Mickey Newbury improvised this medley of American songs one night in 1970 at a high profile show at the Bitter End in West Hollywood. Disenchanted with American discourse, he decided to sing Dixie that night as a protest against division and censorship. The hip Hollywood audience were noticeably uncomfortable as he began. He sang it slow and mournful, honest. Nearing the end, seeing they were under a spell, he instinctively segued into Battle Hymn of the Republic, then All My Trials.
Newbury knew a northerner from Ohio wrote Dixie before the Civil War; that Battle Hymn of the Republic begins with a southerner, William Steffe; and that All My Trials, an American slave song, had ephemeral origins in other lands. In this moment, he distilled the multitudes of America - contradictory and large - into a single statement.
Civil Rights activist Dorothy Hamm noted, “He changed a song that some consider divisive into a song of unification.”
As he finished, Newbury gazed unsurely from the stage. The star-studded audience sat in stunned silence, then thunderously leapt to their feet. Odetta wept.
So hush little children, don’t you cry-
“With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic. Now I will do nothing but listen, to accrue what I hear into this song” -Walt Whitman