Tell Me Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?-In Honor Of The Late Rosalie Sorrels  

By Fritz Taylor

[This piece was written and in the pipeline before the recent (2016) internal wrangle at this site about who would write what and what kind of material would survive the posting wars so I asked new site manager not to put the now familiar notice about job titles and specialties beneath my by-line as he has done on most pieces submitted of late. He has honored my request and this may yet lead to a cessation of the practice since unless the reader has been privy to the vast inside information about the replacement of old-time manager Allan Jackson (and in the interest of transparency my old friend going back to Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) by former American Film Gazette editor Greg Green it poses more questions than it answers. In any case I will keep my opinions to myself for now about whether we have just gone through a purge and attempt to write Allan out of blogosphere history somewhat reminiscent of the old Stalinist tricks trying to write (and airbrush) Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky out of history or a simple retirement of an eligible candidate. Fritz Taylor           

Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are social distinctions between each cohort recognized among themselves if not quite so definitely by rump sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day has seen starlight on the rails. Has found him or herself (mainly hims though out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Has seen the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed dreams of shelter against life’s storms.

But not everybody has the ability to sing to those heavens (or void) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.         

Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent. Worked her way to a big night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago. So listen up, okay.