Peter La Farge
Encyclopedia
Peter La Farge was a New York
-based folksinger
and songwriter
of the 1950s and 1960s. He is known best for his affiliations with Bob Dylan
and Johnny Cash
.
and was raised on a ranch in Fountain, CO by his mother Wanden LaFarge Kane. He was the biological son of the Pulitzer Prize
winning novelist Oliver La Farge
. Oliver and Peter shared a love and respect for the traditions and history of Native Americans. As a teenager he competed as a rodeo
rider and worked as a singer. As a young musician he worked with Big Bill Broonzy
, Josh White
, and Cisco Houston
; Houston became La Farge's mentor, in songwriting and in life. La Farge served in the United States Navy
during the Korean War
. After the war, he worked again as a rodeo
cowboy, where an accident nearly cost him a leg.
Following his recuperation, he studied acting at the Goodman Theater School of Drama in Chicago
. He then relocated to New York City
, where he became increasingly interested in music. As a singer-songwriter
, he became well-known as a folk music
singer in Greenwich Village
, along with Bob Dylan
, Ramblin' Jack Elliott
, Dave Van Ronk
, and veteran Pete Seeger
. He was contracted briefly with Columbia Records
.
At a September, 1962, Carnegie Hall "hootenanny" hosted by Seeger as a means of introducing new talent, Dylan performed a song—which he never recorded -- "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow", with lyrics written by LaFarge and music by Dylan. Its subject was the flooding of the Allegheny Reservoir
in upstate New York against the wishes of the Seneca Nation of New York
, who insisted it violated the Treaty of Canandaigua
signed on behalf of the United States by its then president George Washington. The song which immediately followed it was Dylan's epic work "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", in Dylan's first public performance of that song. LaFarge later wrote, and recorded, his own version of "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow", which was covered by Johnny Cash and others.
His performances in Greenwich Village convinced Folkways Records
' initiator Moses Asch
to contract La Farge to his music company.
La Farge's five Folkways albums (1962–1965) were dedicated to Native American themes as well as blues, cowboy and love songs. His most famous song, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes
," is the story of a Pima
Indian who became a hero as one of five United States Marines who raised the U.S. flag
on Iwo Jima
, but who then experienced prejudice and became an alcoholic after his return to civilian life. This song was covered successfully by Johnny Cash
in his 1964
album Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian
, and reached number 3 on the Billboard country music
chart.
During 1965, La Farge was becoming known as an artist and painter. He lived with the Danish
singer Inger Nielsen, and the pair had a daughter. Largely as a result of Johnny Cash's success, he was signed to MGM Records
and was in the planning stages for a new album. However, he also had serious (and largely undisclosed) medical problems. On October 27, 1965, Peter La Farge was found dead in his New York City apartment. He died from a probable overdose of Thorazine a sleeper Johnny Cash introduced to him at The Bitter End, a club they visited with Ed McCurdy, after meeting in May 1962 at the Carnegie Hall. However, Howard Sounes
revealed during 2001 that Liam Clancy
had informed him that La Farge had committed suicide
by slitting his wrists in the shower stall of his apartment, which was next door to where Clancy was living. Clancy's account conflicts with the police report and the reports in the New York City newspapers, which note that Inger Nielsen found La Farge in their apartment dead from a stroke or overdose. He is buried in Fountain, Colorado and survived by his sister, half brother, daughter and a granddaughter.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based folksinger
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
of the 1950s and 1960s. He is known best for his affiliations with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
and Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
.
Biography
According to anecdotal sources, he claimed he was distantly descended from the Narragansett Indian tribeNarragansett (tribe)
The Narragansett tribe are an Algonquian Native American tribe from Rhode Island. In 1983 they regained federal recognition as the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island. In 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled against their request that the Department of Interior take land into trust...
and was raised on a ranch in Fountain, CO by his mother Wanden LaFarge Kane. He was the biological son of the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning novelist Oliver La Farge
Oliver La Farge
Oliver Hazard Perry La Farge was an American writer and anthropologist, best known for his 1930 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Laughing Boy....
. Oliver and Peter shared a love and respect for the traditions and history of Native Americans. As a teenager he competed as a rodeo
Rodeo
Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
rider and worked as a singer. As a young musician he worked with Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...
, Josh White
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White , better known as Josh White, was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s....
, and Cisco Houston
Cisco Houston
Gilbert Vandine 'Cisco' Houston was an American folk singer and songwriter who is closely associated with Woody Guthrie due to their extensive history of recording together....
; Houston became La Farge's mentor, in songwriting and in life. La Farge served in the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. After the war, he worked again as a rodeo
Rodeo
Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
cowboy, where an accident nearly cost him a leg.
Following his recuperation, he studied acting at the Goodman Theater School of Drama in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. He then relocated to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he became increasingly interested in music. As a singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
, he became well-known as a folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
singer in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, along with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Ramblin' Jack Elliott is an American folk singer and performer.-Life and career:Elliot Charles Adnopoz was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents in 1931. Elliott grew up inspired by the rodeos at Madison Square Garden, and wanted to be a cowboy...
, Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
, and veteran Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
. He was contracted briefly with Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
.
