Here is a new video by Banana Street titled “Take This Hammer”:



This song was recorded with the full band (Jeff Kytta - Drums, Yacek Zawadski - Guitar, Kev Moeller – vocal/harmonica and my brother James - guitar). I love the way the song builds to a crescendo and almost goes out of control and then comes back down to a tempered finish. And I hope you do too.

This video is dedicated to Leadbelly.

Those of you that know me well will know that I’m a big fan of Leadbelly’s music. Leadbelly, for those who don’t know already, was a singer/songwriter that lived from 1885-1949. As a man Leadbelly was one badass dude. In 1910, he was in a terrible fight getting his throat cut from ear to ear and mortally wounding the other man in the battle. He walked several blocks with his hand across his throat, so he would not bleed to death, to a nearby hospital. He was convicted of manslaughter and served 15 years on a chain gang, being released in 1925 when he wrote a song for the governor of Texas. Governor Pat Neff pardoned Leadbelly on his last day in office – the only pardon he ever granted. Leadbelly didn’t stay free for long though. He ended up serving another 5 years after killing another man three years later. Alan Lomax secured his release in 1933; Lomax recorded Leadbelly for the Library of Congress and he setup performances for Leadbelly all over the country. Leadbelly soon became famous and he hosted a radio program in the 1940’s with numerous musical guests including Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry and others who would perform songs with him on his show.

Like I said, Leadbelly was a badass as a person, but his music and influence were immense and in a very good way. He like no other performer created the folk protest song. First with subtle works like “Grey Goose” and “Take This Hammer” which were adopted as resistance songs and celebrated the perseverance of the human spirit; and then more directly with songs like “Scottsboro boys”, “Bourgeois blues”, “Same Boat Brother” and many other songs. The folk tradition is unique in American music in that it has a social conscience. And it started with Leadbelly, no other songwriters of leadbelly’s era were writing songs like this. He of course, influenced many artists like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and many others to continue this tradition – which set the stage for the political reforms of the 1960’s.

Leadbelly was a collector and writer of music and when he was in jail he led work prison groups in southeastern Texas, working “lead”, he would sing rhythmic work songs so the workers could keep time as they swung their hammers, there would be a loud “clang” as all the hammers hit the iron rail ties simultaneously bending them into place. Prisoners “lined track” for the railroad all throughout Texas and the Deep South. “Take this Hammer” is a song that came from these work songs. It is about a prisoner who rebels against the oppression of the chain gang and flees in an attempt to escape, leaving his hammer to another prisoner to take back to the prison captain at the station headquarters. “Take this hammer and carry it to the captain, you tell ‘em I’m gone, you tell ‘em I’m gone”. This song has been recorded by many different artists over the years, but the first recording was Leadbelly’s in 1940 recorded by Folkways Music, which is now owned by the Smithsonian Institute.

In my video there are clips of Leadbelly from a 1940’s movie from the archives of the Smithsonian Institute. I would like to thank Lisa Bradford at the Smithsonian for helping me secure the rights for me to use these clips in my video. It took 6 months of emails back and forth but in the end they were very helpful and they granted me permission.

All other video not filmed by me is public domain footage from www.Archive.org . Using mostly black and white video it was a challenge to bring color to this video that does not look gaudy; you will be the judge to whether I was successful. I hope that you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it.

You can listen to Leadbelly’s original recording (1940) in a video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXnVd2q_bIg

KSM