HOW CAN A POOR MAN STAND?

There ain’t ever been a time when everything was cheap,
Now the price of a slice of bread is oh so steep.,
When you get your grocery bill
Almost makes you wanna kill.

Chorus:
Tell me, how can a poor man stand?
How can a poor man stand?
How can a poor man stand such times and live?

So you go to the doctor when you’re feeling tight.
And he says, “In a little while you’ll be alright”
He gives you a humbug pill,
Hands you a great big bill,
Tell me, how can a poor man stand? Etc…

Well they say there is a cost-of-living crisis now,
You need to feed your kids but you don’t know how.
But it’s all right for some – looking out for number one,
Tell me, how can a poor man stand? Etc…

Now your politics they may be blue or red,
But the promises they make won’t get us fed.
Ain’t it a crying shame – there’s always someone else to blame,
While we work so hard to earn our daily bread.
Tell me, how can a poor man stand? Etc…

“How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” is an American folk song originally recorded on December 4, 1929, in New York City. It was written, composed, and performed by Blind Alfred Reed, accompanying himself on the violin. The song tells of hard times during the Great Depression. It is considered an early example of a protest song. Recorded by Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen, etc.
I have added my own verses – such as the one about the ‘cost-of-living crisis – and deleted others to make it more relevant to the current times. As far as I’m concerned that is legitimate as circumstances change.

Blind Alfred Reed (June 15, 1880 – January 17, 1956) was an American folk, country, and old-time musician and singer-songwriter. He was one of the artists who recorded at the Bristol Sessions in 1927, alongside more famous names such as Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family. He played the fiddle along with his son Arville, who played the guitar. He is perhaps most well-known for the songs “The Wreck of the Virginian” and “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?“, the latter of which has been covered many times, including versions by Bruce Springsteen, Ry Cooder, and the New Lost City Ramblers.

Alfred was born completely blind, in Floyd County, Virginia, being the second blind child born to Riley & Charlotte (Akers) Reed. He was raised in a very conservative family, the son of a farm labourer, and he acquired a violin at a young age. Later, he began performing at county fairs, in country schoolhouses, for political rallies, and in churches. He even played on street corners for tips. He used to sell out printed copies of his compositions for ten cents each. This is about all the information that can be gathered from him in his early life, as most of the events during this time were not written down nor talked about much in his later years.

While playing during a convention in 1927, Ralph Peer, who was the director of the Bristol Sessions, heard Reed playing “The Wreck of the Virginian”, and asked him if he wanted to make some recordings. Reed consented, and he recorded four songs, one solo, “The Wreck of the Virginian“, and three with Arville’s guitar accompaniment: “I Mean to Live for Jesus”, “You Must Unload”, and “Walking in the Way with Jesus”. After the Bristol Sessions, Reed kept recording until 1929, which was the year of his most famous song’s release “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?“.

After 1929, he stopped recording and lived out the rest of his life mostly in the Princeton area in Mercer County, West Virginia. Reed continued to perform locally until 1937 when a statute was passed prohibiting blind street musicians. In addition to being recording artist and a musician, he also served as a lay preacher Methodist church minister. In 1956, Reed died, supposedly of starvation. He is buried in Elgood, West Virginia.

Reed’s lyrics, all of which he composed himself, were ostensibly very conservative, but always were presented with a sense of humour; for example “Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls?” was an over-the-top commentary against women’s hair style fashion of the 1920s, in which women who wore a shingle-bob were instructed to “ask Jesus to forgive” their hair style. More than half of the songs he recorded were religious or political or spoke out against society’s ills. Because of his social commentary, which was somewhat uncommon then, some people today consider Reed an early “protest” singer.

In 2007, Blind Alfred Reed was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, alongside other famous musicians from West Virginia. Also in 2007, a tribute album to Blind Alfred, named for one of his songs, was released. Always Lift Him Up: A Tribute to Blind Alfred Reed features nineteen of Reed’s most famous songs, recorded by artists from West Virginia, such as Little Jimmy Dickens, Tim O’Brien and Ann Magnuson.

In 2020, Reed’s song “How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live” was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

My latest book of short stories and ballads – LUNATICS & CRIMINALS – is mainly for adults (available on Amazon for just £6.99, paperback, or £1.99 as an ebook. As the title suggests, the subjects include murder, robbery, corruption and other cheerful things. Here’s a taste:

                               I met her on the mountain, there I took her life,

Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife.

Hang down your head Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry.

