Phil Ochs 1973 Audio Interview Becomes 2015 Video Release

Broadside Balladeer Blog - Political Folk Music News: A 1973 audio interview of Phil Ochs was made into a video by Vic Sadot in 2015. 

"Phil Ochs May 1973 Interview by Vic Sadot & Rich Lang" (30:10) Truth Troubadour YouTube Channel. Phil talks about Nixon, Watergate developments, the TV show he was on the day before, and his travels in South America. This old 1973 reel-to-reel tape comes alive as re-created as a 2015 video by Vic Sadot as a tribute to Phil Ochs' upcoming 75th Birthday on Dec. 19, 2015. 
See the new "Celebrating Phil Ochs" Blog by Shannon Hammock! 
Phil Ochs May 1973 Interview by Vic Sadot & Rich Lang Released in 2015

 

Phil Ochs got his start in New York City as part of the Greenwich Village folk music revival. He was a contemporary of Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Janis Ian, Len Chandler, Odetta, and others following the vibrant tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Phil Ochs and Malvina Reynolds had about 70 songs published in Broadside: The National Topical Song Magazine published by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen. Kudos to SingOut! Magazine, which is now in the process of archiving and making the Broadside song collection available to the public. Likewise, Folkways is being preserved by the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. 

 Here are several screen-shots from the short 1973 audio interview made into a 2015 video. See also some links to other blogs about Phil Ochs by Vic Sadot.

 

 
Phil Ochs Highlighted in Smithsonian Folkways Collection– Broadside Balladeer Blog

PHIL OCHS FBI FILE- 1982 Broadside Magazine news-breaking cover story by Vic Sadot re-published at the Official Vic Sadot Website in 2011. It was also published in the Delaware Alternative Press as a cover story in 1982. The first entry is about Phil Ochs joining the musician’s union. 

BroadsideBalladeer – A tribute song to Phil Ochs written in 1977 by Vic Sadot. This free download version has Vic Sadot on vocals and acoustic guitar with Eric Golub on violin. This version was released on “9/11 Truth & Justice Songs” which is available on CD Baby.

Phil Ochs with Bob Dylan at "An Evening for Salvador Allende" in 1974. Phil was quite devastated by the brutality of the US CIA Kissinger orchestrated military coup in Santiago, Chile on September 11, 1973. He had traveled and sung with Victor Jara to copper miners, students, and activists. Victor Jara was killed in the stadium when he led the prisoners in songs of the Popular Unity movement for economic justice.

 #PhilOchs #interview #VicSadot #TruthTroubadour #folksinger #Nixon #Watergate #SouthAmerica #protest #folk #BroadsideBalladeer

Phil Ochs Legacy Lives On In The House of Woody

Phil Ochs fans will be happy to know, if they do not know already, that Phil Ochs' legacy will live on in The House of Woody Guthrie in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The placement of Phil Ochs' archives in the Woody Guthrie Center is a wise and wonderful development! Here's a screenshot from the Woody Guthrie Center website.

Much as thousands of young balladeers like Phil and his buddy Jim Glover, such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Len Chandler, Odetta, Melanie, Dave Van Ronk, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Janis Ian, Patrick Sky, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGee, and too many more to mention here, derived much of their songwriting inspiration from Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Ledbelly ... Now it looks like another generational wave of broadside balladeers are being inspired by the songs of Phil Ochs. 

 

Phil Ochs had over 70 songs published in the pages of "Broadside: The National Topical Song Magazine". The only other songwriter as prolific in Broadside was Berkeley's own Malvina Reynolds. Malvina also had about 70, as I recall Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen explaining to me on a visit to their New York City apartment once upon a time so long ago... Many do not realize that Sis "Agnes" Cunningham was in a band before the more famous and commercially successful "Weavers" with Pete Seeger came along. Sis and Gordon, like Woody, had come to New York from Oklahoma roots. The band that Sis was a leading member of was called "The Almanac Singers". Sis played the accordion along with partners Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Imagine that! Sis and Gordon published songs by me and my brother Joe Sadot, and I got to know them and Phil. Broadside magazine is the namesake of this blog about political folk music. Click on the photo to watch the new 2015 video (30:10) created for the 1973 reel-to-real audio interview with Phil Ochs at his best!

So let's have a look at what's going on with this inclusion of Phil Ochs under the roof of the Woody Guthrie Center. Here's what I found on a visit to their comprehensive and intellectually engaging website. The Tulsa World has reported the news, and it would seem that it could turn into a smart tourist attraction as well as a way to encourage the artists who embrace these legacies.

