Musician strikes historical chord, kicks off annual Sampler Series

Striking a historical chord, musician to kick off annual Sampler Series at the McHentry County Historical Society Museum. Bucky Halker has traveled across the country and around the world but he remains rooted in the Midwest, grounded in history. It is an approach he wishes his fellow Americans would embrace.

"America may be the one country in the world that has an interesting case of historical amnesia," said Halker, 62, of Chicago. "We tend to view ourselves as the city the hill, above it all. But knowing something about the past makes people think a little differently about the present."

A native of Ashland, Wis., Halker began playing guitar as a teenager. By16 he had discovered blues piano, songwriting and the music of Woody Gutherie. Halker's website notes that he "skipped town for college in cowtown Idaho, the liberal arts College of Idaho in Caldwell, learned how to read, and got hooked on caffeine, cigarettes and history books.

"Dividing time between gigs and footnotes, Bucky came back to the Midwest in 1976 (and) continued to perform and earned a Ph.D. in U.S. labor history at the University of Minnesota."

Halker said he became interested in history as a boy, listening to stories from his grandfather about working in the Chicago stockyards and from his parents, both of whom were from Chicago.

"Folk songs tie in nice with history and that resulted in a merging of my two passions: Music and history. Fortunately I had a college adviser that was open-minded to my idea of a dissertation on forms of protest music in the 19th century," Halker said. "That kind of set the course."

Join musician, author, and cultural historian Bucky Halker at 3 p.m. Monday, March 6, for "Ain't Got a Dollar: Illinois Workers and Protest Songs, 1865-1965." Well known for his music-history programs on Woody Guthrie and the Great Depression, Halker will visit the McHenry County Historical Society Museum, 6422 Main St. in Union, as part of the 31st annual Sampler Lecture Series.

Halker uses a blend of performance, audience participation, commentary and discussion as he reviews a century of songs from Illinois workers. Illinois became the center of American working-class protest music, as coal miners, laborers, printers, iron workers, clothing workers, and their allies penned songs and poems for the cause.

Last year, he spent six months at Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany, teaching students about the history of American workers and the history of protest music here. It does not surprise Halker one bit that political changes have refocused attention on the topic now.

"There are a lot of parallels between songs in the 19th century and now," he said. "They might have had a higher sense of moral purpose then, but regardless the issues are still the same: Wages, hours, abusing people in the workplace and a discussion of what rights workers should have. It's a struggle."

Halker has 10 CDs to his credit, including the 2010 release by a collaborative trio featuring Johnsburg native and John Prine bassist, Tom "Pickles" Piekarski. Johnsburg 3's "Caskets in the Cornfield" features folk songs from across Illinois.

Halker also penned the book, "For Democracy, Workers, & God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protest" in 1991; is producing the sixth volume of a CD series on Illinois folk music; and directs Company of Folk - an organization that promotes folk and ethnic arts in the Upper Midwest.

"These days doing anything creative means taking on more than you want," Halker said. "The drawback of being a freelancer like me is you do a lot of projects."

Still, he remains a devote of history with an important message for those attending Monday's Sampler program: "I always hope that people do listen to the lyrics and the commentary and at least think a little about what was going in this country then and today," Halker said. "Believe me, I've been getting a lot of calls. I'm getting ready to leave for a meeting with AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). But I guess I wish circumstances were a little bit different."

Other programs in the series include:

• 7 p.m. Monday, March 20 - The National Park Service at Age 100. Norman Moline, accomplished cultural geographer from Rock Island, offers highlights of National Park Service history and discusses many of the NPS sites throughout the Midwest - including the Pullman State Historic Site in Chicago and Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield.

• 7 p.m. Monday, April 3 - Rockford's Camp Grant and World War I. Terry Dyer, a recognized scholar and lecturer on Camp Grant, will discuss the 1917 origins of this massive National Army Training Center, named for Ulysses S. Grant, that operated until 1946. Dyer, a lifelong resident of northern Illinois, Dyer is the past state commander of the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, a member of S.U.V.C.W. John A. Logan Camp No. 26, the Gettysburg Foundation and the Rock River Civil War Round Table.

• 3 p.m. Monday, May 15 - General Pershing and World War I. Local historian and re-enactor, Ed O'Brien, will assume the guise of Gen. John L. "Black Jack" Pershing, commander of American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I and responsible for more than 2 million men. Pershing is the only American to be promoted in his own lifetime to General of the Armies, the highest possible rank in the Army. This remarkable soldier certainly is worth remembering as our nation marks the 100th anniversary of its entry into the war.

All programs are at the society museum, 6422 Main St. in Union. Tickets are available in the office, online or at the door. Series tickets are $35, and $30 for society members. A $10 donation is requested for individual programs. The national parks program is made possible through a grant from Illinois Humanities.

For information or to buy tickets, call (815) 923-2267 or visit www.GotHistory.org.