Back at the very end of the 1950s when I was perhaps 8 or 9 I was allowed into the front “best” room of my grandparents’ house in London. The great treat was to be allowed to play the wind-up gramophone.
I’d lift the deep mahogany lid with its concave moulding, open the front doors to increase the volume, wind up the spring, change the needle to make sure there was a sharp one there for the session and finally gently lower the playing arm to the edge of the shellac disk. I never tired of listening to one record and loved hearing the deep voice that boomed above the tinny sound of the accompanying music, or perhaps it made the music sound tinny. That voice belonged to the man I consider the most influential black American of the last century. A man the world loved and America let die in poverty, living with his sister, 30 years ago this year.
The song was the signature tune of the singer but actually was not the original and neither was he the original performer, even though it was written for him. By now you might have guessed that I was listening to Paul Robeson singing his version of “Old Man River”.
A BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast today told the story of that song. It is available over the net for the next week and is the third in the “Soul Music” series of 4. Robeson’s most widely available performace of the song is in the film version of “Showboat”. It had been written for him but he was not in the original Broadway production, instead he first performed the role in London, perhaps a harbinger of his later career. For the film, Robeson made some changes, but retained the melancholy resigned ending. In the film it is sung when the mixed race woman is forced to leave the theatre boat for breaking the law by marrying a white man, the ending is context. It was the subsequent changes that Robeson made which transformed it into an anthem of freedom and hope for many throughout the world, includeing striking miners in South Africa. The original ending:
You an’ me, we sweat an’ strain,
Body all achin’ an’ racked wid pain –
Tote dat barge!
Lif’ dat bale!
Git a little drunk,
An’ you land in jail…
Ah gits weary
An’ sick of tryin’;
Ah’m tired of livin’
An skeered of dyin’,
But Ol’ Man River,
He jes’ keeps rollin’ along
Was changed to;
You an’ me, we sweat an’ strain,
Body all achin’ an’ racked wid pain –
Tote that barge and lift that bale
You show a little grit and
You lands in jail…
But I keeps laffin’ instead of cyrin’
I must keep fightin’;
Until I’m dyin’
And Ol’ Man River,
He just keeps rollin’ along
It was at while in London for that first stage performace of Showboat that Robeson experienced something that was also help radicalise many other black Americans more than a decade later. Like the black soldiers in WWII, who even then were separated into lesser support roles in segregated battalions, Robeson found a comparative absence of racism. At a time when the Broadway theatres forced black members of the audience to sit in the most obscure areas of the auditorium, Robeson was lauded. It was not only the wealthy theatre goers in Britain who came to admire, respect and even love him. He toured South Wales in the 1930s and his 1939 film Proud Valley made him even more popular with the miners in the area. In 1950, after he refused to confirm or deny if he was a Communist, the USA banned him from travelling overseas by confiscating his passport. The travel ban meant that in 1957 his address to the Miners’ Eisteddfod (a traditional Welsh cultural/song festival) in Porthcawl had to be givn over a transatlantic link. The British Committee to lobby for the restoration of Robeson’s passport included Lord Stansgate, father of Anthony Wedgwood-Benn who resigned the title to stand as an MP. He is better known as the radical Labour ex-MP Tony Benn. In his interview in the radio programme he describes how his father took Robeson round the Houses of Parliament when he eventually was able to visit London again. After virually stopping the proceedings in the Commons, he softly sang Old Man River in the House of Lords’ tea room, electrifying the room.
The speech Robeson made to the anti-fascists in Spain in 1937 remain as relevant to performers today and maybe its fitting that in the year of the 30th anniversary of Robeson’s death that once again Hollywod seems to becoming more social aware. Robeson told the Spanish Republicans:
The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.
