This week, another protest song with a long ass title. It began life as a poem. I’ll let the good people at Secondhandsongs.com fill you in:

“Guthrie wrote this as a poem in response to the January, 1948 plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon, California. Mexican migrant workers on this flight were being sent home and their deaths were referenced not by names but rather the generic “Deportees.” Guthrie was moved by this lack of respect to pen a memorial. Pete Seeger performed it in concert as a chant prior to it becoming a full-fledged musical composition. In 1958, California high school teacher Martin Hoffman composed a melody, resulting in a venerable “folk” song.”

The quotes around folk are theirs, not mine.

Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) is such a long title that many artists have shortened it to Deportee. I’m doing likewise.

This post is dedicated to everyone being harassed, arrested, and deported by ICE.

We begin with the first known recorded version of Deportee. Cisco wasn’t kidding around:

Look at that album cover, no wonder Steve Stills called her Judy Blue Eyes:

Let’s hop on a Harley and ride off to The Byrds. I’ll watch: I get the appeal of motorcycles but I’m a klutz.

Joan Baez is 84 years old and still the queen of protest music.

Arlo Guthrie: Son of Woody.

Nancy Griffith died last summer at the age of 68. She was a fine songwriter and outstanding interpretive singer.

Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Say no more.

That’s it for this week. Let’s drink to restoring sanity to the White House after the lunatic is off the grass. It’s what the first residents of the White House, John and Abigail Adams, would want. Never argue with them.