I dedicate today’s song to my American Facebook friend, Linda SippIo from the U.S.A.
Today’s song is ‘Cotton Fields’. This song was written by American blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, better known as ‘Lead Belly’, who made the first recording of the song in 1940. The song was also covered by Odetta: Harry Belafonte: The Highwaymen: The Springfields: The Beach Boys and Petula Clark.
While barely making a dent in the US (number 95 Record World, number 103 on Billboard) the song succeeded across the Atlantic, reaching Number 2 in the UK's ‘Melody Maker Chart’ and listed as the tenth-biggest seller of the year by the ‘New Musical Express’. Worldwide (outside North America) it was Number 1 in Australia, South Africa, Sweden and Norway, Number 2 in Denmark, Number 3 in Ireland, similarly it was in the Top 5 in the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain and Rhodesia; Number 12 in the Netherlands, Number 13 in New Zealand and Number 29 in Germany.
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My favourite recording of this song is by ‘Creedence Clearwater Revival’ on their (1969) album ‘Willy and the Poor Boys’. I had recently got married when this record first was released and was seriously considering obtaining the necessary qualifications at night school which I had avoided doing in my mid-teens so that I might do a degree in History and become a History teacher.
I left my education at ‘Dewsbury Technical College’ immediately after my 15th birthday and six months before sitting my ‘O’ level exams. Being the oldest of seven children at the time, I was fed up of not being able to replace school uniforms when they wore out or buy the necessary school equipment most of my peer group were able to have purchased on their behalf. I’d also missed nearly two years of schooling following a serious traffic accident at the age of 12 years, which laid me up in the hospital for nine months.
I was 14 years of age before I could return to school. When I eventually attended the technical college at Dewsbury (having taken and passed the examination whilst in the hospital over a year earlier) all the other pupils in my form had already commenced, six months earlier. Being in a constant state of educational ‘catch up’ frustrated me enormously, and my ego would not allow me to sit comfortably with being only number six in a class of twenty-four instead of number one or two (a class position I had grown accustomed to between the ages of 7-11 in my former school). Not being able to walk for almost three years after my accident, I was no longer able to participate on the sports field at the technical college or on the running track like my school peers. I was instead relegated to watching my peers from the side-lines.
Until I managed to turn my hobble of a walk into a more acceptable limp, I was often physically picked on by bigger boys in the class. After one such incident, when being picked on by a huge-sized pupil, I thought I would nip the bullying in the bud, so I hit him hard over the head with a chair and knocked him unconscious, sending him to hospital for stitches to his scalp. After that incident, the bullying and teasing of my ungainly walk stopped.
All in all, a constant lack of money, a bruised ego of not being number one or two in the class, loss of pride and my inability to walk properly, run or participate on the football and rugby field at; all these aspects told me that I was the ‘odd one out’ and I’d be better off getting a job and going out to work instead of continuing my schooling. That way, I could at least put some decent clothes on my back and a pair of non-leaking footwear on my feet if I earned some wages, besides contributing to the family coffers.
Over the next six years, I worked in two mills and spent four nights a week engaged in some sporting activity to improve my movement and ability to physically defend myself. I knew that it was foolish always to rely on a spare chair being on hand if ever my person was physically threatened by a peer. I emigrated to Canada for a couple of years at the age of twenty-one.
I’d become an avid reader of books after my lengthy period of hospitalisation as a young boy. Over the following years, my favourite subject was history; British, German, American, Irish and African, but mostly British history from the 17th Century onwards. The period of ‘The Slave Trade’, ‘The Industrial Revolution’, ‘The American War of Independence’, ‘The Rise of the German Reich’, ‘The Irish Easter Rebellion’ and the advancement of Civil Rights for black people in the U.S.A.; all these periods in world history fascinated me enormously and I couldn’t read enough on the subject to satisfy my thirst for historical knowledge.
I will never forget reading about the cotton pickers between the 17th and 20th century in Africa, Jamaica and America; the hard lives and abject conditions of poverty they endured before the first machine cotton picker was invented by John Daniel Rust in the late 1920s, thereby making manual cotton picking redundant. Ever since the 18th Century, in many societies, like America, slave and serf labour was used to pick the cotton crop, greatly increasing the plantation owners cotton crop. English plantation owners also made huge fortunes out of the slave trade and their plantations in Jamaica. Such wealth and vast profits buttressed the British economy and was an essential part of commerce for centuries before the slave trade was abolished. It is not stretching the truth to say that much of the wealth of Great Britain and the United States was built on the backs of poor cotton pickers and cane and sugar cutters of African origin; either serfs or slaves. It is these centuries of dominance by the white master over the enslaved black citizen what this song truly represents to me.
I dedicate this song to my Facebook friend Linda Sippio, from America. Linda is and has always been a strong advocate for the rights of all people and particularly abhors all aspects of racism and anti-feminism. These are two causes I have always strongly supported ever since a West Indian surgeon saved my life on the operating table after I received multiple life-threatening injuries as an 11-year-old.
From what I have read of Linda’s daily posts I believe her ALSO to be an astute historian of the ‘American Civil Rights Movement’. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Linda, and please accept today’s dedicated song from your friend across the waters. The Atlantic Ocean may separate our presence but cannot distance the philosophy we share that is borne out of respect for our fellow beings and love for our family and friends. We remain part of the same wholesome value structure that spins this world of ours on its axis of love.
