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Vern Partlow (May 25, 1910 – March 1, 1987) was an American newspaper reporter and folk singer who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He composed the popular satirical song "Old Man Atom," which was famously banned during the period. It is considered one of the first anti-nuclear songs of the post-war era.〔Hillinger, "Modern Songwriters Tune In to Atomic Bomb," ''Los Angeles Times,'' February 11, 1992.〕 ==Early life== Vern Partlow was born Verneil Hoover Partlow in Bloomington, Illinois, a son of Abner Moses Partlow and Florence Hoover Partlow. His father Abner Moses Partlow (1874-1959) was born in Chester, Meigs County, Ohio, son of Moses Ackley Partlow (1848-1926), a farmer who family tradition states was a local preacher and with his older brother Joseph Partlow was captured briefly by Colonel Morgan's troops as they retreated through the Partlow family farm in 1863. The Partlows first came to Ohio in 1809 (listed in history of Meigs County, Ohio books as the second settler of Pomeroy) when Amos Partlow (1786-1866) and his wife Sarah Bailey Partlow (1788-1862) settled as farmers. These were the great-great-grandparents of Vern Partlow and their eldest son John Partlow (1812-1886) was the great-grandfather of Partlow. After the death of his first wife Abner Moses Partlow settled in Illinois around 1905 and married Florence Alva Hoover and had two sons, Eugene Partlow and Verniel Partlow. Partlow worked in early radio and wire services in Wisconsin and Chicago. He began working for Manchester Boddy's ''Los Angeles Daily News'' (which is unrelated to the current newspaper of the same name) in the 1930s.〔Burton, "Newspapers at Risk of Becoming Shopping Specials," ''Ventura County Star,'' March 23, 1998.〕 He worked as a crime reporter as well as a writer of feature stories.〔 Partlow was also active in the trade union movement early in his life, even though he was also actively working as a newspaper journalist. In the mid-1940s, Partlow was host of a Los Angeles-based radio program about union issues which aired on a Congress of Industrial Organizations-owned radio station.〔Escobar, ''Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900-1945,'' 1999, p. 283.〕 Partlow was an avid musician. The first of his songs to become widely known was the satirical "Newspapermen Meet Such Interesting People," composed in 1947.〔 The song describes some of the murderers, thieves, and other disreputable people which a newspaper reporter meets, and lumps newspaper publishers in with them. The song, which includes a plea for reporters to join The Newspaper Guild (a labor union which represents reporters, among others), includes the stanza:〔Blackburn, "A Cause to Sing," ''The Times Union,'' August 25, 2002.〕 :Oh, publishers are such interesting people; :Their policy's an acrobatic thing. :They shout they represent the common people. :It's funny Wall Street never has complained. :But publishers have worries, for publishers must go :To working folks for readers, and big shots for their dough; :Oh, publishers are such interesting people; :It could be press-titution, I don't know. Around the time Partlow composed this song, he became a member of People's Songs. The group had been formed late in the evening on December 31, 1945, after folk singers Pete Seeger and Lee Hays convened a group of more than two dozen musicians in Seeger's Greenwich Village apartment in New York City.〔Cohen, ''Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970,'' 2002, p. 42.〕 The goal of the organization was to create a radical left-wing movement of musicians.〔 Partlow became part of People's Songs in late 1945, after several branches of the group were formed in California.〔Cohen, ''Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970,'' 2002, p. 47.〕 For many years thereafter, Partlow remained at the core of left-wing musical culture on the West Coast.〔Cohen, ''Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970,'' 2002, p. 75.〕〔Lotchin, ''The Way We Really Were: The Golden State in the Second Great War,'' 2000, p. 61.〕 He was also active politically. He was a public relations consultant to the California Attorney General races of Edmund G. "Pat" Brown in 1946 and 1950.〔"Vern Partlow: His Peace Song Stirred Ruckus," ''Los Angeles Times,'' March 4, 1987.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vern Partlow」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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