The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 61: When the World's on Fire

Episode Date: June 20, 2017

The melody was sweet, but the lyrics were too painful to sing.

This is the way I heard it. Once upon a time when America's soundtrack was flooded with folk songs and the music of the day featured something called a melody, our country was united by a cheerful and unforgettable refrain, a joyful tune that inspired regular folks from sea to shining sea like no other melody before or since. The song was called When the World's on Fire. And I'm pretty sure you know the melody by heart.

But what about the words? Oh, my love and mother, when the world's on fire, don't you want God's bosom to be your pillow? Dark lyrics for such a happy tune. So one day a good-natured man with a guitar and a smile in his eyes wrote some new words to accompany that melody. And now that man was engulfed in flames. This time the fault was his. He had set the gas can too near to the campfire and when it exploded with a gentle, woof, the flame. The flames had leapt up like a living thing and covered his right sleeve.

Seconds later, he was on the ground trying to smother the flames. He finally succeeded, but his ruined arm now hung limply at his side, blistered and useless. He would never pick up a guitar again. If you're inclined to believe in curses, the ultimate fate of this legendary musician will confirm your inclination. When he was just a boy, he watched his feet. family's home burned to the ground. A few years later, his little sister Clara got too close to

an open flame. Her clothes caught fire, killing her. Twelve years later, his mother, a loving woman who named him after an American president, descended into madness and hurled a kerosene lamp at his brother. Charlie survived, but he was burned horribly from his chin to his navel, and almost exactly 20 years after that tragedy came the worst fire of all. A short circuit in an AM radio caused a spark. The spark ignited his daughter's bedsheets while she lay sleeping. And poor little Kathy, the sweet dancing child he called stack of bones died in flames. No one can say if his dementia was preceded by that final conflagration or triggered

buy it, but either way, the man, plagued by fire, was doomed to follow his mother into the abyss of madness. When the cops found him shuffling down the highway, they didn't see the legendary musician whose songs had given hope to so many. They didn't hear the legendary voice forever linked to the common man. They just saw a 43-year-old hobo, lost and dazed and muttering the very word. He had changed all those years ago. Oh, my love and mother, when the world's on fire, don't you want God's bosom to be your pillow? In many ways, flame and fame are not so different.

Both can arrive in a flash, both can consume you, and both can vanish in a blink. By the time he wrote, when the world's on fire, A.P. Carter was already famous, Thanks to country classics like, Will the Circle be Unbroken and Keep on the Sunny Side. Carter was a household name, and his songs were known to millions. But his most famous melody endures today because a man plagued by fire changed the words he couldn't bear to sing. Oh, my love and mother, when the world's on fire, don't you want God's bosom to be your

pillow. With new lyrics, AP Carter's original melody would catch fire like no other folk song in the history of American music. From California to the New York Island, the crowds couldn't get enough, and overnight the entire country was singing along and falling in love with the idea that this land was made for you and me. In life, there was nothing he could do to quench the flames, but with one song he finally put the fire out. That's the legacy of the man plagued by fire. A regular guy named in honor of our 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, a guy you might remember as Woody.

Woody Wilson Guthrie. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.