Memoriam: Barbara Dane

We're remembering American musician and activist Barbara Dane, who died Sunday, Oct. 20. She was 97.

In the 1950s, she became a popular blues singer and performed with many leading musicians of the time, including Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, and several others. She eventually turned her attention to activism, becoming involved in the civil rights movement and other campaigns.

Bellairs was an early fan, as related to us by his friend, the late Alfred Myers, who told us Bellairs heard one of her songs on Chicago's great cultural station, WFMT. Thus Myers:

The song, a mock-prohibition ballad called It's Rum, By Gum! was sung by a deep-voiced contralto named Barbara Dane, and John scoured the record stores of Chicago until he finally obtained a copy.

Here's a sample of the lyrics to the song known variously as "The Song of the Salvation Army", "The Song of the Temperance Union", "Away With Rum", or "Rum by Gum".

We never eat fruitcake because it has rum

And one little bite turns a man to a bum,

We never eat cookies, because they have yeast,

And one little bite turns a man to a beast.

Away, away with rum by gum,

With rum by gum, with rum by gum!

Away, away with rum by gum!

The song of the Temperance Union!

We tried to run down a copy, too, but no such luck. Here's Dane with her version of "Nine Hundred Miles":