Eye-Opening Perspectives for Heroic Hearts

Eye-Opening Perspectives for Heroic Hearts

Monday, November 1, 2010

Tea Party, Frank Sinatra, Lead Belly and the Rise of the Unions

Frank Sinatra and Lead Belly Bullied by Tea Party Types



11.01.2010 By Winsip Custer CPW News Service

"You cannot watch the next Speaker of the House, John Boehner, visit a man who dresses in the uniform of a Nazi Wiking SS soldier, the same unit that gave the German Iron Cross to the 'Butcher of Auschwitz', the 'Angel of Death', Joseph Mengele, and believe that the Tea Party movement of Beck, Koch and Murdoch is sane," said music historian and political activist, Jason A. Theargonauts, of the Institute for Cultural Equity in Seattle, Washington.

"About five years ago I was walking down the street in Austin, Texas while at an art convention when a number of stolen paintings confiscated by the Nazi's showed up at a pawn shop at Riverside and I-35. That same day I'm walking across the street in front of the convention center and look down and see a bronze star embedded in the sidewalk. I read the name 'John Lomax'. I tell myself....'I know that name.' I had been reading that Frank Sinatra had been held an economic slave by big band leader, Tommy Dorsey, who had him under contract for just less than half of his annual salary. Sinatra wanted out, but Dorsey wouldn't let him out. So somebody gave Dorsey an offer he couldn't refuse" said Theargonauts.

"Lomax was the agent for the black singer Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter. In the 1930's Lomax went to Huntsville State Prison in Texas and recorded Huddie's songs. Lead Belly did 'Midnight Special', 'Good Night Irene' and "Rock Island Line'. Later Ledbetter was in Angola Prison in Louisiana on an unrelated charge and Lomax helped get him out of the infamous Angola which everyone knows in the Reconstruction South and even today is used for de facto slavery. Anyway, Lomax signed Ledbetter for fifty percent of his earnings, but then renegotiated the contact to include his son, Alan, with sixty-six percent going to the father and son while leaving Ledbetter a third. And you wonder why the unions opposed the Rockefellers, Harrimans and Carnegies. God only gets ten percent at church," said Theargonauts, "unless you really trust the church and you might give substantially more....like the widow who gave what she had.  So where does John Lomax send his son Alan to school? Choate, of course. Home to Avery Dulles, the cousin of CIA Director, Allen Dulles, and the first US Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, Herbert Kohler, founder of the Kohler Company, "Bus" Mosbacher, Chief Protocol Officer of the US, Robert Mosbacher, GHWB's Secretary of Commerce...how's the treatment of Ledbetter for 'protocol' and 'commerce'? asked Theargonauts.  "Then there's Nicholas Negroponti of MIT (A Computer for Every Child Program) and brother of the Bushite and Iran-Contra water-carrier, John Negroponti, Paul Giamatti the actor whose father was President of Yale, home to Skull and Bones...they all went to Choate," said Theargonauts.

I mentioned to Dr. Theargonauts that many fine artists and musicians died before their contributions were recognized and asked him whether or not this could have been an example of that phenomenon. "Phenomenon? Yea, it's a phenomenon alright. It's called greed and it never, ever goes away. It is stuck to the human condition like stink on....oh, you get my drift."

Dr. Theargonauts went on to say that John Lomax had the good fortune of being in the driver's seat on the new development of recording equipment that was compact and transportable and that he was mining the landscape for the gems that would make him rich just as the shovel, pick ax and gold pan manufacturers or the diamond mining equipment men like Cecil Rhodes had sold equipment to the miners of California or Rhodesia or South Africa.  When you're at the front end of the technology boom, people take what they can get, but that's also why we have intellectual property laws.  What's more important?  The gold or the pick ax?"

I noticed that the 'Father of the Internet', Vint Cerf, also went to Choate.  "You noticed that, huh?" said Dr. Theargonauts.  "There's the new pick ax and shovels of the modern era and some people will get very rich from it and many more won't," said Dr. Theargonauts.

For examples of how other musicians have profited from Lead Belly's works see the following in sequence.
Leadbelly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYrK464nIeY
Ram Jam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLnDuzgkjo
MeatLoaf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYKOKTFtc4A
Cheryl Crow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kum4O_fh0_E
Spider Bait http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVZ-Zmgzneg&feature=related
Tom Jones http://ilike.myspacecdn.com/play#Tom+Jones:Black+Betty:59870:s50329294.12528997.10971384.1.2.278%2Cstd_4bdf281e1715491e864786bd0894552b
Alvin and the Chipmunks  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9C0amk8w3E&feature=related
Yess http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaHaEA_bCuM

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