Ronnie Gilbert: A Radical Life in Song

By Ronnie Gilbert

Ronnie Gilbert had a long and colorful career as a singer, actor, playwright, therapist, and independent woman. Her lifelong work for political and social change was central to her role as a performer. Raised in Depression-era New York City by leftist, working-class, secular Jewish parents, Gilbert is best known as a member of the Weavers, the quartet of the 1950s and '60s that survived the blacklist and helped popularize folk music in America. Her joyous contralto and vibrant stage presence enriched the celebrated group and propelled Gilbert into a second singing career with Holly Near in the 1980s and '90s. As an actor, Gilbert explored developmental theater with Joseph Chaikin and Peter Brook and wrote and performed in ensemble and solo productions across the United States and Canada.

Ronnie Gilbert brings the political, artistic, and social issues of the era alive through song lyrics and personal stories, traversing sixty years of collaborations in life and art that span the folk revival, the Cold War blacklist, primal therapy, the back-to-the-land movement, and a rich, multigenerational family story. Much more than a memoir, Ronnie Gilbert is a unique and engaging historical document for readers interested in music, theater, American politics, the women’s movement, and left-wing activism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Oct 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9780520962446

Ronnie Gilbert

Ronnie Gilbert was a founding member of the Weavers, along with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman. She became a performer and an activist on behalf of social change in the late 1940s. Her credits include the book and stage presentation Face to Face with the Most Dangerous Woman in America, detailing the life and work of Mother Jones; Legacy, a play based on the writings of Studs Terkel; and many recordings with the Weavers, Holly Near, and others.

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Michael P. Roth

and Sukey Garcetti

have endowed this

imprint to honor the

memory of their parents,

Julia and Harry Roth,

whose deep love of music

they wish to share

with others.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Music in America Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from Sukey and Gil Garcetti, Michael P. Roth, and the Roth Family Foundation.

Ronnie Gilbert

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the following:

The Constance and William Withey Endowment Fund for History and Music of the UC Press Foundation

The Gustave Reese Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Ronnie Gilbert

A Radical Life in Song

With a foreword by Holly Near

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2015 by Ronnie Gilbert

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gilbert, Ronnie, author.

    Ronnie Gilbert : a radical life in song / with a foreword by Holly Near.

    pages    cm

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-25308-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-520-96244-6 (ebook)

1. Gilbert, Ronnie.    2. Folk singers—United States—Biography.     I. Near, Holly, writer of foreword.     II. Title.

ML420.G438A3    2015

782.42162’130092—dc23

[B]

2015016336

Manufactured in the United States of America

24  23  22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 2002) (Permanence of Paper).

For Donna

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Holly Near

Acknowledgments

1. Songs Are Dangerous

2. Family

3. Making My Own Way

4. The Weavers

5. Moving On

6. Theater

7. Heading West

8. British Columbia

9. The Winter Project

10. The Weavers’ Last Concert

11. Women’s Music

12. Women in Black

13. Learning to Be Old

Postscript

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Three-year-old Ruth Alice Ronnie Gilbert, Queens, New York City, 1929

2. Ronnie with her mother, Sarah, and sister, Irene, New York City, 1930

3. Ronnie and friends Greta Brodie and Jackie (Gibson) Alper singing rounds at a hootenanny with Pete Seeger, New York City, c. 1947

4. Pete Seeger, Fred Hellerman, Ronnie, and Lee Hays at the Village Vanguard, Greenwich Village, New York City, 1950

5. Ronnie dressed for stardom, 1950

6. Wedding portrait, Ronnie and Marty Weg, 1950

7. Ronnie and baby Lisa at home in North Hollywood, California, 1954

8. The Weavers’ reunion concert at Carnegie Hall, with the three post-Seeger tenors, Bernie Krause, Erik Darling, and Frank Hamilton, 1963

9. Ronnie in a scene from Open Theatre’s production of America Hurrah, by Jean-Claude van Itallie, at the Pocket Theatre in New York City, 1966

10. Joe Chaikin, founder of the Open Theatre, 1978

11. Director Jim Brown filming the documentary The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time!, New York City, 1980

12. Ronnie and Will Patton in the Winter Project’s production of Tourists and Refugees, New York City, 1980

13. Ronnie and Holly Near at the Sisterfire music festival, Takoma Park, Maryland, 1982

14. Ronnie and Holly Near about to go onstage at the Sisterfire music festival, Takoma Park, Maryland, 1982

15. Ronnie as Saint Joan in Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill, directed by Larry Lillo at the Grand Theatre, London, Ontario, Canada, 1988