Love and peace Bill xxx
Today’s song is ‘Cotton Fields’. This song was written by American blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, better known as ‘Lead Belly’, who made the first recording of the song in 1940. The song was also covered by Odetta: Harry Belafonte: The Highwaymen: The Springfields: The Beach Boys and Petula Clark.
While barely making a dent in the US (number 95 Record World, number 103 on Billboard) the song succeeded across the Atlantic, reaching Number 2 in the UK's ‘Melody Maker Chart’ and listed as the tenth-biggest seller of the year by the ‘New Musical Express’. Worldwide (outside North America) it was Number 1 in Australia, South Africa, Sweden and Norway, Number 2 in Denmark, Number 3 in Ireland, similarly it was in the Top 5 in the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain and Rhodesia; Number 12 in the Netherlands, Number 13 in New Zealand and Number 29 in Germany.
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My favourite recording of this song is by ‘Creedence Clearwater Revival’ on their (1969) album ‘Willy and the Poor Boys’. I had recently got married when this record first was released and was seriously considering obtaining the necessary qualifications at night school which I had avoided doing in my mid-teens so that I might do a degree in History and become a History teacher.
I left my education at ‘Dewsbury Technical College’ immediately after my 15th birthday and six months before sitting my ‘O’ level exams. Being the oldest of seven children at the time, I was fed up of not being able to replace school uniforms when they wore out or buy the necessary school equipment most of my peer group were able to have purchased on their behalf. I’d also missed nearly two years of schooling following a serious traffic accident at the age of 12 years, which laid me up in the hospital for nine months.
I was 14 years of age before I could return to school. When I eventually attended the technical college at Dewsbury (having taken and passed the examination whilst in the hospital over a year earlier) all the other pupils in my form had already commenced, six months earlier. Being in a constant state of educational ‘catch up’ frustrated me enormously, and my ego would not allow me to sit comfortably with being only number six in a class of twenty-four instead of number one or two (a class position I had grown accustomed to between the ages of 7-11 in my former school). Not being able to walk for almost three years after my accident, I was no longer able to participate on the sports field at the technical college or on the running track like my school peers. I was instead relegated to watching my peers from the side-lines.
Until I managed to turn my hobble of a walk into a more acceptable limp, I was often physically picked on by bigger boys in the class. After one such incident, when being picked on by a huge-sized pupil, I thought I would nip the bullying in the bud, so I hit him hard over the head with a chair and knocked him unconscious, sending him to hospital for stitches to his scalp. After that incident, the bullying and teasing of my ungainly walk stopped.
All in all, a constant lack of money, a bruised ego of not being number one or two in the class, loss of pride and my inability to walk properly, run or participate on the football and rugby field at; all these aspects told me that I was the ‘odd one out’ and I’d be better off getting a job and going out to work instead of continuing my schooling. That way, I could at least put some decent clothes on my back and a pair of non-leaking footwear on my feet if I earned some wages, besides contributing to the family coffers.
Over the next six years, I worked in two mills and spent four nights a week engaged in some sporting activity to improve my movement and ability to physically defend myself. I knew that it was foolish always to rely on a spare chair being on hand if ever my person was physically threatened by a peer. I emigrated to Canada for a couple of years at the age of twenty-one.
I’d become an avid reader of books after my lengthy period of hospitalisation as a young boy. Over the following years, my favourite subject was history; British, German, American, Irish and African, but mostly British history from the 17th Century onwards. The period of ‘The Slave Trade’, ‘The Industrial Revolution’, ‘The American War of Independence’, ‘The Rise of the German Reich’, ‘The Irish Easter Rebellion’ and the advancement of Civil Rights for black people in the U.S.A.; all these periods in world history fascinated me enormously and I couldn’t read enough on the subject to satisfy my thirst for historical knowledge.
I will never forget reading about the cotton pickers between the 17th and 20th century in Africa, Jamaica and America; the hard lives and abject conditions of poverty they endured before the first machine cotton picker was invented by John Daniel Rust in the late 1920s, thereby making manual cotton picking redundant. Ever since the 18th Century, in many societies, like America, slave and serf labour was used to pick the cotton crop, greatly increasing the plantation owners cotton crop. English plantation owners also made huge fortunes out of the slave trade and their plantations in Jamaica. Such wealth and vast profits buttressed the British economy and was an essential part of commerce for centuries before the slave trade was abolished. It is not stretching the truth to say that much of the wealth of Great Britain and the United States was built on the backs of poor cotton pickers and cane and sugar cutters of African origin; either serfs or slaves. It is these centuries of dominance by the white master over the enslaved black citizen what this song truly represents to me.
I dedicate this song to my Facebook friend Linda Sippio, from America. Linda is and has always been a strong advocate for the rights of all people and particularly abhors all aspects of racism and anti-feminism. These are two causes I have always strongly supported ever since a West Indian surgeon saved my life on the operating table after I received multiple life-threatening injuries as an 11-year-old.
From what I have read of Linda’s daily posts I believe her ALSO to be an astute historian of the ‘American Civil Rights Movement’. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Linda, and please accept today’s dedicated song from your friend across the waters. The Atlantic Ocean may separate our presence but cannot distance the philosophy we share that is borne out of respect for our fellow beings and love for our family and friends. We remain part of the same wholesome value structure that spins this world of ours on its axis of love.
Love and peace Bill xxx
