind Show was the first under that name. (The show had previously been called Open End.) The other guest, in addition to Seeger, was Robert Kennedy. (Historic Films Archive has clips from the Susskind show, and I hope to find this one.)
It's unclear what were the revisions that Broadside mentioned, but the lyrics as published there are slightly different from the way either Seeger or Belafonte sang them. (I'll post the lyrics separately.) In 1999, Seeger wrote to Sing Out! that "Frances Taylor sent these words to me; all I did was put a tune to them." (Sing Out! The Folk Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 1, 1999, p. 80)
A second song with lyrics by Taylor and music by Seeger appeared in the November 1966 issue of Broadside. Titled "Men of Principle," it ridiculed the hypocrisy of government officials whose words about open and low-cost housing, integrated schools, jobs, and peace did not match their actions. (I'll post those lyrics, too.)
A third song with Taylor lyrics, "Computer Love-Song," had been published in Broadside in June 1966. It was a whimsical and skeptical song about computer matching (long before OKCupid or Tinder.) The music was by pianist, singer, and composer Irma Jurist. I have found evidence of another song they wrote together, called "I Haven't Lost My Way" but know nothing more about that one. (Eleven years earlier, Irma Jurist had been one of many performers, including Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, who refused to testify about ties to communism in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee.)
Finding information about Frances Taylor before and after this period was difficult, but here's what I have discovered.
She was born Pearl Finkelstein in New York in 1909. Her father had a drugstore in Manhattan. It's not clear if Frances was her middle name or how she otherwise came to be known as Frances, but the family name was eventually shortened to Fink. She graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism and was listed in various sources as a reporter or a writer as early as 1933, but it is unknown who she wrote for or what kind of writing she did before the 1960s. She married a Czech-born motion picture theater operator named Michael Zala in 1933. They were later divorced. In 1947, she married Joseph S. Taylor, another motion picture operator.
I have not yet found any other examples of her music writing, besides the Dylan interview, except for a reference to a column about Woody Guthrie. She continued to write film reviews for many years until the demise of the Long Island Press in 1977 and was a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. She died in Poughkeepsie, New York in December 1979 at the age of 70.
I have been in touch with Frances Taylor's daughter and hope to learn more about her and about how she came to write the lyrics to "Those Three Are on My Mind" and other songs. (Her daughter did not know or did not remember Pete Seeger's connection to the song.) I'll share more info when I have it.
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