Hang down you head Tom Dooley, poor boy you’re bound to die.*

I was sitting in a café trying to impress a girl by outlining plans to write a book on violent crime. ‘We may be the most successful species on Earth, but we’re also the most violent,’ I said. ‘Even our games – football, rugby, boxing, and so on – are often based on armed conflict and use the language of warfare. Why is this? Well, I have a few ideas.’

Leaning back, rather pleased with my pitch, I smiled smugly at the girl. This was, I should add, many years ago, before I’d attempted to write anything more taxing than a school essay and had little experience of life. I was, however, a fan of murder ballads such as Tom Dooley, Jesse James, Frankie and Johnny, and Delia’s Gone, to name but a few, and thought I knew a thing or two about mankind’s insatiable appetite for slaughter.

Then the café door crashed open and a wild-eyed youth rushed in, pulled another guy out of his seat, and began to punch and kick him. Customers sprang up, screaming, overturning tables and chairs, all in a panic to avoid the maniac.

Within seconds the victim was knocked to the floor and, as he lay bruised and bloodied, his assailant escaped leaving everyone trembling with shock.

I never discovered the cause of the fracas but did realise one important fact: singing or reading about violent acts was one thing – it could even be entertaining – but the reality was no joke. Even a Saturday night punch-up could be heart-stopping, possibly lethal, and something I surely didn’t understand or wish to get close-up to. So maybe I wasn’t yet ready to write a book on the subject.

But here I am, many decades later, attempting that very thing. Let’s hope I’m now up to the task.

The song lyrics (ballads) were mostly penned by me for singing in pubs and clubs. The stories written for various publications and are a mixture of fact and fiction. But all reflect the darker side of human nature, of which, unfortunately, there are many examples.

All characters’ names are fictional and any similarity to real people coincidental unless otherwise stated.

 *Traditional North Carolina ballad based on the true 1866 murder of Laura Foster in Wilkes County by Tom Dula (above) – pronounced locally as ‘Dooley’. A version by the Kingston Trio was a hit in 1958, but the song has been recorded by many other artists.

A brand-new collection of short stories, verse and narrative song lyrics

Most of the stories in this book were written to be read or sung aloud which, to my mind, is the best way for tales to be told. Long before the invention of visual symbols made on clay, stone, paper or papyrus, humans recounted their experiences verbally. Often, no doubt, accompanied by dramatic gestures and sounds. It is also certain these narratives were embellished as they passed on so that after a while fact and fiction became blurred. But ‘fact’ is not always the same as ‘truth’, for many a wise word is wrapped up in mythical garb to make it more entertaining or memorable. With this is mind, though I have indicated the non-fiction pieces, I hope readers will approach all these tasty tales with an open mind.

Published now – May 2022 on Amazon                                                Paperback £6.99 and Ebook £1.99

NEW DAWN

one hundred years beyond the end game                                                    when our great cities have become overgrown                                         with thistles and thorns weeds and moss                                                       and everything has returned to how it once was                               wildlife will reclaim the landscape                                                                     and endangered species clamber back from the brink

our neatly regimented houses offices and factories

will disintegrate or become homes

for bats bears badgers rats voles and foxes

along with millions of other creatures

birds insects and reptiles.

living their harsh but innocent lives

as they have always done

one thousand years on

little of what remains would be recognisable to us

a concrete pile here or there

and maybe some bleached plastic odds and ends

washed up on deserted beaches

any inquisitive star traveller

or alien archaeologist

may clear a patch of jungle and find the remains

of a sports stadium or shopping mall and wonder

what gods were worshipped here

and by what strange creatures

a little more digging and it may be realised

this was the site of extensive urban sprawl

in fact a world-wide megalopolis

connected by a complex transport

and communications system

but something must have gone wrong

or why was it not still thriving

further investigation may detect residues

of noxious chemicals and gasses

but it seems

the earth creatures did not poison themselves

or blow one another into smithereens

the only clue to their demise may lie in the paws of skeletal remains

found in the decayed buildings

small oblong devices which it appeared

were not tools or weapons

but some form of messaging service

whatever data storage they once held

now long since deteriorated and

without a power source

it was hard to tell what had so mesmerised and ultimately

transfixed like stone these clever but doomed beings

then an alien visitor against all odds

manages to spark one gadget back into life

for a brief second or two

the screen flickers with a meaningless symbol

F

My latest book – Potts & McCann Investigate the Hunting Games –  is a novel for young adults (or anyone) published on Amazon this week as both paperback and ebook. It’s taken nearly a year to write, partly because that’s just how it is, and also due to the great deal of research I did on animal rights and environmental issues.

