Charlie's Trip

Most people in the Boston area have at least passsing familiarity with the old folk song "Charile on the M.T.A.," but did you ever wonder how the song came to be?

On Monday the New York Times published the obituary of Bess Lomax Hawes, of the eminent Lomax family of folk-music scholars, who passed away last week. In the 1940s she performed in a folk group with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and later co-wrote the song (its official title is "M.T.A.") that became a hit for The Kingston Trio in 1959. But the song's origins are somewhat surprising, and if you hit that link above you can find out more.

(Related trivia: the head of our department took banjo lessons from Ms. Hawes as a boy in Los Angeles in the 1950s.)