Gilbert, Ronnie (1926—)

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Gilbert, Ronnie (1926—)

American singer, actress and author who was a member of the famous folk-music group The Weavers and a successful survivor of McCarthyism. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 7, 1926; daughter of Charles Gilbert and Sarah Gilbert; married Martin Weg (divorced 1959); children: daughter, Lisa Weg .

Performed with The Weavers (1949–52); rejoined the group after its revival (1955–63); began a successful solo singing career (1960s), turning to acting as well; earned a professional degree in clinical psychology and practiced as a therapist; recorded with Holly Near (1980s); combined her acting, singing and writing to present her play Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (1990s).

Ronnie Gilbert was born into a Jewish-American working-class family in Brooklyn during the height of the Roaring '20s but grew up during the economically depressed 1930s when labor activism and the specter of fascism and war became basic facts of American life. From her parents, Gilbert absorbed political idealism and a faith in the possibilities of creating a world free of poverty, war, and racism. As a high school student, she took a stand against racial stereotyping when she refused to appear in a blackface minstrel show with white students. Citing Paul Robeson's denunciations of racism, Gilbert would not back down, even when her teacher threatened with denial of graduation. Ronnie graduated as scheduled.

Gilbert was deeply influenced by the internationalist aims of the Left. From her earliest years, she was exposed to revolutionary songs and sang them with enthusiasm while marching in the annual May Day parades in Manhattan. During the summers, she attended Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers Children's Camp), where Naomi Feld , a counselor and choral conductor, made singing a part of the daily camp routine. Feld reminded the campers that music always existed in a broader social and political context, that "singing is a form of battle."

Ronnie's mother Sarah Gilbert was born into a poor ghetto family in Warsaw. Orphaned as a child, Sarah came to America at age 16 after having already absorbed the traditions of the Polish-Jewish Bund, a Socialist organization that emphasized economic victories for workers as well as cultural and moral enlightenment. In a 1990 interview, Gilbert gave credit to her mother's labor idealism as having played a major role in her own formative years, noting that the Bund was an "inspired and inspiring movement [that] was full of culture, full of songs and poetry and theater and writing of all kinds." A woman who loved to sing and an active member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Sarah Gilbert would often return home from union meetings with her book of labor songs. This and other songbooks and recordings, including songs inspired by the Spanish Civil War as well as pop music of the period, were always available in her home. Ronnie Gilbert's political involvement began around this time as well, when she stood on New York street corners to collect money for Spanish refugee children. At the start of World War II, she went to Washington, D.C., to work for the Federal government. In her spare time, she continued her activism, joining a leftist singing ensemble called the Priority Ramblers—its priorities being to sing about the necessity both of winning the anti-fascist war overseas and working for an expansion of social and racial justice on the home front.

Growing up in New York became even more challenging for her family after Sarah Gilbert divorced her husband, but Ronnie matured into an attractive, confident and talented young woman. The world around her was rapidly changing, however. Now, with victory over fascism and the achievement of a hard-won peace, a new era was dawning. In December 1945, folksinger Pete Seeger was instrumental in founding People's Songs, a group closely linked to the Communist Party whose avowed goal was to raise the morale of the labor movement and disseminate the progressive agenda.

People's Songs reached its apogee during the presidential campaign of 1948, when Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party's candidate, challenged the rapidly emerging ideological orthodoxies of the Cold War. Folksingers were invariably on hand at Progressive Party rallies, and both Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson sang at the Philadelphia convention that nominated Wallace for the presidency. It was during this time that Ronnie Gilbert began to combine her political idealism with her love of music, singing on behalf of Wallace throughout a campaign that was marred by incidents of red-baiting and threats of violence. While employed as a secretary for CBS, she also worked for social and political change. Art, she was convinced, could play a vital role in modifying the world for the better. Decades later, she recalled: "I had a lot of faith in the effectiveness of songs because of my own experience of songs getting so deeply to me.… I ex pected them to have the same effect on others."

Although most of her friends during this period were either members or sympathizers of the Communist Party and accepted its rigid discipline, Gilbert chose to define her beliefs in a socialist society as one in which "nobody had to worry about clothing and housing and medical care [so that] people could turn their attention to how to make the products they made better." She envisioned the new society as one that was economically decentralized, and which emphasized lifelong educational opportunities that enabled individuals to change course if they discovered "that there was something that they did better or wanted to do. There would be a lot of singing and painting and plays." In view of the fact that her Weltanschauung was as much based on her artistic ideals as on political and economic ideology, Gilbert found herself irritated by Communist meetings and the know-it-all attitudes of the party leadership, noting decades later: "I am not a good organizational person.… It's very hard for me to follow regula tions or discipline. I tend to laugh a lot when I should probably be serious."