16. Life partners Larry Lillo and John Moffat, 1992

17. Ronnie and her partner, Donna Korones, 1987

18. Ronnie and Lisa kayaking in Sausalito, California, 1993

19. Ronnie with her mother, Sarah, and lifelong friends Jackie Alper and Dottie Gottleib, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1994

20. Ronnie, Lisa, Donna Korones, and Donna’s daughters, Harlene and Alicia Katzman, Hawaii, 1998

21. Ronnie and Donna with their new grandbaby, Sara Zoë, Berkeley, California, 2001

22. Ronnie and Zoë at the zoo, Oakland, California, 2003

23. Ronnie with Faith Petric at a Women in Black silent demonstration for peace in the Middle East, San Francisco, California, 2003

24. Lisa and Zoë, Mendocino, California, 2004

25. Ronnie and Donna, Mill Valley, California, 2012

1. Three-year-old Ruth Alice Ronnie Gilbert, Queens, New York City, 1929.

2. Ronnie with her mother, Sarah, and sister, Irene, New York City, 1930.

3. Ronnie and friends Greta Brodie (left) and Jackie (Gibson) Alper singing rounds at a hootenanny with Pete Seeger accompanying on banjo, New York City, c. 1947.

4. Pete Seeger (seated), Fred Hellerman, Ronnie, and Lee Hays at the Village Vanguard, posing for the Weavers’ first publicity photo, Greenwich Village, New York City, 1950. (Photo by Sonia Handelman Meyer)

5. Ronnie dressed for stardom, according to the Weavers’ early manager, Pete Kameron, 1950. (Photo by William PoPsie Randolph)

6. Wedding portrait, Ronnie and Marty Weg, June 25, 1950.

7. Ronnie and baby Lisa at home in North Hollywood, California, 1954.Gilbert

8. The Weavers’ reunion concert at Carnegie Hall, with the three post-Seeger tenors—Bernie Krause, Erik Darling, and Frank Hamilton—and Ronnie, Lee, Fred, and Pete, 1963. (Photo by Norman Vershay)

9. Ronnie in a scene from the Open Theatre’s production of America Hurrah , by Jean-Claude van Itallie, at the Pocket Theatre in New York City, directed by Jacques Levy and Joseph Chaikin, with (clockwise from left) Bill Macy, Conard Fowkes, Cynthia Harris, Brenda Smiley, James Barbosa, Joyce Aaron, and Henry Calvert (with glasses), 1966. (Photo by Phill Niblock)

10. Joe Chaikin, founder of the Open Theatre, 1978. (Photo by Terry Stevenson)

11. Director Jim Brown filming the documentary T he Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time! , New York City, 1980. (From left) Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Ronnie, and Fred Hellerman. (Photo by David Gahr)

12. Ronnie and Will Patton in the Winter Project’s production of Tourists and Refugees , New York City, 1980. (Photo by Nathaniel Tileston)

13. Ronnie and Holly Near having a great time at the Sisterfire music festival, Takoma Park, Maryland, 1982.

14. Ronnie and Holly Near about to go onstage at the Sisterfire music festival, Takoma Park, Maryland, 1982. (Photo by Susan Wilson)

15. Ronnie as Saint Joan in Top Girls , by Caryl Churchill, directed by Larry Lillo at the Grand Theatre, London, Ontario, Canada, 1988. (Photo by Jackie Noble)

16. Life partners Larry Lillo (seated) and John Moffat, 1992. (Photo by David Cooper)

17. Ronnie and her partner, Donna Korones, 1987. (Photo by Joe Abaldo)

18. Ronnie and Lisa kayaking in Sausalito, California, 1993. (Photo by Jill Davey)

19. Ronnie with her mother, Sarah (left), and lifelong friends Jackie Alper and Dottie Gottleib, following a performance of Mother Jones at the Hasty Pudding Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1994. (Photo by Ellen Friedman)

20. (Clockwise from lower right) Ronnie, Donna, Lisa, and Donna’s daughters, Harlene and Alicia Katzman, Hawaii, 1998.

