The Crack of Dawn

Volume #500

10/31/23

Newsletter #500

The Crack of Dawn

In 1949 Pete Seeger and his friend and bandmate, Lee Hays, were both attending a peace rally.  A tad bored, Seeger wrote the verse of a song lyric on the back of the event’s flyer and handed it to Hays.  Lee Hays wrote another verse and handed it back.  Seeger wrote another verse.  When the protest was over, without having exchanged a spoken word, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger had written The Hammer Song, as they called it.  The two of them were in a band together called the Weavers.  They recorded the song, and it was a hit.

Of its own accord, the song changed titles to, If I Had a Hammer.  Also, one line of the chorus changed.  It went from, “I’d hammer out love between all of my brothers,” to “I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters.”  When Peter, Paul & Mary recorded the song in 1962 it contained the revised title (with The Hammer Song in parentheses) and the new, inclusive “brothers and sisters” lyric.  The song was a smash hit, as was the whole album (which my elder sister had), and it was a pervasive sound in my early youth (along with Motown). Then the song If I Had a Hammer became a smash hit again when Trimi Lopez recorded it, also in the ‘60s.

Although folk music had been around for a long time, it became a really big deal in the years after World War II.  The biggest-selling folk band of this period was the Weavers.  Since they were all extreme lefties who had all dabbled with Communism in the 1930s (as had most intellectuals), they were a prime target for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Unamerican Committee hit list, which led to the blacklist.  The Weavers didn’t work for most of the 1950s.

Now comes the important part of the story – my participation.  Peter, Paul & Mary’s version of If I Had a Hammer was so influential on me that 40 years later, I made a movie entitled, If I Had a Hammer.  The story takes place over a weekend in 1964 and is about the brief, ill-fated romance of a committed folky girl and an uncommitted rock and roll boy.  Most of the action takes place in a folk club, where a number of songs are performed.  As fate would have it, it also happens to be the weekend of February 9, when The Beatles debuted on The Ed Sullivan Show, subsequently killing the folk movement and starting the rock & roll generation.

My film begins with a montage of black & white news events beginning in 1958, when Elvis Presley was drafted into the army, up to The Beatles’ arrival in New York just a few days before the time of the movie on February 8-9, 1964.  Therefore, the front titles represented “the old days.”  During the course of movie, the folky girl would perform a solo, singing, If I Had a Hammer, with the updated “my brothers and my sisters” line, because she’s young and represents the next generation.

For the film I created my own version of the Weavers that I called the Four Feathers.  I did my best to exactly copy the Weavers – a banjo player like Pete Seeger, a baritone, upright bass player like Lee Hays, a female singer like Ronnie Gilbert and a male guitar player like Fred Hellerman.  I only gave them first names, and they were: Pete, Lee, Ronnie and Fred.  Amazingly, these four actor/musicians, who didn’t know each other before I put them together, did an exceptionally credible job as the Weavers.  They perform two songs in the movie, but I also had them record two other songs – Goodnight, Irene for the end titles, and The Hammer Song (not If I Had a Hammer) for the front titles.  It’s written in the script.

Anyway, one of the Four Feathers had a well-equipped home studio.  He said that they would record the front and end title songs there, and he wouldn’t charge me.  That was wonderful and I said, “Go for it.”  The four of them called me a few days later and asked if I wanted to come to the studio and listen to the recording with them?  Of course I did.  I drove to somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, and the fellow did have a nice little studio set up in his house.  We all took seats.  Proudly, they played me the professionally recorded song.  It was If I Had a Hammer, not The Hammer Song, the one called for in the script.

I said, “You recorded the wrong song.”

All four of their smiles faded, and they all vociferously defended themselves, saying, “No we didn’t.  You asked for If I Had a Hammer.”  I shook my head, “No, I didn’t.  I asked for The Hammer Song.  It’s written in the script.”  I’m sure they all thought I was tripping because they didn’t know the difference.  I said, “You’ve got ‘my brothers and my sisters.’”  They all smiled and nodded.  One of them actually said, “Yeah, we fixed that.”  Showing them the script, I explained how The Hammer Song became If I Had a Hammer.  They all nodded understandingly, though they were slow in comprehending what they were being informed.  Finally, the guy with the studio said, “You don’t actually mean we have to do it again?”  Ah, he got it.  I nodded, “Yes, you do.”  They couldn’t believe it.  “But we did hours and hours of work for free.  Hours and hours.”  As both the screenwriter and the director I could not help but admonish them.  “You have to read the script. It’s written in the script.” 

I swear to you this is true.  Actors read scripts like this, “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit – my line – bullshit, bullshit, bullshit – my line – bullshit, bullshit . . .”

Good on ya.