Despite the enthusiasm of millions who supported Henry Wallace, the progressive and leftist forces faced an increasingly repressive environment. Anti-Communism, which became the official ideology of American public life in the late 1940s, covered a broad spectrum, ranging from genuine concern about Stalinist tyranny and Soviet territorial expansion to a belief on the part of ultra-conservatives that any impulses toward domestic reform should be stigmatized and crushed as an expression of subversive "un-Americanism." By 1949, the American mood had become extremely ugly as "subversion" was being uncovered by self-proclaimed patriots in every state. In Washington, D.C., the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) sought headlines by issuing subpoenas to individuals whose ideas appeared to be a threat to an American Way of Life; this group had detected

subversive tendencies in folk music as early as May 1941, when a HUAC special committee labeled Woody Guthrie and other folk-based entertainers as red balladeers whose cultural deviance was alleged to pose a clear and present threat to national security.

Ronnie Gilbert, a few days shy of her 23rd birthday, experienced the new mood in America, ominous in its near hysteria, at a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York, in late August 1949. Decades later, Gilbert could vividly recall a day when a peaceful crowd that had assembled to enjoy a folk-music concert found itself being violently attacked by a mob of rock-throwing "patriotic" vigilantes, while police, some smiling, were visible on the sidelines doing nothing. As Gilbert and thousands of others attempted to depart, they were mauled and insulted by a screaming mob. Rocks were thrown, while on a nearby hill a burning cross could be seen. Over 150 in the audience were seriously injured; cars and buses were smashed. Several years later, Gilbert and The Weavers would recall that frightening day in a song titled "Hold the Line" but avoided scrutiny by professional red-hunters by recording it for the little-known Hootenanny label and using the billing of "Pete Seeger and Chorus."

As early as 1948, during and after the ill-fated Wallace presidential campaign, Gilbert found herself singing at hootenannies organized by People's Songs. Along with Pete Seeger, the initially unnamed quartet also included Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman. The group was heterogeneous: Seeger was born into a WASP background in Manhattan in 1919, while Hays, the son of a Methodist minister, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1914. A social activist in the 1930s, Hays had written both a play and produced a documentary film about the plight of America's sharecroppers. Hellerman, born in Brooklyn in 1927, was gifted both as a guitarist and singer. As the foursome coalesced, they would often meet for songfests at Seeger's home on MacDougal Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, in which the rumbling bass of Lee Hays would contrast dramatically with Ronnie Gilbert's soaring contralto.

Appearing in their debut on Oscar Brand's "Folk Song Festival" on municipally-owned radio station WNYC, the group was still searching for a collective persona when it was announced to listeners as "The No-Name Quartet." This situation changed instantly when they decided to identify themselves as The Weavers. Taken from the title of a 19th-century play about impoverished weavers by the German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, the name was both simple and memorable but also evoked a spirit of social militancy. As the group's only woman, Ronnie Gilbert brought an artistic maturity to the ensemble that was extraordinary in view of her youth (she was one year older than Hellerman, but twelve years younger than Hays and seven years younger than Seeger). In their performances and recordings over the next 14 years, Gilbert was able to provide The Weavers with what Robert Cantwell has described as a "protean and brilliant" voice, one that was capable of revealing innumerable facets, "by turn gentle as a nursing mother's, innocent as a child's, [and] lusty as the Wife of Bath."

In December 1949, The Weavers received their first booking at Max Gordon's Village Vanguard. Uncertain of their appeal, Gordon offered the group only $200 a week and all the hamburgers they could eat. Not having properly assessed how healthy the singers' appetites were, he quickly insisted on renegotiating their salaries to $250 weekly without kitchen privileges. The Weavers' new sound and fresh material, which included songs by then relatively little-known African-American folk singers such as Leadbelly (Hudson "Huddie" Ledbetter), who had died only a few weeks before their Village Vanguard debut, delighted audiences, and their reputations quickly soared. Soon, the Manhattan press was singing the group's praises, as when the critic of the Herald-Tribune enthused about their "unspoiled… spontaneity." Carl Sandburg, who happened to see their show, declared enthusiastically, "When I hear America singing, The Weavers are there." Pleased by The Weavers' popularity, Max Gordon extended the ensemble's contract, keeping interest alive through newspaper ads in which he declared them to be "the most exciting act" that had appeared at the Village Vanguard in a decade.