“Phil Ochs Archives Donated to Woody Guthrie Center” Posted in Tulsa World: Thursday, September 4, 2014 12:00 am By JERRY WOFFORD World Scene Writer.

 

 The Woody Guthrie Center is in Oklahoma because that was his home state before he became the wandering, organizing, song-writing “Dustbowl Balladeer”, the Joe Hill labor singer of his era. It is indeed fitting and wonderful that Phil Ochs will be memorialized at this center by agreement with the families of the deceased radical folk singers. 

Excerpt: “The collection of an influential protest singer/songwriter will join the work of his major influence when the Phil Ochs archive comes to the Woody Guthrie Center this year. Ochs wrote and sang hundreds of folk and rock songs during his career and released eight albums in the 1960s and ’70s, including songs “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Changes,” “Power and the Glory,” “The War is Over” and more.

 

Phil Ochs 1973 Interview on Nixon Watergate S America

The archives will be unveiled at an event later this year at the center, 102 E. M.B. Brady St. in the Brady Arts District. “The topical songs that Phil Ochs wrote are still relevant today, just as the music of Woody Guthrie continues to address the struggles that we face in our society,” Deana McCloud, executive director for the Woody Guthrie Center, said in a press release. “We are honored to be the caretakers of the work that these advocates for social justice left, and we look forward to expanding our collection in the future to include more work that is empowering, gives voice to the voiceless and makes positive changes in our society.” The Woody Guthrie Center & Phil Ochs Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma http://woodyguthriecenter.org

Broadside Balladeer Blog always ends with good wishes and a song!  
This one is called "BROADSIDE BALLADEER" and the sound track for this video is from the CRAZY PLANET BAND 1987 studio full band cut. It was released on a 2005 "Best of 25 Years of Recordings of Vic Sadot" CD titled "BROADSIDES & RETROSPECTIVES" available at CD Baby. Video by Dean A. Banks. Thanks again, Dean!

BROADSIDE BALLADEER 2011 acoustic duo version. Broadside Balladeer is a tribute song to Phil Ochs written in 1977 by Vic Sadot. This free download version has Vic Sadot on vocals and acoustic guitar with Eric Golub on violin. This version was released on 9-11-11 on a CD titled “9/11 Truth & Justice Songs” available at CD Baby. Free download at SoundCloud.com/BroadsideBalladeer

Blogs by Vic Sadot:

BERKELEY CALLING BLOG - The Living Tradition of Free Speech in Berkeley & the San Francisco Bay Area http://www.berkeleycalling.wordpress.com

TRUTH TROUBADOUR BLOG - 9/11 & Other False Flag Truth Emergencies

http://www.truthtroubadour.blogspot.com

BROADSIDE BALLADEER BLOG - Focus on Topical Truth & Political Folk Songs 

http://www.broadsideballadeer.blogspot.com 
 

 

Courage To Resist - Free Chelsea Manning

Another Broadside for truth and justice by Broadside Balladeer Vic Sadot. Chelsea Manning got a 35 year prison sentence for exposing U.S. war crimes, including the video of the U.S. helicopter pilots attacking a group of Iraqi citizens and journalists. But blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime. It is a duty! Meanwhile the corporate empire thugs destablize and destroy other countries based on false flags and lies. Free! Free! Free Chelsea Manning!

Phil Ochs Highlighted in Smithsonian Folkways Collection

I subscribe to “No More Songs”, a wonderful Phil Ochs memorabilia tribute web site that has an email discussion list. The current email from “No More Songs” features an article about the Folkways Collection, which is now housed at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. The Spring/Summer 2013 cover story at Smithsonian Folkways on-line has an article by Ronald D Cohen titled “PeaceSongs of the 1960's”. It gives well-deserved recognition to Phil Ochs. Hit the photo to link to the story!

Attention Phil Ochs fans! An interactive web site has been created called No More Songs: A Phil Ochs Collection. No More Songs features a number of free downloads of songs, photos, articles, and interviews. Vic Sadot and Rich Lang interview of Phil Ochs from May 1973 is a free download there under "Phil" and his 2005 full band release of the song is a free download under "Tribute Songs to Phil Ochs"!

The “Peace Songs of the 1960's” article features an interview with Pete Seeger about his peace songs; a slide show of anti-war photos that has several of a very young Phil Ochs playing at Broadside concerts; and there are links to the various Folkways albums that are fortunately being preserved and celebrated as part of American culture. For example, there is a link to “The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine”.

