Vern Partlow

Vern Partlow was born Verneil Hoover Partlow in Bloomington, Illinois, a son of Abner Moses Partlow and Florence Hoover Partlow. His father Abner Moses Partlow (1874-1959) was born in Chester, Meigs County, Ohio, son of Moses Ackley Partlow (1848-1926), a farmer who family tradition states was a local preacher and with his older brother Joseph Partlow was captured briefly by Colonel Morgan's troops as they retreated through the Partlow family farm in 1863. The Partlows first came to Ohio in 1809 (listed in history of Meigs County, Ohio books as the second settler of Pomeroy) when Amos Partlow (1786-1866) and his wife Sarah Bailey Partlow (1788-1862) settled as farmers. These were the great-great-grandparents of Vern Partlow and their eldest son John Partlow (1812-1886) was the great-grandfather of Partlow. After the death of his first wife Abner Moses Partlow settled in Illinois around 1905 and married Florence Alva Hoover and had two sons, Eugene Partlow and Verniel Partlow. Partlow worked in early radio and wire services in Wisconsin and Chicago. He began working for Manchester Boddy's Los Angeles Daily News (which is unrelated to the current newspaper of the same name) in the 1930s. He worked as a crime reporter as well as a writer of feature stories. Partlow was an avid musician. The first of his songs to become widely known was the satirical "Newspapermen Meet Such Interesting People," composed in 1947. :Oh, publishers are such interesting people; :Their policy's an acrobatic thing. :They shout they represent the common people. :It's funny Wall Street never has complained. :But publishers have worries, for publishers must go :To working folks for readers, and big shots for their dough; :Oh, publishers are such interesting people; :It could be press-titution, I don't know. Around the time Partlow composed this song, he became a member of People's Songs. The group had been formed late in the evening on December 31, 1945, after folk singers Pete Seeger and Lee Hays convened a group of more than two dozen musicians in Seeger's Greenwich Village apartment in New York City. The goal of the organization was to create a radical left-wing movement of musicians. For many years thereafter, Partlow remained at the core of left-wing musical culture on the West Coast. He was also active politically. He was a public relations consultant to the California Attorney General races of Edmund G. "Pat" Brown in 1946 and 1950. =="Old Man Atom"==

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, many people feared what might happen if a general nuclear war broke out, and a number of protest songs were written in protest of this new danger. Partlow had interviewed nuclear weapons scientists for the Los Angeles Daily News in the early fall of 1945. They had told him what the effects of a nuclear war might be like, which deeply alarmed Partlow. Before the end of the year, he had written a talking blues song titled "Old Man Atom." The song treats its subject in comic-serious fashion, with a combination of black comedy puns (such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident/All men may be cremated equal" or "I don't mean the Adam that Mother Eve mated/I mean that thing that science liberated") on serious choices to be made in the nuclear age ("The people of the world must pick out a thesis/Peace in the world, or the world in pieces"). The song quickly gained attention among folk musicians. Pete Seeger first heard the song while traveling in California in the late summer or early fall of 1946. The song's music and lyrics were published in ''People's Songs'' (the newsletter for the People's Songs organization) in January 1947 under the title "Atomic Talking Blues." Seeger recorded the song under the title "Talking Atom" in 1948. Sam Hinton made a recording for the small California record label ABC Eagle in early 1950 (which later sold its rights to this recording to Columbia Records), and the Sons of the Pioneers made one for RCA Victor in the spring or summer of 1950. Lyrics referring to the United Nations and non-English-speaking countries building their own nuclear arsenals were changed in the Sons of the Pioneers recording, and replaced with blander lyrics about people coming together to end the threat of nuclear war. Fred Hellerman made a recording for the Jubilee label, Billboard, Variety, and Cash Box all positively reviewed the song. The New York Times editorialized that "A new high in absurdity has been reached by two large record manufacturers who have recently withdrawn from distribution a five-year-old song about the atomic bomb because of some protests that it coincided with current Communist 'peace' agitation. ...this new form of censorship by self-appointed groups is a threat to freedom. ... If the song that caused all the furor, 'Old Man Atom,' is propaganda at all, it is by rights American, not Russian, propaganda." Nonetheless, the song disappeared from both the airwaves and store shelves. But the song's popularity had ended, and sales never recovered. ==Later life and death==

The controversy over "Old Man Atom" eventually led to Partlow's dismissal from his job. The song's notoriety led federal agents to investigate him for his left-wing political views. Partlow was asked by the Los Angeles Daily News to publicly declare that he was not a member of the Communist Party USA, and he refused on the grounds that no one should be required to publicly declare his political affiliation as a requirement to keep his job. "Old Man Atom" made a comeback among folk singers in the 1960s, and Tom Glazer made a very popular recording which he released as part of his Songs of Peace, Freedom, and Protest set in 1970. Vern Partlow died of cancer in a hospital in Los Angeles, California, on March 1, 1987. He was survived by three sons. The first two stanzas of "Newspapermen Meet Such Interesting People" are played at the start and finish of The Media Project, a weekly radio program on National Public Radio. ==Partial list of Partlow songs==

A partial listing of Partlow's more popular folk and protest songs includes: :*"I'm a Native American Nazi" :*"My Name is Cannery Bill" :*"Newspapermen Meet Such Interesting People" :*"Old Man Atom" (also known as "Talking Atom" and "Atomic Talking Blues") :*"Susan's in the Union" :*"The U.A.W. Train" ==Footnotes==