One of the most important members of the Vanguard audience for many nights was band-leader Gordon Jenkins, whose enthusiasm for The Weavers only seemed to increase with time. Jenkins was convinced that these musical neophytes could be commercially successful and was certain that he could convince his recording company's director, Decca Records' Dave Kapp, into offering a contract. Kapp was somewhat skeptical, however, and wavered until Columbia's producer Mitch Miller offered to sign them up. Only then did Decca make the decisive move. Advised by their new manager Harold Leventhal, The Weavers signed with Decca. Pete Seeger echoed the group's sentiments when he voiced their hope to "do for folk music what Benny Goodman did for jazz."

In May 1950, with the ink on their contract barely dry, The Weavers began recording their repertoire. At their first session on May 4, they recorded a catchy Israeli soldiers' tune, "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena." A few weeks later, they taped the flip side, a song composed by Leadbelly that was dear to their hearts. "Goodnight, Irene" shot up the national charts, became the #1 single, and earned a gold record. "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena" also caught the attention of America, peaking at #2. For much of 1950, Decca Records could not press the vinyl fast enough to meet the nation's demand for The Weavers' discs.

For the next two years, The Weavers enjoyed immense popular success, earning another gold record and a #2 chart rating with "On Top of Old Smokey," a folk ballad from America's Southern Highlands. They achieved another smashing success in 1951, reaching #4 on the charts with their spirited rendition of Woody Guthrie's "So Long (It's Been Good to Know Yuh)." The group also recorded Guthrie's "Hard, Ain't It Hard," as well as "Lonesome Traveler," with words and music by Lee Hays who was inspired by fragments of an old American hymn. The group's astonishing success gratified Decca Records—pulling the company out of debt—but was as much a surprise to Gilbert and her Weavers colleagues, who had hoped to earn enough to pay their basic, and rather modest, living expenses. Between 1950 and 1952, The Weavers would sell more than 4 million records. They also enjoyed choice engagements at plush night clubs in major cities throughout the United States.

The Weavers' success, however, did not create a situation of unalloyed happiness. As overnight stars, each member of the group indulged in varying degrees of soul-searching and artistic unease; all could easily remember their days of political activism. Each chose to deal in a different fashion with the ambiguities of success; for example, Pete Seeger wore red socks along with his tuxedo. The Weavers' hit records and well-paid night-club engagements were the result of the group's conscious decision to formalize their repertoire, limiting their freedom of improvisation so as to present shows that were smooth, polished and audience pleasing.

With the Cold War now at its chilliest, The Weavers decided to avoid being ideologically controversial. From the first days of the group's public appearances in 1949, they had chosen to bypass songs that made political statements. Their tunes now contained innocuous lyrics, and they were careful to delete verses that might offend conservative sensibilities, like the line in Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" that concluded: "If Irene turns her back on me/ I'd take morphine and die." They even avoided singing "If I Had a Hammer," a new composition by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. Writing in the leftist folksong journal Sing Out! in February 1951, Irwin Silber noted with considerable annoyance: "The Weavers would have sounded far better in the more vital and vibrant Hootenanny setting than they did in their formal evening attire on the Town Hall stage."

The Weavers' retreat from artistic activism delayed but did not prevent their becoming embroiled in the worst excesses of the Cold War. Since 1947, a group of disgruntled ex-FBI agents, convinced that the U.S. government remained soft on Communism and incapable of effectively fighting internal subversion, had been publishing an anti-Communist newsletter named Counterattack. On June 22, 1950, Counterattack issued a special report entitled Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. Listing 149 "prominent actors and artists" it accused of having lent their names to organizations "espousing Communist causes," Red Channels was sent to media executives and quickly became universally accepted by the industry as the Holy Writ of radio and television blacklisting. There was little if any resistance to the intimidationist tactics from the entertainment world. The music industry's trade journal, Billboard, chose to add some additional fuel to the fire by reporting that "the Commies are hell-bent on taking over."