21. Ronnie and Donna with their new grandbaby, Sara Zoë, Berkeley, California, 2001. (Photo by Lisa Weg)

22. Ronnie and Zoë at the zoo, Oakland, California, 2003. (Photo by Donna Korones)

23. Ronnie with singer and San Francisco folk music doyen Faith Petric at a Women in Black silent demonstration for peace in the Middle East. Puppets by Annie Hallatt and Arina Isaacson, San Francisco, California, 2003. (Photo by Joan Bobkoff )

24. Lisa and Zoë, Mendocino, California, 2004. (Photo by Jerry Kashiwada)

25. Ronnie and Donna, Mill Valley, California, 2012. (Photo by Redwing Keyssar)

FOREWORD

A small child on a Northern California cattle ranch begins her journey to understand the world through the songs on those magical vinyl circles that her parents bought through mail-order catalogs. The child listens with great care and curiosity. One such recording is called The Weavers at Carnegie Hall. Maybe the girl is six or seven or eight. The songs are forever invited into her brain and her heart. Kisses Sweeter than Wine, Darling Corey, Rock Island Line, Shalom Chaverim, I Know Where I’m Going, and more. There are four voices. The little girl stares at the picture on the cover of the record, figuring out which voice came out of which singer. One is obvious, the female voice. The photo suggests that the singer throws her head back when she sings. The little girl tries it out, throwing her head back and singing along. The singer’s voice sounds like she looks. It is a powerful, joyful voice. It is a tender voice. It is the voice of Ronnie Gilbert.

The child? That is me. A few decades later, I was singing with Ronnie Gilbert—not along with a record but in real life on a real stage with a real audience.

In 1972, I had started a record label in order to sing lyrics that the mainstream was not interested in: songs that opposed racism and the war against Indo-China, and songs that let me begin to investigate my newly discovered feminism. I dedicated my second recording to Ronnie Gilbert. I confess, I didn’t know where she was or if she was even alive. Understand, this was before the Internet.

Apparently, Ronnie’s daughter brought the recording to Ronnie’s attention. And that was the beginning of a long and creative relationship. It would be boring and unrealistic to say our collaboration was without challenges. We are two strong-minded women! But on stage, that power was thrilling. Audiences came in multiple-generation configurations. They came to hear I Know Where I’m Going, about a woman dreaming of marrying her handsome winsome Johnny, smashed right up next to Imagine My Surprise, about a woman contemplating lesbianism and the rugged women gone before her. We sang Si me quieres escribir, which remembers the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of the late 1930s, who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. And we sang Biko, in remembrance of a South African leader who stood up against apartheid and was tortured and killed.

I remember walking to Lincoln Center in New York City and seeing SOLD OUT written across the ad for our two-night engagement at Avery Fischer Hall.

Ronnie will tell you the rest as she puts together the many and varied pieces of her life. A memoir isn’t a well-researched biography by a historian. It is a remembering fat with feelings. This memoir is a gloriously personal invitation to us to see how she saw it. Any of us who remember it differently can write our own damn books!

I’m thrilled that Ronnie took the time and made the effort to put her stories onto the page. During the process, I saw her room strewn with loose pages, news clippings, PR photos, records and CDs, Post-its, and red-pen-marked drafts. I did not envy her task. How does one write about eight decades in a book light enough for people to read on a park bench or an airplane? But then again, we don’t have to write about it all. We can write about the parts we remember, the parts that interest us. And Ronnie was interested in so much! Anyone who thinks Ronnie was just a folk singer (as if that weren’t enough) can come take a ride with Ms. G. as she remembers the first time she heard Paul Robeson sing, her travels with the Weavers, becoming a mom, the devastating disruptions of McCarthyism, touring Israel, her solo career, experimenting with drugs, becoming an actor, living in Paris during a workers’ uprising, meeting Vanessa Redgrave, becoming a therapist, coexisting with bears in Canada, and discovering feminist and lesbian culture.

Thank you, Ronnie, for picking and choosing and committing to this part of your story. The rest we will remember in our hearts, in the way we love you, in the way we throw our heads back and sing!

Holly Near

December 21, 2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Abundant thanks to Annie Stine for urging me to continue writing this memoir, which had its inception in Wendy Lichtman’s writing class; to Deborah Ann Light, Clare Coss, and the Grandmother Winifred Foundation for supporting and helping me through the first phase of the project; to Lynda Winslow for uncountable hours spent organizing my files into working order; to Kate Dougherty for reworking my scribbles into readable paragraphs and challenging my compulsive revisionitis; to Annette Jarvie for proofreading, to Lisa Weg for editing and rearranging the manuscript and helping me to finish it already; to Donna Korones for her support and companionship on this decades-long journey; and to the many friends, acquaintances, and soulmates who encouraged, inspired, and supported me along the way.

