Paul Robeson: Young Man / Ol’ Man

Further Info

This story was made as part of the “Recalling Robeson” project, celebrating the life and work of black actor, singer and campaigner, Paul Robeson. Led by Anna Farthing of Harvest Heritage Arts and Media, supported by Bristol Old Vic, Colston Hall, Watershed, Pervasive Media Studio, ABLAZE, Aim Higher, Festival of Idea, The Paul Robeson Wales Trust, The South Wales
Miners Library,  and numerous volunteers.

Transcript

My name’s Kevin Burn and I’m a guitarist and when I was a young teenager Paul Robeson started to mean a lot to me.

I think my parents had a record of Paul Robeson’s singing various of his most famous songs and I got very taken with him singing, especially Ol’ Man River. It was something about the, sort of fatalism and gloom of it that appealed to my teenage self. And then hearing how he changed the lyrics of Ol’ Man River so that it was more in keeping with how he felt you should live your life so the Ol’ Man River originally the old man that he wants to be because “what does he care if the world’s got troubles, what does he care if the land ain’t free”. Paul Robeson changed it to “that’s the old man I don’t like to be” for the same reasons.

And then later on “tired of living and scared of dying” becomes “we must keep fighting until we die” and that song used to get me so kind of excited and often when I was young and if I’d been out for the night in Penzance I’d got come back to Marazion and I’d walk out at the end of the harbor and sing that song at the top of my voice and it was like a promise that I was going to live a good life somehow. A promise to my older self that I would live as well as I could

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