The two main characters – students Zara Potts and Ali McCann – are caught up in a mass shooting while working in Strasburg during the summer holidays and with the help of sniffer dog Klio (belonging to Ali’s uncle) the pair become involved in an international search for the criminals behind the incident. Along the way they visit a ski lodge in Romania where the Hunting Games – a TV reality show – is being filmed and are invited to participate. Here they discover a wealthy businessman is not only sponsoring the show but is also head of a conspiracy to import endangered species and other crimes.

The story and characters are fictional but the crimes depicted are real, though the plot is fast=paced and never polemical. The relationship between Potts and McCann is, as with many male-female protagonists in crime fiction, fraught with tension but nevertheless they make a good team.

I bought Bob Dylan’s first album when it came out in the UK in 1962 and have subsequently bought most others over the years, so it’s fair to say I’m a fan even if sometimes a disappointed one. Anyway, his 80th birthday deserves a mention.

It took Bob ages to respond to the Nobel Prize offer and during that time when it seemed he might not accept I wrote No Belle For Bob (below). However, his speech, when it finally came, was eloquent and gracious. I reproduce an extract below:

‘Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time, now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures and I’m grateful for that.

But there’s one thing I must say. As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me.

But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane matters. “Who are the best musicians for these songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is this song in the right key?” Some things never change, even in 400 years.

Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?”

It’s a question many critics have asked and which I for one say ‘yes’. If songwriting can ever be literature then Dylan’s songs (not all but many) must surely fall into that category. Much of his work is also rambling and inconsequential, but that’s because he is an innovator and always pushing boundaries and not everything is going to work. Nevertheless, he is without doubt head and shoulders above his peers, and certainly the most influential song writer since WWII.

My song is simply a compilation of song titles and certainly not worth any award, but it was fun to write.

 NO BELLE FOR BOB    Dylan’s Unacceptance speech

Hey Mr Nobel – afraid I must decline
Been standing at the gates of Eden, since the changing of the times.
Don’t need no rainy day woman, to see the man in me,
If you want somebody babe, no, no, no, it ain’t me – babe.

Hey Mr Nobel – there’ll be no belle for me,
It’s just one too many mornings, or a ballad in plain D,
For I threw it all away man just like a rolling stone,
In dreams of St Augustine – a long, long, way from home.

Hey Mr Nobel, still won’t work Maggie’s Farm,
And those visions of Johanna, ain’t going, going, gone.
Farewell Angelina, baby if not for you,
Call me the Jokerman all tangled up in blue.

Hey Mr Nobel, ain’t knockin’ on heaven’s door,
Yet nor am I with Isis, or your bloody masters of war.
All right ma I’m only bleeding, and I got the tombstone blues,
Don’t need no prize for literature, though it’s way, way, way overdue.

Hey Mr Nobel, can’t you see that old slow train?
You may have God on your side but I’ve got the hurricane.
Just one too many mornings makes me lonesome when you go,
Blowing in the wind around desolation row.

To hear track:

https://soundcloud.com/mauricebaker-1/no-belle-for-bob

Here’s my new book (£6.99 paperback or £1.99 e-book on Amazon) a collection of original animal-based stories, songs and poems, written over many years for all ages – some to inform or teach, but mostly just amuse and entertain. The animals featured include cats and dogs, rats and mice, chimps and gorillas, lions and tigers, camels, lizards, horses, magpies, bears and many others both real and mythical. If there is a theme it is to show life from the animal’s perspective, that their wisdom is often superior to our own. At a time when the natural world is threatened as never before, that isn’t a bad view to consider.

Animals have been used, abused, loved, hated, and even worshiped by humans for thousands of years. We depend on them for food, clothing, shelter, transport, medicine, sport and much more, so it’s no wonder they are woven into our culture as myths, legends, and folk tales, featured in numerous movies and TV shows, or used as corporate logos and in advertising, etc.

Often, animals are given human characteristics intended to teach lessons or point out some moral or other. Aesop’s Fables, Brer Rabbit and the Anansi tales are cases in point, though there are thousands more examples from around the world, and not meant just for kids.

In real life, of course, animals generally behave far better than we do, despite our use of words like ‘beast’, ‘swine’ and ‘dog’ as insults. Most animals do not kill unless necessary and even where cruelty occurs there is usually an instinctive survival mechanism at play. What’s more, animals would manage the natural world far better without us, given our poisoning and destruction of the environment with little or no thought for the consequences.

All poems, songs and stories are original, written over several years for both adults and young people. Most have not been published elsewhere, but a few are taken from previous works.

