Originally published on Arcata1.com: July 15, 2022
“It was the red, white and blue making war on the poor —
Blind Mother Justice on a pile of manure.”
Richard & Mimi Fariña
House Un-American Blues Activity Dream
- The music
- The lyrics
- A brief biography of Richard Fariña
- History of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Fidel Castro, and Castro Convertibles
- Links for further reading
Three versions are on YouTube:
- The studio recorded version, from 1965.
- Richard & Mimi Fariña, Live at the Newport Folk Festival, July 25, 1965.
This was the same 1965 event where Bob Dylan came on stage with an electric guitar, with Al Kooper on organ and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band backing him, to play “Like a Rolling Stone” amidst boos and jeers and cries of “Judas.” - On the Pete Seeger TV Show, live, February 26, 1966. Before singing the song, Richard Fariña tells the real-life incident that led him to write the song — a funny story.
Richard & Mimi Fariña, from the 1965 Vanguard Records album “Reflections In A Crystal Wind”
Richard & Mimi Fariña, Live at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival
Mimi & Richard Fariña, Live on the Pete Seeger show, February 26, 1966
With the story behind the song
Lyrics
I was standing on the sidewalk, had a noise in my head
There were loudspeakers babbling, but nothing was said
There were twenty-seven companies of female Marines
There were Presidential candidates in new Levi jeans
It was the red, white and blue planning how to endure
The fife, drum and bugle marching down on the poor
God bless America, without any doubt
And I figured it was time to get out
Well, I have to believe that in-between scenes, good people
Went and got ’em done in the sun, good people
Tourist Information said to get on the stick
You ain’t moving ’til you’re grooving with a Cubana chick
So I hopped on a plane, I took a pill for my brain
And I discovered I was feeling all right
When I strolled down the Prado, people looked at me weird
Who’s that hippy, hoppy character without any beard?
Drinking juice from papayas, singing songs to the trees
Dancing mambo on the beaches, spreading social disease
Now the Castro convertible was changing the style
A whole lot of action on a blockaded isle
When along come a summons in the middle of night
Saying, “Buddy, we’re about to indict”
When I went up on the stand with my hand, good people
You’ve got to tell the truth in the booth, good people
Started out with information kind of remote
When a patriotic mother dragged me down by the throat
“When they ask you a question, they expect a reply!”
Doesn’t matter if you’re fixin’ to die
Well, I was lying there unconscious, feeling kind of exempt
When the judge said that silence was a sign of contempt
He took out his gavel, banged me hard on the head
He fined me ten years in prison and a whole lot of bread
It was the red, white and blue making war on the poor
Blind Mother Justice on a pile of manure
Say your prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance every night
And tomorrow you’ll be feeling all right
Uh-huh-huh
Some notes. This may be basic to some of you, or fresh information to others.
Richard Fariña
Richard Fariña was one of the shining lights of the early-1960s folk scene in New York City. He was born in 1937 in Brooklyn, NY, to an Irish-born mother and a Cuba-born father.
At the age of 23, Fariña married the then-popular folk singer Carolyn Hester in 1960 and became her agent while she toured worldwide. While recording her third album, a little-known Bob Dylan played harmonica on a few songs. Carolyn Hester introduced Dylan to the producer John Hammond of Columbia Records who then signed Dylan with Columbia. As another aside, Carolyn Hester was asked by Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey to form a trio, which she declined. The two men joined with Mary Travers, together becoming Peter, Paul, and Mary.
(From Wikipedia: “John Hammond was instrumental in sparking or furthering numerous musical careers, including those of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Charlie Christian, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Big Joe Turner, Pete Seeger, Babatunde Olatunji, Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Freddie Green, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Russell, Jim Copp, Asha Puthli, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Mike Bloomfield. He is also largely responsible for the revival of delta blues artist Robert Johnson’s music.”)
