Feb 24 2008
Malvina Reynolds: No Hole In My Head
Born in 1900, the daughter of Jewish, socialist immigrants, who ran a tailor shop patronizes by US Navy personnel in Long Beach, CA. Malvina Milder, by this time married to Communist organizer, union carpenter,William Reynolds, earned her PHD in English at UC Berkeley in 1939. she couldn’t get a teaching position at the college level, being a Jewish female socialist so she went to work as a social worker, wrote a column for the People’s World and worked in a bomb factory assembly line during WWII. In the late 1940s Reynolds met Pete Seeger at a political event and became interested in songwriting. She returned to Berkely to study music theory and began writing songs. “Little Boxes,” “What Have They Done To The Rain” and “Turn Around” were all her songs.
Most of Malvina Reynolds’ songs had a social or political message. In this video she is on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest television show, on a local TV station in New York. With her are Pete, in full bad sweater mode, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
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