Red Channels did not list The Weavers as a group, but the blacklisting bible did devote fully two pages to document the "un-American" activities of Pete Seeger, who was accused, among other things, of having performed before such groups as the Progressive Citizens of America and the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. The Weavers were, however, collectively accused of pro-Communism in the June 9, 1950, issue of Counterattack in an article that took pains to note that the group was "well-known in Communist Party circles" and had publicly performed the "fighting songs of the Lincoln Brigade… and other Communist song favorites," also pointing out what the blacklisting journal regarded as a glaring discrepancy, namely between the songs the ensemble had recorded for Decca and performed in night clubs, which were "not the folk songs they sing for the subversive groups they frequently entertain." The appearance of both the Red Channels listing of Seeger and the Counterattack piece on the entire group had an immediate and dramatic impact on the professional future of The Weavers. Without warning, plans for them to appear as regular guests on a television series were canceled by the program's sponsor, Stokely-Van Camp. Terrified of the prospects of a total blacklisting, The Weavers' manager promised the editors of Counterattack that the singers would henceforth turn down all future invitations to perform before left-wing groups.

At first, The Weavers appeared to have successfully weathered the storm unleashed by Counterattack and Red Channels. If imitation is the height of flattery, then The Weavers were flattered indeed when Dennis Day, Vic Damone, and Frank Sinatra all made recordings of "Goodnight, Irene," which Billboard hailed as being quite possibly "the biggest hit of the era." For the 122 weeks between the release of "Goodnight, Irene" and the termination of their relationship with Decca Records in November 1952, a Weavers song appeared on Billboard's weekly bestseller chart an astonishing 74 times. Even more amazingly, for 25 of these weeks, not one but two Weavers songs appeared on that listing. "Good-night, Irene" remained immensely popular even at the end of 1951, fully 18 months after its release. Even though they were banned on television, The Weavers continued to flourish as live performers, appearing at the best night clubs in New York, Las Vegas, and Hollywood. Audience response remained enthusiastic, and at their opening at New York's Blue Angel the group was greeted with what the New York Post described as "the greatest ovation ever accorded an act at this club."

Despite the blacklist, The Weavers' career continued to flourish throughout 1951. Nevertheless, an event that took place in Chicago in June of that year foreshadowed serious trouble. The group had been scheduled to perform on a national television program on the NBC network. When word of this was somehow relayed to Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, founder of the American Jewish League Against Communism, Schultz organized call-ins to pressure NBC to cancel their appearance. Despite the fact that only a handful of complaints had been received by the network, NBC capitulated to pressure. Even with the television blacklist, The Weavers generally continued to enjoy broad-based popularity throughout 1951. Several of their recordings, including "On Top of Old Smokey" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," rose quickly into the upper reaches of the charts, and Newsweek described them as "the hottest singing group around." But pressure groups continued to target the singers. The American Legion was able to frighten the director of the Ohio State Fair into canceling a Weavers appearance even though they had already signed a contract. The year ended optimistically with a packed house for a Christmas concert at New York City's Town Hall.

The year 1952 began hopefully, with Decca Records announcing that they were inaugurating an "all-out" campaign to promote several of their leading recording artists, including The Weavers. Another positive sign was the fact that The Weavers' latest release, the South-African tune "Wimoweh," was rapidly climbing the charts. The American Legion in Ohio, however, continued to hound the group. During The Weavers' visit to Cleveland, the Legion noted that all four members of the group had been kept under "constant surveillance" during their stay in that city. While The Weavers performed at Akron's Yankee Inn, local Legionnaires regularly showed up, presumably in order to monitor the content of their music. For a while, the owner of the Yankee Inn resisted the Legion's pressure tactics, but eventually he bowed to economic realities and announced that his contract with the musicians had been terminated "by mutual consent."

In February 1952, a former Communist named Harvey Matusow, who had become a professional anti-Communist working for the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy, testified before a HUAC panel in Washington, D.C., accusing the Communist Party of misusing folk music, and particularly popular groups such as The Weavers, to entrap young people to join their movement. Matusow insisted that he had proof positive that Gilbert, Hellerman, and Seeger were all card-carrying Communists. In his 1955 autobiography, False Witness, Matusow admitted that most of his voluminous HUAC testimony was fabricated and that his work as a paid government witness had done great harm to the lives of innocent women and men. Ronnie Gilbert was one of Matusow's intended victims, but she exhibited remarkable powers of decency and resistance during an indecent period of American life. When subpoenaed by HUAC, she simply ignored it (fortunately, she never received another). In 1950, at the onset of The Weavers' overnight fame, she married Martin Weg, a dentist. Soon a daughter Lisa was born, and, as the intimidating pressures of the blacklist took hold and The Weavers received fewer and fewer invitations to perform in public, Ronnie settled into the role of wife and mother. Not all was normal, however, for a young woman who never hid her beliefs. On several occasions, FBI agents visited her husband's office, frightening off his patients and inflicting economic damage on the Weg family.

