Long Ways from Home: the Rhetoric and Performance of The
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LONG WAYS FROM HOME: THE RHETORIC AND PERFORMANCE OF THE AMERICAN FOLK OUTLAW A Dissertation by DAMIAN CARPENTER Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, M. Jimmie Killingsworth Committee Members, William Bedford Clark John Lenihan David McWhirter Head of Department, Nancy Warren May 2014 Major Subject: English Copyright 2014 Damian Carpenter ABSTRACT This study traverses the unsettled outlaw territory that is simultaneously a part of and apart from settled American society by examining outlaw myth, performance, and perception over time. In this study the outlaw figure is de-heroicized and expanded upon in its historical (Jesse James, Billy the Kid), folk (John Henry, Stagolee), and social (tramps, hoboes) forms in order to emphasize the disruptive possibilities of a marginal or outcast existence in performative acts that improvise on tradition. Because the outlaw voice has been most prominent in folk performance since the late nineteenth century, this study focuses on the works and personae of Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan. The performative outlaw is a cultural persona that is invested in outlaw tradition and conflates the historic, folkloric, and social in a cultural act. These three outlaw performers also demonstrate key cultural treatments of the outlaw in the form of the bad man, good man, and honest man. ii DEDICATION To Lisarooni, Mom, Dad, Matt, Marc, and Barbara Rutherford. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth, and my committee members, Dr. William Bedford Clark, Dr. David McWhirter, and Dr. John Lenihan, for their guidance and support throughout the course of this research. Thanks also go to Nora Guthrie and Tiffany Colannino at the former Woody Guthrie Archive in New York for their help and input. Additional thanks to the Woody Guthrie Archive and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research for granting me research fellowships and the Texas A&M University English Department for additional funding. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………... 1 The Bad, the Good, and the Honest: An Overview of Outlaw Ethics ……...... 5 Making it Live: Improvisation on Tradition and Crossroad Commerce …….. 12 What is an Outlaw? …………………………………………………………... 22 The Folk-Outlaw-American ………………………………………………….. 38 Outlaw Territory ……………………………………………………………... 42 Performing the Outlaw ………………………………………………………. 44 CHAPTER II THIS TRAIN IS BOUND FOR GLORY: MAKING AMERICA, MAKING THE OUTLAW …………………………………………………………... 49 Oh Give Me a Home ………………………………………………………... 56 The Minstrel Rustler and the Bushwhacker in Hood’s Clothing: Billy the Kid and Jesse James ……………………………………………………………... 65 The Badman and the Steel-Drivin’ Man: Stagolee and John Henry ………… 88 The Tramp and other Gentlemen of the Road ……………………………….. 111 Poor Boy Long Ways from Home …………………………………………… 125 CHAPTER III ANTHOLOGIZING OUTLAW TERRITORY AND UNSETTLING AMERICA: REVISITING FOLK TRADITION AND THE OLD, WEIRD AMERICA …………………………………………………………………………… 129 Greetings from the Old, Weird America …………………………………….. 135 Remembrance of Things American: The Voice of the Frontier ……………... 148 Brand New Bag and the Old, Free America …………………………………. 163 Authentic Pop-Hiss Revenants and the Old, Weird America ………………... 178 CHAPTER IV THE OUTLAW AS PERFORMER: LEAD BELLY, THE MURDEROUS MINSTREL ………………………………………………………… 201 Left Me Here to Sing This Song: Poor Howard’s Legacy …………………… 206 Let Me Go Home: Making the Myth ………………………………………… 211 You’re a Mean Boy: The Murderous Minstrel 1934-35……………………… 217 v Page Sinful Songs and the Socially Conscious Bad Man …………………………. 226 Lead Belly Is a Hard Name …………………………………………………... 237 CHAPTER V PERFORMING THE OUTLAW: WOODY GUTHRIE, THE DUSTIEST OF THE DUST BOWLERS ……………………………………………. 240 The Great, Singing Historical Bum in the Garden of Eden ………………….. 247 The Good Man outside the Law ……………………………………………... 258 Social Outlaws on the Freedom Highway …………………………………… 269 This Machine Kills Fascists ………………………………………………….. 281 CHAPTER VI THE PERFORMER AS CULTURAL OUTLAW: BOB DYLAN, ALIAS ……………………………………………………………………………….. 285 Portrait of a Musical Expeditionary: Developing the Dylan Myth …………... 292 I Just Might Tell You the Truth: Outlaw Blues out on Highway 61 ………… 303 Never Known to Hurt an Honest Man: The Honest Outlaw from Archetype to Cultural Type ……………………………………………………………… 318 Po’ Boy, Where You Been?: The Outlaw Spending Time Out of Mind in the Tempest of Modern Times …………………………………………………… 337 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………... 345 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………... 