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I came late to a knowledge of the work of Utah Phillips, and then only through Ani Difranco's CD backing tapes of the man. Since then, I've listened more closely.
I got to interview him once, by phone, for an ultimately stillborn article I was writing on labor music. Got him out of his bath, as I recall. I still remember his humor.
I've always teared up at the story of Eddie Belchowski - apologies for the misspellings in the transcription below, but I'm not going to try to research and correct through the tears. Be at peace, Bruce.
I was in Chicago, several years ago. I was invited to play at a nightclub. At
a nightclub? Can you imagine that? Can you see me in a nightclub? It was the
old Quiet Knight upon Belmont Street, across from Cliff Raven's Tattoo Parlor.
Well, I went up there at three o'clock in the afternoon to The Quiet Knight
cause I was scared. Fought my way past the guard dogs, got up there.
The janitor had taken the garbage out - he was in the big hall by himself, just
sitting in the, just under the, just a nightlight up on the stage, an older man
- he was sitting there playing The Moonlight Sonata, beautifully, quietly. I
stood in the shadows; he didn't know I was there. Great shock of white hair
standing back on his head, deeply incised lines on his face. Looked closely
and saw he was just playing with the one hand - the other was a stump off to
about here.
Well he began to pound the piano with the one good hand and in a rumbling
baritone voice, started to sing "Fryheight." "Freedom." The song of the
Tioman Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The war that if we'd gotten
involved in it there might not have been a second World War. He sang "Los
Quatros Generales," "The Horama Valley," "White Cliffs of Gandeza." Powerful
music of the Spanish Civil War.
Well that was Eddie Belchowski. Eddie Belchowski had been a concert pianist,
brilliant pianist, as a young man, but he went, joined the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade, and went to Spain to fight against Franco of the fascists. Crossing
the Ebro he got his arm blown off. Well they put him in the field hospital on
morphine, which turned him into a junkie for the next thirty years of his life.
He haunted the alleys of Chicago a mad poet, derelict, drug addict, alcoholic.
He began to put himself back together. Got the job at the Quiet Knight so he
could practice the piano; Richard Harding was good about that. And not just to
learn songs of the Civil War, but he learned Haydn's and Lizst's left-hand
variations, he could play the Bach Shacon with one hand, and beautifully.
His daughter Reina just sent me recordings, tapes that he made for her I'd
never heard; he could play, oh, a whole classical repertoire on the piano, with
one hand. Chopin, that was his favorite. Well, he taught me powerful things
about endurance, about holding on.
I left Chicago; week later I got a call - said Eddie Belchowski had died. So I
sat down and made him up a death song.
Week later I got a call from Eddie.
First thing I asked him was, "Hey Ed, where're you callin' from?"
Well, he said he was calling from Chicago! I said, "Hell, dead, or in Chicago,
it's all the same to me, fella." And a week after that I was at the Quiet
Knight sitting on a barstool with Eddie Belchowski himself sitting across from
me: had us a chance to sing him his death song. He was amused.
Well it was just a while ago that Ed Belchowski at the age of seventy-four was
found on the subway tracks in Chicago. They just had a museum show of his art
and poetry and music, and recollections from old comrades all over the country,
and there I sang his death song.
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