Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector

Subject: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 08:15 AM

Interesting programme coming up on BBC Radio4 any minute.1.30 PM. Arthur Miller's activities in the Deep South collecting civil rights/labour songs type of thing. Sounds worth a listen.

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(click to play archive recording)

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 08:35 AM

refreshh...it's on now

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 08:44 AM

I is listenin'

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: rhyzla
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 08:57 AM

So is I!

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: belfast
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 09:01 AM

A wonderful programme. This is the kind of thing that makes Radio4 so wothwhile. I assume the programme is available on their 'listen again' facility.

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: GUEST,milk monitor
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 09:53 AM

listen again

here it is for anyone who missed it...

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 11:00 AM

Great stuff. You've got to hand it to Radio 4, it is a fantastic organisation. Even if some of the Archers story-lines leave a lot to be desired recently.

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 11:17 AM

I may transcribe a list of the songs included (or first lines). Some great stuff included! I'm catching it in Total Recorder to clip out the songs.

~S~

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: Leadfingers
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 11:40 AM

What interests me is How much have attitudes in the 'Deep South' changed since Arthur Miller was down there in the forties !! But it was indeed a fascinating piece of Broadcasting !

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: Emma B
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 11:59 AM

great music and an interesting social history narrative - a "must hear"

Subject: Human Rate of Change
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 12:01 PM

Well, how fast do attitudes change where you live, LF? Or, for that matter, here at Mudcat? (How much are most of US amenable to being told when we are wrong and how we "should" be?)

Let's see. It was 1941-- about 65 years ago. How much change could one expect in a mere lifetime? I think the most one could expect would be the first few extreme swings of the pendulum. Real change can be calculated when the pendulum comes to a brief rest.

Black history month is in full swing here in the US, and this year there is a heavy emphasis on slavery times. A lot of us have no idea how really bad it was. Learning about it all is quite a good antidote to the "people should get over it" attitude. It was BAD, and it was YESTERDAY.

Where I live (now), change happens very slowly. I myself have been an agent for change most of my working life, so I used to rail about this till I got to know the community down deep. What I realize now is that change here happens at the rate people actually CAN change, process the changes, and incorporate the change in their values and actions.

"Change" and "justice" run in very different cycles, you see.... I've had to learn to take a longer view on justice, now that I've seen first hand how change actually works, and how the attitudes of intrinsically good people are so deeply woven into their individual identities.

What I can say is "bad" is all tied up, for the person with the attitude, in who they are, who they became-- while ensconced in love and caring. It unravels very, very slowly, or the person simply comes apart. We just are not wired as human beans to move through change very quickly. It's a bitch, but that's how it is.

~Susan

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 12:55 PM

A wonderful programme. It was pointed out that Miller was well into his music and that 'Death of a Salesman' has 20 minutes worth. He had a real ear for the great stuff. How old was he when he had this inspired idea? Was it only 24 years?

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: Leadfingers
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 01:33 PM

WYSIWYG - It was the bit with the people assuming any thing from Washington was Jewish that I noticed , rather than the Black racist stuff - And of course the Anti Union stuff too !!

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 02:18 PM

I'd like to know more about Arthur Miller and his interest in folk music. Google didn't find anything for me except a brief mention of this radio program (programme). Is it available online? Can somebody post a synopsis of what you heard, or point us to more information?

What was the comment about people from Washington being Jewish, Leadfingers? I have to say that wen I worked in Missisisippi and Alabama as a federal election observer enforcing the Voting Rights Act, I was supervised by a number of young lawyers from DC, and I got the impression an unusually large number of them were Jewish. I made several voting rights trips in the 1980's, and I did not that there seemed to be more friendly interaction between whites and blacks in the rural South than there was at the time in the urban North. I almost always came across a few signs of raw bigotry, but more often I found a nice, friendly interaction.

But anyhow, can somebody tell us something about Arthur Miller and folk music?

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 02:31 PM

LF, same thing. Change is change.

~S~

Subject: RE: 1.30PM Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 09:46 PM

Leadfingers sent me a PM and pointed out that there is a link above (click) that will allow you to listen to the program (at least currently).

Here's the explanatory text from BBC:

Arthur Miller's recollection, in his 90th year, of an early job that was temporary but had a permanent effect on him.: recording the voices, the protest songs and the blues of striking black workers and railroad-men in North Carolina, just before the US entered the Second World War.

In 1941 Arthur Miller, penniless, got a job with the Library of Congress. He was sent South to record accents. Miller arrived in Wilmington, North Carolina a few weeks before Pearl Harbour. It was a critical time, and a critical place. In the former slave port a huge new shipbuilding facility had just been built to provide ships for the navy and Atlantic convoys. But the black people who had built the yards could not get work making the ships. There was also strife in textile manufacturing.

Miller was collecting accents but was more interested in what the people had to say rather than the way they said it.