353 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION When this project first began, one of the major questions it sought to answer was similar to a question Woody Guthrie asks in a brief essay from the early 1940s: “Why do people set down and write up great songs and ballads about their outlaws? (And never about governors, mayors, or police chiefs?)” (Pastures of Plenty 79-80). Guthrie’s answer, in addition to being characteristic of his philosophy, reflects the Depression-era treatment of the outlaw figure as a populist hero: “an outlaw does one big thing . He tries. Tries his best. Dies for what he believes in. Goes down shooting. Politicians don’t try. They shoot the bull and hot air, but they don’t try their best to make the world better” (Pastures of Plenty 80). Fair enough. Songs are written and sung about outlaws because they are willing to give their life to make the world better for those whose freedom is threatened by unjust laws or an unfair economic system. This is the portrayal of the outlaw Guthrie grew up with in the oil boom plains and Dust Bowl devastation of Oklahoma and Texas, and this is the outlaw role Guthrie portrayed in his performance persona and songs. It certainly doesn’t take much critical insight to debunk this romantic view of the outlaw, especially if we look at the real lives of “classic” outlaw figures like Jesse James or Billy the Kid. But the real biography of the classic outlaws is not essentially what this project is interested in, nor is it particularly interested in debunking the myths of the outlaw figure. This is not to say that the biographies and mythic structures of the outlaw should not be and are not considered in this study. Getting to the 1 root, the facts and the contexts from which traditional and mythic systems grow, brings to light much that is often glossed over or forgotten over time in rigid traditions and dominant myths. Take John Henry for example. A folkloric tradition that became an enduring myth sung about for over a century, Henry’s epic battle against the machine is certainly full of a rich and perplexing ambiguity that is often lost when it’s read merely in a positive light. Taking the tale as a whole, we might consider a number of readings: is John Henry’s victory over the steam drill a story representing the American will to succeed, an affirmation of the primacy and necessity of human labor in an increasingly urban-industrial society, or a cautionary tale of the dangers of overwork or hubris? Certainly, we don’t have to settle on reading the story strictly in one way, nor should we. In addition to these broader questions, we might consider some more direct issues concerning the man, his family, and situation. Why is it that even as a baby, as the tale tells, John Henry knew he was going to die with that hammer in his hand? What about the son Henry left behind just to prove “a man ain’t nothin’ but a man”? Moreover, what about Polly Ann, the wife he left behind who took up that hammer after his death? Certainly considering these details more fully could lead to some very lively critical interpretation of the story. Is Polly Ann, the steel-driving woman, Rosie the Riveter’s mythical mother? It doesn’t take much digging under the surface to get at the complexity of Henry’s tale. The lasting place the ballad has had in American culture is partly due to this complex ambiguity even if much of it is masked in heroic battle. Digging even 2 deeper, as Scott Reynolds Nelson has recently done, reveals the lost fact that John Henry was a black convict hired out to the railroad who was not swinging his famous hammer by choice. He was an outlaw (in custody) even if, perhaps, he isn’t what we might think of as a typical outlaw. It might be said that John Henry’s story is one of the most successful tales of the folk outlaw tradition because his outlaw roots were masked completely by heroism in popular culture. Unlike tales of Jesse James or Billy the Kid, who only enjoy a partial masking of heroism at different times in history because we are always aware that they’re outlaws (their roots are always showing), John Henry’s roots were firmly “buried in the sand.” Time, memory, and popular consumption erased the prison walls of the “white house” where John Henry was buried in an anonymous mass grave. How does this forgotten fact then add to the already complex story? And this also gives rise to another significant question: what does it mean that the only seemingly positive, non-violent black folk hero had been de-outlawed in popular culture very early in his career? These are two questions we will return to. Getting to the root of myths and traditions (which are essentially more ritualized mythic systems) can reinvigorate the liveliness of such systems of understanding and defining the world around us, our culture and society. Without this reinvigoration, myth and tradition lose their capacity to play, discover, and remain open. They become static, closed systems, which often results in cultural stagnation and with this stagnation, the means to justify exclusion, oppression, dispossession, and, at its worst, extermination. Fascism is perhaps the most striking evidence of this in the twentieth century, but it’s the same closure by which American expansion and manifest destiny justified removal and 3 extermination of Native Americans and by which disenfranchisement of African Americans, as well as the widespread social, cultural, and political outlawing or outcasting of countless others, was made possible.