Teaching The Hudson Valley

Farms, Hudson Valley History, and Occupy Wall Street

Posted by Debi Duke
on October 17, 2011

If you're a fan of NE Public Radio/WAMC, you may have heard Pete Seeger 's recording of Banks of Marble. Of course, Pete himself is part of Hudson Valley history. But so is the author of the song, Les Rice. Googling for Mr. Rice doesn't get you very far.

But if you go to the Smithsonian Institution's Folkways music section you can download the liner notes from Seeger's 1958 album, Gazette, Vol. 1 for free. The notes, written by Irwin Silber, are illustrated with newspaper articles related to the songs along with quotes from Bhabavad Gita, Ben Franklin, and the Bible's Book of Kings, among others. You can also buy the song or the album at Folkways.

Anyway, if you read the liner notes, you'll discover that Les Rice lived here in the Hudson Valley: "In 1948, when the first of the post-war depressions (or recessions, if you choose) was being felt by millions of working people across the country, an apple farmer in Newburgh, N.Y., sat down and wrote a Song which, in the past ten years, has become something of a minor classic.

"Since the song was first introduced by Pete Seeger to a hootenanny audience in New York (and subsequently recorded by The Weavers in one of their pre-commercial releases), it has grown in popularity.

"In Canada, members of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union showed me verses which they added about their own working conditions and I have heard young people and workers sing it with enthusiasm and conviction in the belief that it is a traditional song of long standing rather than one of recent composition, which is its own tribute to the integrity and craft of the songwriter and his creation."

As always, the lyrics tell the story

When you read the song's second verse (the lyrics are also in the liner notes or here for an easier to read copy), you can't help but think that Rice faced some of the same challenges confronted by today's farmers:

I saw the weary farmer
Plowing sod and loam,
I heard the auction hammer
Just a-knocking down his home.

The connection to Occupy Wall Street is in the refrain

But the banks are made of marble,
With a guard at every door,
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the farmer sweated for.

and the last two stanzas:

I've seen my brothers working
Throughout this mighty land,
I prayed we'd get together,
And together make a stand.

Then we might own those banks of marble,
With a guard at every door,
And we would share those vaults of silver
That we have sweated for!

Listen to The Weavers, with Pete Seeger, singing Banks of Marble in the late 1940s or 1950s or search for covers, sometimes called "The Banks are Made of Marble," by the likes of Leo Kottke, Iris Dement, and not so successfully in my view, Leonard Cohen.

The song lends itself to additions, changes, and updates. As a result the covers often have new verses and time spent searching leads to many, many verses created by unknown protesters and strikers over the last 60-some years.

I leave you with a mystery. Banks of Marble was copyrighted by StormKing Music, another name that resonates in the Hudson Valley. My brief effort to learn about its history led only to dead-ends. So, if you know something about this company, please holler.

Comments

Debi	\|SAdministrator \|2011-11-03 23:00:39

Yes! and the New York Times now have resources and curriculum for teaching about Occupy Wall Street.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."