At a September, 1962, Carnegie Hall "hootenanny" hosted by Seeger as a means of introducing new talent, Dylan performed a song—which he never recorded -- "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow", with lyrics written by LaFarge and music by Dylan. Its subject was the flooding of the Allegheny Reservoir
Allegheny Reservoir
The Allegheny Reservoir is a reservoir along the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania and New York, USA. It was created in 1965 by the construction of the Kinzua Dam along the river.-History:...
in upstate New York against the wishes of the Seneca Nation of New York
Seneca Nation of New York
The Seneca Nation of New York, also known as the Seneca Nation of Indians is a federally recognized tribe of Seneca people in New York...
, who insisted it violated the Treaty of Canandaigua
Treaty of Canandaigua
The Treaty of Canandaigua is a treaty signed after the American Revolutionary War between the Grand Council of the Six Nations and President George Washington representing the United States of America....
signed on behalf of the United States by its then president George Washington. The song which immediately followed it was Dylan's epic work "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", in Dylan's first public performance of that song. LaFarge later wrote, and recorded, his own version of "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow", which was covered by Johnny Cash and others.
His performances in Greenwich Village convinced Folkways Records
Folkways Records
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
' initiator Moses Asch
Moses Asch
Moses Asch was the founder of Folkways Records. Asch ran the label from 1948 until his death...
to contract La Farge to his music company.
La Farge's five Folkways albums (1962–1965) were dedicated to Native American themes as well as blues, cowboy and love songs. His most famous song, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes
The Ballad of Ira Hayes
"The Ballad of Ira Hayes" was written by folk singer Peter La Farge. It tells the story of Ira Hayes, one of the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who became famous for having raised the flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima of World War II....
," is the story of a Pima
Pima
The Pima are a group of American Indians living in an area consisting of what is now central and southern Arizona. The long name, "Akimel O'odham", means "river people". They are closely related to the Tohono O'odham and the Hia C-ed O'odham...
Indian who became a hero as one of five United States Marines who raised the U.S. flag
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag of the United States atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.The photograph was extremely...
on Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima, officially , is an island of the Japanese Volcano Islands chain, which lie south of the Ogasawara Islands and together with them form the Ogasawara Archipelago. The island is located south of mainland Tokyo and administered as part of Ogasawara, one of eight villages of Tokyo...
, but who then experienced prejudice and became an alcoholic after his return to civilian life. This song was covered successfully by Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
in his 1964
1964 in music
-Events:*January 1 – Top of the Pops is broadcast for the first time, on BBC television.*January 3 – Footage of the Beatles performing a concert in Bournemouth, England is shown on The Jack Paar Show....
album Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian
Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian
Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian is a concept album and nineteenth album released by country singer Johnny Cash in 1964 on Columbia Records. It is one of several Americana records by Cash; as its title implies, the tracks on the album focus exclusively on the history of and problems...
, and reached number 3 on the Billboard country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
chart.
During 1965, La Farge was becoming known as an artist and painter. He lived with the Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
singer Inger Nielsen, and the pair had a daughter. Largely as a result of Johnny Cash's success, he was signed to MGM Records
MGM Records
MGM Records was a record label started by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946, for the purpose of releasing soundtrack albums of their musical films. Later it became a pop label, lasting into the 1970s...
and was in the planning stages for a new album. However, he also had serious (and largely undisclosed) medical problems. On October 27, 1965, Peter La Farge was found dead in his New York City apartment. He died from a probable overdose of Thorazine a sleeper Johnny Cash introduced to him at The Bitter End, a club they visited with Ed McCurdy, after meeting in May 1962 at the Carnegie Hall. However, Howard Sounes
Howard Sounes
Howard Sounes is a British author, journalist and biographer.Howard Sounes began his career as a newspaper journalist as a staff reporter for the Sunday Mirror. He broke major stories concerning one of the most notorious murder cases in British criminal history, that of Fred West and Rosemary West...
revealed during 2001 that Liam Clancy
Liam Clancy
William "Liam" Clancy was an Irish folk singer and actor from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. He was the youngest and last surviving member of performing group The Clancy Brothers. The group were regarded as Ireland's first pop stars...
had informed him that La Farge had committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by slitting his wrists in the shower stall of his apartment, which was next door to where Clancy was living. Clancy's account conflicts with the police report and the reports in the New York City newspapers, which note that Inger Nielsen found La Farge in their apartment dead from a stroke or overdose. He is buried in Fountain, Colorado and survived by his sister, half brother, daughter and a granddaughter.
Selected discography
- 1962: Iron Mountain and Other Songs
- 1963: As Long as the Grass Shall Grow: Peter La Farge Sings of the Indians
- 1963: Peter La Farge Sings of the Cowboys: Cowboy, Ranch and Rodeo Songs, and Cattle Calls
- 1964: Peter La Farge Sings Women Blues: Peter La Farge Sings Love Songs
- 1965: Peter LaFarge on the Warpath
- 2010: "Rare Breed: The Songs of Peter La Farge"
External links
- Peter La Farge biography
- Illustrated Peter La Farge discography
- La Farge Discography at Smithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...