“Peace Songs of the 1960s” by Ronald D. Cohen on the Smithsonian Folkways Collection: “Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen launched “Broadside: The National Topical Song Magazine” in 1962, which soon featured numerous peace songs. The third issue included Bob Dylan’s “I Will Not Go Down Under the Ground,” referring to bomb shelters, and was recorded by Happy Traum, backed by Dylan, for the album Broadside Ballads Vol. 1 (1963). Potential devastation from atomic weapons, rather than the looming Vietnam War, mostly occupied the minds of songwriters at this point. Dylan’s creative and powerful songs caught the imaginations of a growing number of performers and fans, although their political messages were often oblique. His 1963 “Go Away You Bomb,” however, while unknown at the time, was more direct. Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” appeared on the cover ofBroadside #6, in May 1962, with its rather abstract, convoluted peace message. His 1963 Columbia album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan included not only “Blowin’ in the Wind” but also more pointed peace songs, such as“Masters of War” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Dylan would soon stray from writing about peace, but would quickly be replaced by the prolific Phil Ochs, who had arrived in New York from Ohio and quickly joined the Broadside collective. The October 1962 issue opened with Ochs’s critical “Vietnam,” an early indication that things were definitely heating up in Southeast Asia, despite President John F. Kennedy’s disclaimers. In addition to publishing topical songs, with the assistance of Folkways Records’ Moses Asch, Broadside issued the first of its Broadside Ballads albums in 1963, which included Matt McGinn’s “Go Limp” (a.k.a. “The Young CND”), about the British antinuclear movement, Mark Spoelstra’s “The Civil Defense Sign,” and Dylan’s “Let Me Die In My Footsteps.” During the Newport Folk Festival in July 1964 Ochs performed his hard hitting “Draft Dodger Rag” as well as “Talking Vietnam Blues.” This essay is drawn from Study War No More: Peace Songs in American History, 1900-1970 (East Windsor, NJ: CAMSCO Music, forthcoming).

2011 free SoundLab acoustic version of Broadside Balladeer featuring Vic Sadot and Eric Golub.

Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen photo at Smithsonian Folkways

I met and interviewed Phil Ochs in May 1973, and these days that interview is a free download at “No More Songs”. That interview is available for free under “Phil” in the Downloads section at www.nomoresongs.com

In 1976 in a spell of deep depression, Phil committed suicide at the home of his sister Sonny Ochs in Far Rockaway, New York. Sometime in 1977 I wrote a tribute song to Phil titled "Broadside Balladeer" because he had over 70 songs published in the pages of Broadside Magazine,  which has been archived on line. The tribute was recorded with the Crazy Planet Band in 1985. But it was not released until 2005 on a "Best of Vic Sadot Songs" CD titled "Broadsides & Retrospectives", which is also available at CD Baby. 

My brother Joe Sadot and I had some songs published in Broadside Magazine. I got to know Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen during a few years of visits to Greenwich Village and to their apartment. In the later years of Broadside I was a editor/writer. In 1982 Gordon Friesen asked me to review and write an article about the more than 400 pages of FBI files that Gordon had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act after Phil's death by suicide in 1976.

PHIL OCHS FBI FILE 1982 article was re-published at the Official Vic Sadot Website in 2011.

Photo from Sept 1987 Broadside Magazine: Sis Cunningham and Vic Sadot

I was delighted to see Sis Cunningham featured in an "Artist Spotlight” at Smithsonian Folkways along with her “Sundown” LP preserved for listening on line at the Smithsonian Folkways site! 

Free SoundCloud mp3 of the 2011 acoustic version of Vic Sadot's tribute song to Phil Ochs, Broadside Balladeer, recorded with Eric Golub on violin for the “9/11 Truth & Justice Songs” CD released on the 10^th anniversary of the event on 9/11/11.

YouTube Video by Dean A. Banks for 

Vic Sadot's Crazy Planet Band 2005 release of Broadside Balladeer

Discover lots of Phil Ochs songs at LastFM Interactive Radio website: http://www.last.fm/music/Phil+Ochs

Broadside Magazine archived and preserved on line!

Note: Blues folk singer Lucinda Williams, who is still going strong, had her first two albums released on Folkways in 1979 and 1981 and some of her early songs were published in Broadside Magazine. 

http://www.folkways.si.edu/explore_folkways/lucinda_williams.aspx

The official website of Vic Sadot is www.vicsadot.com