Now Playing: Double Feature – Joan Baez – The Boxer and Deportees

Now Playing – Joan Baez – The Boxer and Deportees

No, it’s not “The Boxer and Deportees”, but “The Boxer” and “Deportees”. You see the difference.

I chose Joan’s version of “The Boxer” this week for two reasons. First, I really enjoy this version and she performs it well. Not many singers could pull this off … she makes it her own, but she also performs it true to the S & G quality. Great job, great voice, great guitar.

Second, I recently had a birthday, and these lines remind me of what my birthdays are (increasingly) about:

Now the years are rolling by me, they are rockin’ even me
I am older than I once was, and younger than I’ll be, thats not unusual
No it isn’t strange, after changes upon changes, we are more or less the same
After changes we are more or less the same

I can’t embed the video, so you have to follow this link in order to watch.

INTERMISSION

The second feature is Joan Baez, “Deportees”, which is a poem by Woody Guthrie, later set to music by Marty Hoffman. Seems kinda timeless.

Lyrics:

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They’re flying ‘em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

CHORUS:
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees”

My father’s own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contracts out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees”

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except “deportees”?