ONE

Songs Are Dangerous

Songs are dangerous. So said HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee) in the 1950s, and its anti-communist investigators did their best to prevent us from being un-American in public. Nevertheless, the Weavers endured, and on November 28, 1980, at New York’s Carnegie Hall, four aging Weavers waited to walk onstage for our first reunion concert in nineteen years, and presumably our last. Actually, only three of us would walk. Lee Hays, the ‘senior member’ of the Weavers, as he liked to call himself, would roll on in a wheelchair. A double amputee with a bad heart, he was losing his long battle with diabetes. As we waited for the signal to go on, I wondered how the audience would handle the shock of seeing big Lee so cut down. And how would he, grinding his teeth, face and hair already wet with sweat, handle his key role as emcee?

Movie cameras rolled and the noise of wild welcome cheering and applause flared as we entered, but it gradually subsided as we crossed Carnegie’s huge stage, wheeling Lee, a blanket covering his stumps, to his microphone behind a small table. The air was electric with anticipation. Then, in the silence, a familiar baritone voice, gravelly with disuse and age, announced: Good evening, I’m Lee Hays . . . more or less. A nanosecond of quiet, and then an explosion of cheers and laughs rocked the staid old auditorium. The tension evaporated. Onstage, backstage, and in the audience, we all settled down to enjoy the concert. The years had altered us: Pete with turkey neck and his hair almost gone, Fred with a full goatee and post-middle-age paunch, and me with my plus size 3X figure. But we were survivors, and we were there anyway. If I hadn’t known that Lee would be annoyed and embarrassed, I would have said in public what I know we were all thinking: that Lee’s appearance that night was the most valiant and generous act of his career. To which he might have replied, as he had to a showbiz promoter twenty-five years earlier: Act? That was no act; that was the real thing!

TWO

Family

I was born Ruth Alice Gilbert in September 1926 to Charles and Sarah Gilbert of Brooklyn, New York. I was a chubby, bookish child at a time when every mother imagined her darling to be the next Shirley Temple, and tap dancing lessons were practically obligatory. I loved the dancing, but it was the singing that I excelled at, and it soon became my path.

I trace my part as a political singer to a tradition my mother learned as a child laborer in pre–World War I Poland. Before she immigrated to America as a teenager to work in the dress factories of New York, the tradition of meetings and discussion groups, demonstrations, plays, poetry, and singing had already crossed the ocean and met its American counterpart in the songs, parodies, and street theater of the Wobblies and the American trade union movement. It was into that fine international stew that I was born.

PAUL ROBESON, 1936

One morning, my mother, Sarah, an activist International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union dressmaker, shook me awake.

Get dressed, get dressed, we’re going downtown to a rally.

Oh no! Why do I have to go? It’s Saturday. I want to go to the movies.

No, Ruthie, you’re coming with me today; it’s something special.

The outdoor event was on Thirty-Eighth Street near Seventh Avenue, in the Manhattan garment district. I stood in the street, miserable, brooding over my mother’s unfairness, jostling with grim-faced strangers for my space, and gritting my teeth at the incomprehensible speeches delivered from the back of a truck to applause and boos from the audience. I was just about to start complaining again when my mother grabbed my arm and pointed up toward the platform: Look, Ruthie, look! There’s Paul! Now! Now you’re going to hear some real singing. It was as if someone had sprayed the crowd with a can of happiness. The somber faces disappeared. People shouted, cheered, laughed. A woman near us took off her gloves to sharpen her applause. I looked up to see a black man standing at the microphone smiling, taller and broader than everyone else on the platform. Finally, he leaned down to speak. Everyone hushed. Comrades, he began with a voice so deep I felt a rumble in my chest. He said something about my people and your people, and I looked at my mother for an explanation. She was fumbling for a handkerchief, her eyes full of tears.

Paul Robeson—actor, singing star, lawyer, football hero—in the garment district amid the short, pale, adoring, mostly Jewish garment workers! He cupped his hand behind his right ear and sang a song familiar from grade school music:

When Israel was in Egypt land, let my people go . . .

Oppressed so hard they could not stand, let my people go . . .

The words wrenched at me as if I’d never heard them before, carried by the thrilling sound of his voice settling around us like a velvet carpet. Now I was full of questions: What’s a pharaoh? Who were the firstborn? Why did Moses threaten to kill them? My mother and I talked all the way home on the rattling BMT subway. It was the first of our lifelong gabfests about politics, power, and songs.

MY PARENTS

Silly, how can you grow up to be a cowboy? You’re a girl, chided Mama. Satisfied at last with the latest hem on my old green party dress, she pulled out the remaining pins, bit off the thread, and steadied the rickety kitchen chair for me to jump down. Women don’t do such things, she threw in for good measure, and pulled the dress off over my head, muffling my retort. They do too, Mommy, I saw in the movies!

I remind Daddy to give me a dime to go see the cowboys tomorrow.