To hear songs from book click below:

https://soundcloud.com/mauricebaker-1/wild-animals

A writers’ group I belong to were recently set the task of composing a short piece opening with the words: ‘I walked to work today…’ This was mine.

‘I walked to work today…’ or words to that effect, have long served as the opening for songs the world over. And small wonder, since walking – or Shanks’s pony as my mum often called it – has been the main means of transport for thousands of years. What often happened next in these songs was the protagonist met with some misfortune, as in the Broadside Ballad, The Death of a Lady (1683-1700), which goes:

As I walked out one morning in May, the birds did sing and the lambs did play,

Unfortunately, she meets an old man who says:

My name is Death, cannot you see? Lords, dukes, and ladies bow down to me.

Though the lady offers gold, jewels, and costly robes to live a few more years, he continues:

Fair lady lay your robes aside, no longer glory in your pride,

And now sweet maid make no delay, your time has come, and you must away. 

But ill fortune does not always follow, as in The Wanton Seed, a song collected by A.L. Lloyd:

As I walked out one spring morning fair,

To view the fields and take the air,

There I heard a pretty young maid making her complain,

All she wanted was the chiefest grain…

In other words, what she needs is a man to: ‘sow my meadow with the wanton seed.’

Then he: ‘sowed high and sowed low, and under the bush the seed did grow.

There are, of course, many songs where pregnancy leads to disgrace and even death, but though some collectors attempted to sanitize bawdy lyrics the original version usually emerges. Though not just traditional songs may begin this way. Bob Dylan, in 1967, John Wesley Harding, wrote:

As I went out one morning to breathe the air around Tom Paine,

I spied the fairest damsel whoever did walk in chains.

I offered her my hand, she took me by the arm,

And in that very instant knew she meant to do me harm. 

The lyric’s meaning, as with many Dylan songs, have been argued about but seem to me a simple warning – as in many old songs – beware false charms of the opposite sex. An even more recent example of the mode is Van Morrison’s 2020 rant:

As I walked out all the streets were empty,

The government said everyone should stay home.

And they spread fear and loathing and no hope for the future,

Not many did question this very strange move.

Van’s main complaint seems to be that the government changed its mind about the need to socially distance and asks why we are not being told the truth. He has, obviously, the right to sing what he likes, but underlying it appears mainly frustration at the cancellation of gigs. Perhaps, though, Morrison and others who disregard medical advice might heed the words of this old American song:

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,

As I walked out in Laredo one day,

I spied a young cowboy wrapped in white linen,

Wrapped in white linen and cold as the clay.

‘The Streets of Laredo’ was first published in 1910 in John Lomax’s ‘Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads’, though it’s probably older. Recorded by Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Willy Nelson, and many others. A rather gloomy message, I agree, like many folk songs – the joy being able to say thank goodness not me. As in ‘The Housewives Lament’ written by an anonymous woman during the American Civil War (from ‘Something to Sing’, compiled by Geoffrey Brace, 1970).

One day as I was walking I heard a complaining

And saw an old woman the picture of gloom.

She gazed at the mud on her doorstep, twas raining,

And this was her song as she wielded her broom.

Oh life is a toil, and love is a trouble, beauty will fade, and riches will flee.

Pleasures they dwindle and prices they double,

and nothing is as I would wish it would be.

But modern song writers can be just as glum – see Frank Turner’s ‘Broken Piano’ (Tape Deck Heart – 2013):

As I walked out one morning fair I found myself drawn thoughtlessly,

Back to the place we used to live, and you still do, now without me.

Around the back, away from the road, behind the bins, beneath your window,

I found the hulk, the rusting bulk, of a shattered old piano.

Someone had torn out the keys with cruel care, not thoughtlessly,

In such a way one could only play minor melodies.

It goes without saying, Frank’s attempt to play sad songs ‘on the banks of the muddy Thames’, does not go well. Maybe, as with many other song writers, he should have stayed at home and not ‘walked out one morning’.

Just completed editing TRUBLE, an adventure/fantasy novel for teenagers and uploaded it to Amazon KDP – £5.99 paperback and £1.99 ebook. I’m also submitting it to agents and would like to believe they see commercial possibilities. To me, of course, it’s the best novel I’ve written.

The main character, Jacob, is based on a kid I worked with as a teacher for Gateshead Home Tuition Service and who, like many others, had been excluded for a string of offences. Many of the other students and staff in the book are also based on real people.

