Born into the most important roots music family this side of the Seegers, Bess Lomax Hawes was an epic anthropologist and musicologist in her own right, a member of the ever-interesting Almanac Singers, and, most significantly for us Bostonians, the co-author (along with Jacqueline Steiner) of the song “M.T.A.,” more popularly known as “Charlie on the M.T.A.”
The Kingston Trio – M.T.A.
As a Dissent Magazine article from 2008 points out, the history of this song is often obscured while we fawn over the Kingston Trio and use our CharlieCards to navigate the M(B)TA. It’s a fascinating history which sets a far better stage for appreciating Ms. Hawes’ classic.
The song was written for Walter O’Brien while he was running for Mayor of Boston in 1949 under the Progressive Party. The Party, an association of left-wing Democrats, disassociated radicals, and self-identifying communists, ran former Vice President and Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace in the 1948 Presidential election, but suffered a crushing defeat, earning the fewest votes between the four national candidates (in order of votes, Democrat Harry Truman, Republican Thomas Dewey, and Dixiecrat Strom Thurman). While the party earned some popular appeal for its staunch opposition to the Jim Crow laws of the south, stronger union support, and resistance to the Truman Doctrine, their association with Stalin and the Soviet Union thoroughly marginalized the party (this being the dawn of the Red Scare).
During the 1948 election O’Brien campaigned heavily for Wallace and ran for Congress himself in the Massachusetts 10th, losing to incumbent and future Governor Christian Herter. Following this loss, O’Brien set his sights on a Progressive Party run for Mayor, against Boston legend James Michael Curley, John Hynes (of the Convention Center), Patrick J. McDonough, and George Oakes. O’Brien, the economically disadvantaged candidate uncomfortably sitting with the politically unpopular Progressive Party, recruited folk musicians to help get his messages disseminated to the public.
Through folk songs and a tired sound-truck he advocated a strong New Deal-style injection of Government jobs, increased tenant’s rights, harsher punishment for police mistreatment of labor strikers, and, most famously, the rejection of the fare increase proposed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The M.T.A. was a legislatively-created body which purchased the government-sanctioned monopolistic Boston Elevated Railway. After taking the railway (an action which O’Brien called a “bailout” for the corporate BERy owners), the M.T.A. ordered fares increased by 50% for riders on the outer edges of the subway system. This lead to petitions and outcry from working-class Bostonians living in Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and Allston, who had to pay fares three-times what was charged when the system first opened.
It was for this cause that O’Brien commissioned Hawes and the Boston Peoples Artists (Jackie Steiner, Sam and Arnold Berman, and Al Katz) to write “M.T.A.,” and the group performed this and several other political songs throughout Boston during the 1949 election.
While the song was tremendously popular, O’Brien’s candidacy was not, and the election went Hynes (who would remain mayor for ten years). This is not a surprise to local historians: Boston at this time was caught up in the Red Scare, and causes such as unions and civil rights were often met with violent resistance. McCarthyism was tremendously popular in the city; Massachusetts even adopted its own investigative anti-communist organization: the Massachusetts Commission on Communism. In 1955 the Commission listed O’Brien as one of 85 possible communists in Massachusetts. His presence on the list worked a constant shadow, and for years Walter O’Brien could not find work. By the end of the 1950s O’Brien moved to Maine and became a librarian, abandoning politics altogether.
Meanwhile, the song migrated down to New York where it began to receive attention, but remained off the airways due its naming of such a controversial political figure as O’Brien. Record companies and artists realized that O’Brien’s presence in the song was keeping it off the air, and when Coral Records released Will Holt’s version they insisted he remove the verse referencing O’Brien after an earlier recording was being blocked. Likewise, when the Kingston Trio recorded the song, they changed O’Brien’s first name to George, also out of Red Scare fears. It is the Kingston Trio version that received massive popularity and allowed the song to take off, curiously guaranteeing that the fictitious “George O’Brien” would remain more famous than the real Walter.
Today numerous covers can be found, though few recordings preserve all seven verses of the original, which Dissent graciously reposts here. Copies of the original Boston Peoples Artists’ recording are extremely hard to find (I’ve heard as few as two still exist), but a live recording from the 1949 campaign can be heard on Songs for Political Action, a 10-CD set of recordings which I would certainly own if it weren’t $350. But hey, the holidays are just around the corner…
Thanks to the Globe and Universal Hub for the scoop. For much, much more on the story, read Peter Dreier and Jim Vrabel’s excellent article in Dissent.