No! No movies, he said. Do not ask me again! He threw down his napkin and walked out of the kitchen.

Why is Daddy mad at me? I was only reminding him tomorrow is Saturday.

Don’t pester, Mama said. There’s no money for foolish things. Daddy had no work again this week.

A cyclical downturn of the market, Daddy’s newspaper had said. The worst depression in a decade. This particular cycle had wheeled us into a sandpit from which there seemed to be no getting out.

If this country had socialism like in Russia . . . Mama had said several times.

Do they have movies in Russia, Mommy—cowboys?

Silly, it’s not about cowboys.

Because of the Depression, we were a family always on the move, looking for cheaper rent. I rarely spent a whole semester in the same school. In a move to Queens, we stayed still long enough for adventures with my neighbors the Flynn twins, Mary and John. One Saturday, Mrs. Flynn invited me to have lunch with them. She served us sandwiches with a thick layer of peanut butter and a thin line of red jam. I took a bite and started to chew, but then I began to choke and tear up as the wad adhered to my palate and would not move. Mary stared. John laughed. Mrs. Flynn brought me a glass of milk and pounded on my back. Finally, the bolus dislodged, and I gulped it down, very embarrassed. The lesson don’t talk with food in your mouth had impressed itself upon me forever. I had been trying to say, This is good. I’ve never had peanut butter before. My family’s sandwiches were always cream cheese and jelly.

After lunch, we watched Mr. Flynn cleaning something over newspapers at the dining room table—a gun, black and shiny with oil. He offered it to me. It was cold and heavy, nothing like the boys’ fake guns. A flutter started at the pit of my stomach and reached all the way up to my throat, like the time I had held a dead bird in my hand. I handed it back quickly. Mr. Flynn chuckled and gave me a rag to wipe my hands. At home, I told my mother about the sandwich and Mary and John’s policeman father. Policeman? He’s no policeman. He’s a gangster! It didn’t seem safe to question, so I didn’t. Who was Mr. Flynn? A nice person in a blue uniform who you went to if you got lost? Who’d help you find your mom? Or a bad guy like in the movies? I thought I’d ask the twins, but I never did.

Mary and John took me to church. I loved the theatrics. I imitated my friends’ genuflections and self-crossings and knelt alongside them before the altar. There, the priest, in his pretty white and gold brocades, pushed a smudge of something black onto my forehead with his thumb and put a tasteless cookie on my tongue. I went home in a mood made dreamy by candles and incense. Wash that off, my mother said, with a cluck of impatience at the ashes on the bridge of my nose. But when I told her that I wanted to go to the convent with Mary and be a nun, she said in a voice sharp with scorn: Jewish girls don’t marry Jesus! What did getting married have to do with nuns? They had such allure, floating in pairs or threes along the street in their long black gowns; you never saw their feet move. Even gruff men said Sister with a kind of tenderness, as if nuns were delicate or royal—certainly special. I imagined Mary and I gliding together along Eighty-Second Street, members of that mysterious club.

But the Flynn-twin adventures ended when we again moved to a different neighborhood. Our new home was a long, third-floor apartment in a wedge-shaped building, perfect for roller-skating around, except when the barber came out of his shop screaming at us about the noise. One night, I awoke from sleep to shadowy voices from deep in the apartment—Mama, and Aunt Pauline maybe. I held my breath to hear better. . . . not a man you can depend on. Mama’s voice sounded like she was crying. The moon was a huge platter outside the window.

Reviews for Ronnie Gilbert

[karen59_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I first heard Ronnie Gilbert sing when I went to a Holly Near/Ronnnie Gilbert concert. They sang of courage, of oppression, of their love of women and so much more. I knew Ronnie Gilbert was in the Weavers and certainly knew who Pete Seeger was and when I received this review copy from Netgalley I was thrilled to learn more about this amazing singer/activist who's voice was so clear and true that I ran out and bought all of her CD's.And so, I was fairly disappointed in her memoir. I learned a lot about her; the facts of her life. I did enjoy reading about her time after the Weavers and with Holly Near and understanding the arc of her activism throughout the years. Yet, the memoir felt flat. While I came to appreciate the life that she lived I did not understand who she was; her motivations and what she felt at different choice points or about the people in her life. For example, I never understood why she became involved in primal scream and what it meant for her. For me, Ronnie Gilbert: A Radical Life in Song had breadth but little depth. This is more a biography than a memoir and though I appreciated coming to know this vibrant and courageous woman I would have liked to understand her heart and spirit even more.Thank you to NetGalley who allowed me to review this book for an honest opinion.