Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 64

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Popular Culture Review

There’s Harold Hammer Beasley, a first rate man at sea,
From Hinton, West Virginia, he had his first degree.
There’s Jim Franklin Benson, a good machinist’s mate,
Came up from North Carolina, to sail the Reuben James.
Dennis Howard Daniel, Glen Jones and Howard Vore,
Hartwell Byrd and Raymond Cook, Ed Musselwhite and more,
Remember Leonard Keever, Gene Evans and Donald Kapp,
Who gave their all to fight about this famous fighting ship.
Guthrie brought the words to an Almanac Singers’ songwriting session in
early November, and immediately ran into trouble. Everyone seemed to agree that
the ballad was sensational but Seeger, or perhaps another member of the group,
said the list made the song much too long. Guthrie countered by saying he would
memorize the entire list of names. Then someone asked, “What were their names?”
which became the chorus. So, as Guthrie reworked the lyrics, Seeger and group
member Millard Lampell wrote the chorus:
Tell me, what were their names?
Tell me, what were their names?
Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?
As Seeger later noted, this chorus became the most memorable part of the
song, but he credited the words to Guthrie, rather than himself and Lampell: “Woody
created a complete chorus for a melody which originally had none; and the chorus
became the high point of the whole song” (Seeger, 408).
Another o f the Almanac Singers, Gordon Friesen, recalled how the song
came to be written:
This song was mainly written by Woody Guthrie. He wrote all
the verses but was stumped for a chorus. The other Almanacs
felt the song was very good and kept steady pressure on Woody
to finish it. For a while Woody tried to build a chorus around
representative names taken from the casualty list appearing in
The New York Times. He wanted to convey the idea that the
crew of the Reuben James symbolized the fighting unity of
melting pot America and fairly begged for some such treat
ment. On it were Scandinavian, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, Jewish,
Spanish derived names — Ghetzler, Evans, Ortizauela,
Johnston, Polizzi. But the idea was too broad for condensation
into short poetry. Finally at an Almanac session on the prob-