DESCRIPTION:
Barstow (from "The Wayward"), for two voices, surrogate kithara, chromelodeon, diamond marimba & boo (1941-1955)

Dean Drummond
Emil Richards
Frank Berberich
Gary Coleman
John McAllister
Linda Schell
Michael Ranta
Richard Lapore
Robert McCormick
Todd Miller
Harry Partch

1. Today I am a Man
2. Gentlemen
3. Considered Pretty
4. A Very Good Idea
5. Possible Rides
6. Jesus was God in the Flesh
7. You Lucky Women
8. Why in Hell did you Come?

Barstow is one of Harry Partch's earliest extant compositions and one of the most accessible and often performed. It originates from the years when he was, often as a hobo, riding the rails from one casual employment or temporary home to another. In late 1939, he went on a hitchhiking trip to take photos in the Southwestern deserts of California and Arizona. In the tough little Mojave Desert junction town of Barstow, California, in February 1941 while waiting for a lift, he noticed the following inscription on a highway railing:

It's January 26. I'm freezing.

Ed Fitzgerald. Age 19. Five feet, ten inches.

Black hair, brown eyes.

Going home to Boston, Massachusetts.

It's 4:00, and I'm hungry and broke.

I wish I was dead.

But today I am a man.

He was struck by this "unedited human expression" and jotted it down along with seven more that were legible.

By autumn Harry settled at an abandoned convict camp at Anderson Creek on the Big Sur coast, living in the old superintendent's office. While there, he built his first large string instrument, the kithara, from gigantic redwood railroad bridge supports. Early in 1941, he set the eight hitchhiker inscriptions, scarcely edited, for solo voice and adapted guitar, with the idea that he could perform them as a solo work. Barstow lasts about ten minutes, and in spare, natural language paints deft and telling portraits of the unknowns who left little fragments of their stories on that highway railing. There's Ed, quoted above. Then there's brown-eyed, brown-haired Marie from Las Vegas who leaves her address so she can be found. "Object: Matrimony," she says. "Dear Marie," answers a later hitchhiker, "a very good idea you have there. I too am on the lookout for a suitable mate. My description -- ." But "[n]o description follows, so he evidently got his ride." Each inscription is introduced by a little ritornello, then is quoted in a more or less spoken passage, then extended in more fanciful sung passages, more in the style of American folk music than classical vocalism.

In the end, Barstow is a touching and even inspiring portrait of Americans at the bottom of their luck, grittily carrying on and somehow sure of better days. Or at least that was the mood after revisions in 1943, 1954 (when he grouped Barstow with other hobo-era pieces collectively called The Wayward), and 1968. In each case, Partch added more of his growing number of hand-made instruments and more singers. The instrumentalists now sometimes make comments on the original inscriptions, and Barstow has become an illustration of how better times can take the painful edges away from old memories. The adapted guitar original version, however, is a tough, serious piece with a less optimistic tone. In 1941, Partch's hitchhiking days were just yesterday, and his "personal Great Depression" was to continue for a few more years of wandering. [allmusic.com]

Art by John Walker