Some of the warmest memories I have of the early days with
my firstborn is singing with him, mostly singing to him, softly, on our glider late in evenings after a long day at work. We had a small repertory of songs he liked, some
standards like Old McDonald and many tunes familiar from Raffi. But there was one old personal favorite of
mine that I sang a lot. No doubt the appeal was the father-to-son-to son theme, spiced up by bursts of onomatopoeia amusing to both son and father.
That song is The
Marvelous Toy, profound I think in its deceivingly superficially simple and
silly way. It was composed by a young
man – in the Army, somewhat incongruously, at the time. He went on to a memorable career as a singer-songwriter
in the “folk” genre, starting off as part of the Greenwich Village scene. I saw him perform once in the mid-80s or so in Chicago – at The Quiet Night on the north side, I think. His songs are many – my particular favorite
is The Last Thing on My Mind, and a
version of his powerful Jimmy Newman by
the late Chicago folkie Fred Holstein deserves special mention.
He’s done a lot of satirical, topical political stuff from the
usual simplistic, child-like leftist point of view, and I wonder how his
antipathy to warmongering and allegedly corporatist presidents is holding up against
such disorienting developments as Obama’s personally directing ongoing drone
murders (no due process!) of scores of people all over the Middle East and
Obama’s sinking billions of taxpayer money into Solyndra and other failing
companies controlled by his political pals and sponsors. Mature, three-dimensional intellectual
thought has never been a strong suit of tres
chic lefties, and I suppose we cannot expect any more of this man.
We take him and his music for what they
are as they come.
Born in Chicago 75 years ago today – Tom Paxton.
Richard Balsamo
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