Aural Fixation- Gavin B.'s Music Blog

Gavin B. · 10-20-2009, 09:36 PM

Song of the Day

Musician and music historian Ry Cooder

Vigilante Man- Ry Cooder Thanks to the dilligent efforts of the BBC Four music archivists, we have this perfectly preserved vintage early 70s video of the brilliant Ry Cooder playing a fire-breathing version of Woody Guthrie's anti-lynch mob classic Vigilante Man. Ry's use of a slide guitar brings a dark and menancing ambient to Guthrie's classic Dustbowl ballad. Vigilantism claimed the lives of thousands of innocents during the Great Depression.

Most victims of vigilantism were nothing more than honest economic refugees who hitch-hiked and rode the rails in search of gainful employment. Vigilantism is still a uniquely American problem even in this day and age. The victims in the 1930s were refugees from the Dust Bowl regions of Texas and Okalahoma. Today's victims are undocumented migrant farmworkers from Mexico who paid starvation wages to harvest the bounty of food crops in this nation. Slavery was never really ended. Now the grower will simply pay his farmworking slaves $5 an hour. In the 1850s, a slave might have been working for nothing, but at least the plantation owner paid the cost of the slave's room, board and medical care. That kind of good old fashioned slavery may have been a far better deal than the current farmworker wage of 5 bucks an hour with no benefits. It's hard for me to believe the vigilante man's specious claim that a $5 an hour undocumented Mexican farmworker is a threat to my employment security and my economic survival.

John Stienbeck wrote the following passage about the malignant vigilante subculture during the Great Depression of the 30s.

Quote:

The moving, questing people were migrants now.... And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them -- hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people.In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways.

The Vigilante Men were men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights.

And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they're filthy. We can't have them in the schools. They're strangers. How'd you like to have your sister go out with one of 'em?

The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them -- armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't get these Okies get out of hand.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, New York, NY (Viking Critical Library), 1972, pp. 385-386 (originally published in 1939)

Vigilante Man
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

Have you seen that vigilante man?
Have you seen that vigilante man?
Have you seen that vigilante man?
I been hearin' his name all over the land.
Well, what is a vigilante man?
Tell me, what is a vigilante man?
Has he got a gun and a club in his hand?
Is that is a vigilante man?

Rainy night down in the engine house,
Sleepin' just as still as a mouse,
Man come along an' he chased us out in the rain.
Was that a vigilante man?

Stormy days we passed the time away,
Sleepin' in some good warm place.
Man come along an' we give him a little race.
Was that a vigilante man?

Preacher Casey was just a workin' man,
And he said, "Unite all you working men."
Killed him in the river some strange man.
Was that a vigilante man?

Oh, why does a vigilante man,
Why does a vigilante man
Carry that sawed-off shot-gun in his hand?
Would he shoot his brother and sister down?

I rambled 'round from town to town,
I rambled 'round from town to town,
And they herded us around like a wild herd of cattle.
Was that the vigilante men?

Have you seen that vigilante man?
Have you seen that vigilante man?
I've heard his name all over this land.