Bess Lomax Hawes, RIP...and who knew?!

I'm sad to hear Bess Lomax Hawes died last week (I've been sick and also busy with other things, and hadn't kept up with the news), though I have to confess I'm a bit surprised she was still alive. Now, I know who she was, since her family is just as important to folk music as the Kennedys are to politics and because she was a member of The Almanac Singers. (That picture on the obituary, incidentally, is the only picture of them I have ever seen. It pops up every time they are mentioned. You'd think there must be at least one other one out there somewhere.) But somehow, I had no idea she wrote "Charlie on the MTA".

Actually, I had no idea anybody wrote it, if you will. I thought I read somewhere that the original version was a wire recording by an unknown male singer sometime in the 1940s. I suppose that could be true, actually, and the account I read simply didn't bother to mention that not only was the song's authorship known even if the singer of the earliest known recording wasn't, but that said author was a member of one of the most important families in American music. Strange omission, though.

I did know that she lived in Topanga Canyon back before it was taken over by rock stars (or even before there was such a thing as a rock star), because I've read about Woody Guthrie staying at her house on his last trip across the country, after he'd already been committed once. She apparently cut his visit short because of his habit of lounging around the backyard naked when she had little kids. How much more hip could a person be in the early fifties, huh?

Anyhow. There are a number of people I really admire for living a truly full life even if they never become household names, and she was one already. How strange that I didn't know that key part of her life story, though!