Being Niggardly With Randy Newman’s Lyrics

Art means whatever we need it to mean.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we needed a song that described
nature’s wrath in plain, powerful language. The one we got is Randy Newman’s
“Louisiana 1927,” a mid-’70s song about a long-ago disaster that’s been
reborn as a lament for three drowned states. Newman performed his song last
night on “Shelter from the Storm,” a telethon that aired on eight networks
and 48 cable channels. In the days prior to Newman’s ôôperformance, New
Orleans native Aaron Neville sang “Louisiana 1927” on two live broadcasts.
Assorted versions have been played on the radio, quoted in blogs and used as
a makeshift soundtrack for TV news montages.

Most of the lyrics make 1927 sound like September 2005:

The river rose all day, the river rose all night

Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away all right

The river has busted through clear down to Plaquemine

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.

Louisiana, Louisiana

They’re trying to wash us away

But the odd thing is, if you read all the lyrics of “Louisiana 1927” – which
first appeared on Newman’s 1974 album “Good Old Boys” – the song seems an
unlikely healing anthem. Sung from the point of view of an unnamed, probably
poor, white Southerner, it isn’t just sad, it’s angry. And the anger is
directed toward the federal government.

President Coolidge come down in a railroad train

With a little fat man with a notepad in his hand

President say, “Little fat man, isn’t it a shame

What the river has done to this poor cracker’s land?”

This verse chides politicians who mine disasters for publicity. It also
alludes to a tragic decision now largely forgotten: To save New Orleans,
Army engineers intentionally breached the city’s levees. Well-off whites
survived on the second floors of their homes; the poor had to swim.

The presidential quote – never uttered by Calvin Coolidge, who didn’t
actually visit the flood zone – adds one more layer of irony. Some of the
flood victims were white, but most were black. The black victims aren’t
mentioned because in the eyes of Coolidge (and perhaps the song’s narrator)
they don’t exist.

When Newman performed his song last night, he sang this verse word for word.
But every other time “Louisiana 1927” has been played on TV recently, those
lyrics have been altered or deleted.

Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” which scored a Sept. 2 montage to
Marcia Ball’s 1997 version, omitted the verse. So did a Sept. 4 montage on
“Meet the Press,” scored to one of Neville’s versions.

And in both of Neville’s recent live performances – on the Sept. 2 NBC
telethon and on CNN’s “Larry King Live” – Neville changed “this poor
cracker’s land” to “this poor people’s land.”

It is easy to see why the epithet gets cut. But dropping the entire Coolidge
verse is harder to explain. It’s bound to provoke conspiracy talk among
Newman fans and historians.

Coolidge didn’t push for increased relief funding for fear of unbalancing
the federal budget, and he sent the secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover,
to visit the flood zone in his place. Hoover’s display of empathy helped win
him the presidency in 1928, hastened the passage of flood-relief legislation
and sowed the seeds for a populist revolt that would culminate in the New
Deal. In the line, “They’re trying to wash us away,” “they” refers not to
the elements, but to a privileged class that wouldn’t get too choked up if
the poor disappeared.

Producers for “Meet the Press” and “The O’Reilly Factor” said they cut the
Coolidge verse because of time, not out of fear that it would seem like a
veiled criticism of President Bush.

“Meet the Press” executive producer Betsy Fischer said she chose Neville’s
cover for a montage because of its chorus, not its verses.

“I’m from New Orleans,” she said. “I’ve loved that song forever, and I have
the (Neville) CD, and it was the first thing that popped into my head.”

Amy Sohnen, the “O’Reilly Factor” producer who chose Ball’s cover, said
“there was no politicizing” in the editing room, just concern about time.

“We could only use two minutes and thirty seconds of a five-minute song,”
she said.

In fairness to news producers, it’s not easy for anyone to articulate why
they love a song, or why they believe it might resonate in ways that its
creator never could have foreseen.

This truth was communicated elsewhere in last night’s broadcast, which was
filled with performances of songs that spoke directly to the flood,
sometimes bypassing the original intent of their lyrics.

For instance, the U2 song “One,” performed by U2 and Mary J. Blige, seems to
be about a destructive affair between two people who don’t trust each other
and seem unable to achieve the perfect love described by poets. But after
the flood, it sounded like a plea for America to put aside rancor and start
rebuilding the South.

Well it’s too late tonight

To drag the past out into the light

We’re one but were not the same

We got to carry each other