Division Street

Delmont and Rafael had the most fun with this set. It's some of their favorite material, so, inevitably, according to Del, "The Early Times came out a little too early at times." Microphones were abused, and a certain amount of stumbling about and other forms of carelessness also ensued.

Del was no crooner, anyway, preferring to hide behind his guitar and let it do the singing for him. These selections demonstrate uncle Leon's contention that no matter how bad it is today, it can always get worse tomorrow.

Here it is, anyway, rough edges and all: what Dave Eggers, who interviewed Fullerton for Might magazine in the nineties, might term a work of several staggering geniuses.

Just Like Tom Joad's Blues

copyright Leon Fullerton

Just Like Tom Joad's Blues - Leon Fullerton

The only home you’ve known is gone,

vanished in the dust.

You thought the Oklahoma dirt

was one thing you could trust.

The highway teems with pilgrims

once your neighbors and your friends.

Another chapter closes,

but the story never ends.

You’re gonna roll, roll, roll to the promised land.

You’re gonna roll, roll, roll to the promised land.

You’re gonna roll, roll, roll to the promised land.

You’re gonna roll, roll, roll to the promised land.

You’ve got enough provisions

to get you ‘cross the plain,

to keep this old truck running

just takes two hands and a brain.

You can keep your family by you

Lord only knows how long.

You never were too lucky,

but you were always plenty strong.

You’re gonna....

The few, they live like pharaohs,

the many build their tombs,

monuments to hungry pride,

heirless, empty rooms.

You wander in the desert now,

but you shall build again,

the power in you vested

by decree of mice and men.

You’re gonna....

In 1940, in the company of Pete Seger, Woody Guthrie saw the movie made from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and rushed out of the theater to find a typewriter (a twentieth century apparatus combining the functions of a keyboard and printer while circumventing the added expenses and complications of computer literacy and electricity).

Guthrie stayed up all night typing, singing, and strumming, aided and abetted by half a gallon of cheap, non-union California wine. The first time he heard the song, a young and unforgivably cocky Fullerton said to friends that that’s just how it sounded — “Like it was written by a boozed-up sleep-walker.”

Fullerton wrote a letter to Guthrie upon hearing the song. “Sleep-writing and you are a match made elsewhere than in heaven, Woodrow. I’ve enclosed what I humbly consider to be a tune that hits the nail a little squarer on the head.”

He included the lyrics and accompanying guitar chords in the body of the letter. But he never recorded or named the song. The Fullertons, who frequently use it as a set-closer or encore, gave it the title by which it appears here - a nod both Tom Joad and Tom Thumb, Steinbeck and Dylan characters, a Fullerton double hat-tip to Guthrie and his best-known disciple.

Not surprisingly, music critics disagree with Fullerton’s estimation of the Guthrie song. “The Ballad of Tom Joad,” which appears on Dust Bowl Ballads (Vanguard) is universally considered a masterwork by American music folklorists. Guthrie, however, was not offended by the young upstart’s dismissal. He promptly wrote back to Fullerton: “Keep kickin’ up the dust, kid. That’s how they make mountains.”

Under Guthrie’s signature is a drawing of a little boy in oversized coveralls and twenty-gallon hat kicking dust onto a dust pile three times his height. A slingshot sticks out of his back pocket. An older, wiser Leon Fullerton later conceded to biographer Rex Geronimo that a dustbowl refugee like Guthrie was undoubtedly an expert on the subject of dust.