"Wimoweh" was the last Weavers song to appear on the charts, and the management of Decca began to distance itself from the quartet that had earned their company large sums of money. When other Decca artists, such as Louis Armstrong and Guy Lombardo, failed to appear on the charts, the company invested in a promotional campaign to rekindle their popularity. But when The Weavers found themselves in a similar situation in late 1952, Decca dropped them from their roster. Soon after, the group decided to disband. The Weavers were brought down not by an aroused public angry at their political ideals or by fans who had grown tired of their singing, but by a small band of Americans who created blacklists and intimidated employers even though millions of Americans were attending their concerts and buying their records.

Ronnie Gilbert survived the era of Senator McCarthy and the blacklist and continued performing. In December 1955, with McCarthy politically discredited and the worst excesses of the era that bears his name diminished, The Weavers were back together as a group. Performing in New York's Carnegie Hall, Gilbert and her colleagues gave a stunning performance which the group self-recorded because record companies were still fearful. (Vanguard Records eventually purchased rights to the tapes and released discs derived from them.) For the next several years, The Weavers once again enjoyed success throughout the United States despite continuing protests and occasional bomb threats before concerts. Pete Seeger departed from the group in 1958, replaced in quick succession by Erik Darling, then by Frank Hamilton and finally by Bernie Krause. Fred Hellerman and Lee Hays stayed on to continue singing with Gilbert. After a 15-year existence, the group finally disbanded in 1963 with an emotional farewell concert in Carnegie Hall. Shortly before, they had been offered an appearance on ABC's "Hootenanny" but declined to sign a loyalty oath demanded by the show's director.

The original Weavers quartet, Gilbert, Hays, Hellerman, and Seeger, performed for a final time in a pair of concerts in Carnegie Hall in late November 1980. By this time, it was obvious that Lee Hays, who had lost both legs because of severe diabetes, did not have long to live. He died in August 1981.

After touring as a solo performer in the 1960s, Gilbert's energies were channeled into earning a master's degree in clinical psychology. She then practiced throughout the 1970s as a therapist. Music was, however, never banished from her life, and, by the 1980s, she was again active on stage and in the recording studio. She made a number of solo recordings before making two recordings with Holly Near , "Lifeline" (1983) and "Singing with You" (1986). Gilbert toured with Near in 1983-84 and sang with the group HARP (consisting of Holly Near, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Gilbert, and Pete Seeger). Gilbert also appeared in a number of films, including The Loves of Isadora, Windflowers, Loin de Vietnam, Going On, Hard Travelin', and The Hopi: Songs from the Fourth World. She enjoyed performing as an actress on stage and was seen in many plays in New York and London, as well as in Canada and France, even once appearing at the Venezuela Festival in Caracas. She also became a decades-long member of Joseph Chaikin's experimental drama troupe, The Open Theater. Gilbert also released the solo albums The Spirit Is Free (1985) and Love Will Find a Way (1989); the latter was self-produced with her new manager and life partner, Donna Korones .

In 1993, Gilbert's considerable talents came together in her play about Mary Harris Jones titled, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. In her portrayal of the legendary union organizer, Gilbert set out to reveal a woman who was at once "spunky and sarcastic, fearless and opinionated." The show's songs, most of which were written by Gilbert, provide its audiences with indelible portraits of an age of resistance to injustice when the Knights of Labor, John D. Rockefeller, and Mrs. O'Leary's cow all made their marks on the history of an exuberant and raucous young nation.

In the 1990s, Ronnie Gilbert could look back on a remarkable career that spanned the turbulent eras of the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II and the Cold War. She had found the strength to survive the McCarthyite hysteria and never abandoned her ideals, continuing to believe that, despite some errors of judgment made by her generation, she had been part of a movement whose aspirations had been on balance "good and true and clean and wonderful." Ronnie Gilbert has never grown tired of quoting Mother Jones, who said, "Women have such a power, but they don't know how to use it." Gilbert's career is a testament not only to this power in one gifted woman's life, but also to her remarkable ability to use it often and well.

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