Most striking to Miller and amazing to hear today were the people making music out of their experience and struggle - a railwayman singing raw blues and striking women shirt makers. So taken was he by this music he found a hall and recorded several songs and interviews.

Miller's recording trip only lasted a few weeks but it had a profound effect on him. He had never been to the South before and was shocked by the racism and anti-semitism. He was held at gunpoint for being Jewish. Once he made his host, a health care organiser, incandescent with rage by addressing a black man as 'sir' rather than 'boy' (the man was in his fifties, Miller in his early twenties).

Christopher Bigsby, the leading authority on Miller, discovered this material while working on Miller's diaries. At his house in Connecticut Bigsby played the material to Miller and interviewed him about this unknown but formative experience. So Arthur Miller tells the story of how, quite by chance, the playwright became a music collector.

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If the link above doesn't work, try this one (click).
BBC broadcasts tend to be available only for a short period of time.

Subject: RE: BBC Radio4: Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 09:17 AM

I was trying to listen in Taunton yeaterday. Do you know, you can't get Radio 4 in Taunton ...

Subject: RE: BBC Radio4: Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 02:08 PM

If we can get permission, this is something that ought to be archived at Mudcat permanently, for after BBC4 removed it from their active listening.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: BBC Radio4: Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: GUEST,Charlie Baum
Date: 23 Feb 05 - 02:09 PM

The above was me--forgot that I don;t have an automatic cookie because I entered throught the backdoor (207.103.108.99) today.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: A.Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: Rain Dog
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 03:27 AM

A programme that was on BBC Radio 4 on MOnday 3.1.11

Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector

The playwright tells Christopher Bigsby how he began taping North Carolina's poor singing Blues and spiritual songs in 1941.

Available to listen to again until 10.1.11

Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector

Subject: RE: BBC Radio4: Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: GUEST,Trewissick
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 12:14 PM

Hello,
This was repeated on BBC 7 on Bank Holiday Monday (there was a brief period that wasn't devoted the wall-to-wall Archers coverage) and I was wondering if anyone:
a) caught it and
b) could identify the song that the strikers outside the shirt factory sing towards the end of the programme - just before the 'train blues' (it's at about 23mins in)
It's on iplayer for a few more days yet!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x7fd3'

I can't make out many of the lyrics but I think I got:
'we've sided with the union'
'have tried to block our way'
'picket every day'
'by a few'

Google isn't bringing up anything that looks remotely like it. And I can't find anything of use on the Library of Congress website.

Thanks! It's a great programme... worth a listen.
Trewk.

Subject: RE: BBC Radio4: Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 04:55 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: BBC Radio4: Arthur Miller/Song Collector
From: ChrisJBrady
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 05:57 PM

Can still be downloaded using Radio Downloader.

Or go to

http://www.radioarchive.cc/torrents-details.php?id=10849

Subject: RE: A.Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: EBarnacle
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 11:56 PM

refresh. This is an important topic.

Subject: RE: A.Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: Rain Dog
Date: 07 Jan 11 - 04:08 AM

I had not realised that this was a repeat and my quick search did not reveal that there was already a thread about it. What can I say? Put it down to old age, failing eyesight etc etc.

The other thread can be found here:

BBC Radio4: Arthur Miller/Song Collector

Perhaps the two threads can be combined or this one deleted?

Subject: RE: Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Jan 11 - 10:24 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jan 11 - 07:05 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: GUEST,Trewissick
Date: 11 Jan 11 - 12:38 PM

OK.
Not much progress but have tracked down a refernce to what must be the archive material in the American Folk life catalogue

(not sure if this URL is durable...)
http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/afc9999005-search?view=thumbnail&query=wilmington&sort=titlesort&memberOf=afc9999005&field=all

if not go to here:
http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/afccards/afccards-home.html
and seach for Wilmington in the seach box.

I think the song I'm after must be 'Going' every step of the way'...
I should prob start a seperate thread...

Trewk.

Subject: RE: Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: GUEST,Sandy Clubley
Date: 19 Oct 15 - 06:39 AM

I'm trying to find words for Goin' every step of the way, sung by the shirt factory strikers at just over 9 minutes in. I can't get some of the crucial details. So far
Going every step of the way, we are going every step of the way.
We don't care what the ???? say about us we are going every step of the way
(We told the Union)we are going....etc
(Fight ????)
Can anyone point me to the full words?

Subject: RE: Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: cnd
Date: 19 Oct 15 - 05:32 PM

By the way, DO NOT click on that radioarchive link above. It's a spam site saying your computer is "hacked" and won't let you switch off, making you have to close all your tabs through Control Alt Delete -> Task Manager. You should probably make some warning about that.

The link that actually still plays the sound clip (or what I'm assuming is the sound clip) is http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x7fd3

Subject: RE: Arthur Miller: The Accidental Music Collector
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 19 Oct 15 - 06:18 PM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x7fd3