Sixteen-year-old Jacob Lee Manning seems like a hopeless case to home tutor Andy Fish. Excluded from school for drug dealing, attacks on staff and pupils, vandalism, etc, and finally bringing down a suspended ceiling and hospitalizing himself and other pupils, Jacob is also severely dyslexic and suffering from ADHD. However, Andy discovers the boy has a rare gift for technology but is alarmed by his ability to levitate objects among other subversive talents.

Such stunts, and other even more spectacular ones, have been made possible by a miraculous phone – nicknamed the Enzee – acquired by one of Jacob’s thieving friends. Unfortunately, many powerful people including gangsters and government agents find out about the device and make violent advances to get hold of it.

Among Andy’s other students is Noraz, an unaccompanied fourteen-year-old found wandering the streets apparently suffering from amnesia and assumed to be an illegal immigrant. However, the boy is key to the mystery of the Enzee’s power – a meteorite discovered at the Antarctic by Yu Chang, a Korean scientist – though this is not revealed for some time.

Meanwhile, Jacob fights off adversaries using the Enzee’s super functions which include time travel which is used to visit 1939s New York where he meets his hero Nikola Tesla and helps realize the inventor’s great ambition to produce free energy. Returning to the present day with a scale model of Tesla’s flying saucer design, Jacob enlists the help of Yu Chang and other friends to fly to the far side of the Moon where Noraz’s parents have been staying.

Although the novel includes elements of sci-fi, it is rooted in believable situations with characters drawn from real life. There is also a subtle moral regarding the consequences of climate change if we do not act soon.

The idea for the Enzee phone came from a project devised for KS3 students to stimulate creativity and design skills. Asked to imagine a futuristic phone with any number of imagined functions, they not only had to make a prototype using available materials but consider the consequences, e.g. if their phone enabled users to fly or become invisible, for example. This novel takes that idea and runs with it.

I looked out of my studio window the other day and noticed a seagull perched on the neighbour’s roof. He looked as if he only had one leg, though I suppose that’s unlikely. In any case, he inspired this song – based on the story of Androcles and the Lion – the moral being you never know when a good deed might be repaid.

LUCKY JIM THE SEAGULL

There’s an old one-legged seagull, perched upon our roof.
Like a military general he stands there so aloof,
Though his feathers are all tattered and his eyesight’s growing dim,
Still the captain of the lifeboat says hats off to him.

Chorus: Lucky Jim. Oh, Lucky Jim,
If it wasn’t for that seagull, we’d all sink or swim.

It was late one stormy evening the alarm bell did chime.
And those that manned the lifeboat from their warm beds did climb.
There’s a freighter on the rocks lads – and nothing they can do.
Four and twenty passengers are a-counting we’ll pull through.

But we’d no sooner left the harbour when all hell it did break loose,
Our diesel engine spluttered and soon it were no use.
If lives were to be saving all hands must surely row.
To reach that ship a-sinking and avoid the rocks below.

Now that bird began a wheeling above us in the sky,
But why should any seagull give a damn if we may die?
Yet still he took the tow line to that ship in distress,
As we prayed up to the heavens for a miracle no less.

And so we began a-heaving the oars with all our might,
And the seagull led us homewards like a beacon in the night.
And though God knows how we made it all safe back to shore.
But we heard the seagull cry out above the ocean’s roar.

Spoken:

You may be a wondering why a seagull should care about us poor sailor boys. Well let me tell you the reason why.

Now the seagull is a wanderer going far out to sea,
But long ago the captain found him wailing helplessly.
His wing it had been broken so he took him home to mend,
And so then forever after he became the sailor’s friend.

Maurice Baker – July 2020

Set in the present day, the story is narrated by Emily, a fifteen-year-old girl from a run-down Yorkshire town who moves to South Devon following her parents’ split. She at first struggles to settle and develop friendships but, meeting a witch in Whitby, is introduced to climate change action group, the Green Witch Brigade (GWB). Emily then makes an enemy of oil company boss Jefferson G Krabb who is planning to build an oil refinery near Plymouth. She is involved in a series of adventures as an activist, but which appear to end in failure. However, following the discovery of a secret smugglers’ tunnel, Emily and her friends find a long-lost pirate treasure horde and she returns to the GWB, finally preventing Krabb’s project.

The novel has three main strands: Emily’s attempts to deal with her parent’s break-up, establishing new friends after moving from north to south, and her adventures with the GWB. Though the book was partly inspired by the many young people involved in the environmental movement and mentions the issues involved, these do not detract from the plot which remains fast paced. Most of the main characters are female but I believe the story would also appeal to boys.