Hoodoo Voodoo, Lady Madonna and Guthrie

[Chinese Apple]

I was listening to the Beatles a couple of weeks ago, and heard a riff in Lady Madonna that is used at the beginning of Hoodoo Voodoo. This musical reference is probably not news to many of you here, but that realization set off a whole chain of association that made a favorite song even greater for me.

 

I am a fan of Woodie Guthrie, and love his songs for children. My two little guys and I love "Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_to_Grow_on_for_Mother_and_Child) I know from the lyrics of Hoodoo Voodoo that Guthrie must have written it as a children's song. I love the way Wilco does it: we always do dance a goofy dance when we listen to it in our house.

 

After hearing the Lady Madonna reference, I started to "hear" the lyrics of that Beatles' song, about a single mother in poverty trying to feed her kids, when I listen to Hoodoo Voodoo:

 

Lady Madonna, children at your feet

Wonder how you manage to make ends meet

Who finds the money when you pay the rent

Did you think that money was heaven sent

...

Lady Madonna, baby at your breast

Wonder how you manage to feed the rest

Lady Madonna, lying on the bed

Listen to the music playing in your head

 

And that, reminded me of the fabulous iconic Dust Bowl photograph "Migrant Mother" (1936) by Dorothea Lange.

 

Lange said this about the photo:

 

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960)

 

Woodie Guthrie is also known as "The Dust Bowl Troubadour" -- and that seven-or-so seconds of Beatles' reference did something magic for me, contextualizing the sad economic times that happy song was written in. It makes me want to give my kids a hug. Now when I listen to Hoodoo Voodoo, I think of how Guthrie must have loved his kids, though thick and thin, and wanted them to have a happy childhood even in the worst of times.

 

I don't even know if it was intentional on Wilco's part, but anyway. I love that song even more. And I was loving it way too much as it was. My heart can hardly contain it. I had to share.