In 1962, Richard Fariña, then 25, met Mimi Baez, the 17-year-old younger sister of Joan Baez. According to the book book “Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña,” the two Baez sisters and Richard Fariña and Bob Dylan were an inseparable part of the early New York folk scene.
Richard and Mimi married in 1963 (author Thomas Pynchon, his college roommate, was the best man) and moved to a small cabin in Carmel, California. Performing with Mimi Fariña on guitar and Richard Fariña on dulcimer, they debuted their duo act at Big Sur Folk Festival in 1964. They recorded two studio albums in 1965.
In April 28th, 1966, his first novel, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me” was published. Two days later, after a book-signing celebration and while at a party for Mimi’s 21st birthday, he went out for a motorcycle ride in the Carmel Valley as a passenger with a man he’d just met that day. According to reports, the driver was travelling at an excessive speed. The motorcycle crashed and Richard Fariña was killed instantly. He was 29 years old.
For more on Richard Fariña, see this article from The Guardian (2016) or go to the links below.
Richard Fariña: lost genius who bridged the gap between beats and hippies
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Un-American Activities Committee was created in 1938 to “investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having either fascist or communist ties.” It became a permanent committee in 1945 and was disbanded in 1975 when its functions became part of the House Judiciary Committee.
The House Un-American Activities Committee is known for the Hollywood Blacklist that arose out of hearings in 1947. Starting with 10 writers who were convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify against their friends an co-workers, the list grew to over 300 directors, actors, screenwriters, and others who became unemployable in Hollywood because of pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee. The blacklist included dozens of well-known names: Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alan Lomax, Paul Robeson, Yip Harburg (who wrote all the songs for “The Wizard of Oz” including “Over the Rainbow”), Dalton Trumbo, (during the blacklist, he was wrote two Academy Award Best Screenplay winning films, “Roman Holiday” and “The Brave One” on which he used pseudonyms; after the blacklist, “Spartacus,” “Exodus,” “Hawaii,” “Papillon”) Ring Lardner Jr., Lillian Hellman, Richard Wright, Will Geer (later Grandpa Walton on “The Waltons”), Ruth Gordon (“Harold and Maude”), Dorothy Parker, Edward G. Robinson, Lena Horne, Pete Seeger, José Ferrer, Zero Mostel (“Fiddler on the Roof”), Harry Belafonte, Leo Penn (Sean Penn’s father) and hundreds more. A more full list can be seen on Wikipedia, here. Some, like Chaplin and Orson Welles, left the United States permanently and worked in Europe and elsewhere.
Other memorable activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee were the Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss testimonies. In 1948, the then-freshman Congressman Richard Nixon testifies against Alger Hiss. Hiss was imprisoned for perjury. Nixon’s testimony was later found to be fabricated and knowingly false. There is, however, other evidence which came up 40 or 50 years later from Soviet archives that did indicated that Alger Hiss was had been a Soviet spy.
By 1959, the committee was being denounced by former President Harry S. Truman as the “most un-American thing in the country today.”
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro became the Communist leader of Cuba in 1959 when he was 33 years old. He, his brother Raúl, and Che Guevera led the revolution (1956-1959) against the established Batista government. He ruled for 49 years, until 2008 when he was 82 years old, as the leader of a one-party system in Cuba. He died in 2016 at the age of 90.
Castro Convertibles
Castro Convertible was a national chair store network selling “convertible” furniture, including sofas that pull out to become beds an Ottoman that folded out to become a single bed.
Between 1931 and Bernard Castro’s death in 1991, he had sold over 5 millions convertible sofas our of 48 retail showrooms in 12 states, all in the Eastern U.S.
For further reading:
Richard Fariña: lost genius who bridged the gap between beats and hippies
The Guardian, 2016
Richard and Mimi Farina — 1960s folksingers
Richard Fariña – Wikipedia
House Un-American Activities Committee – Wikipedia
Hollywood blacklist
Red Channels list
Fidel Castro