Phil Cohen War Stories: Rising Stars
WAR STORIES By Phil Cohen
Editor’s Note: This is Part III of Phil’s bittersweet story of the Local 1077 Whiteville Choir. Read Part I here and Part II here.
Two weeks later I made my annual pilgrimage to the Great Labor Arts Exchange in Washington, this time accompanied by Melvin Chambers who was treated like a celebrity. One of the guests handed her song lyrics written by an anonymous composer during the recent Detroit Newspaper strike, explaining that the words were set to the legendary pop song, “Dancing in the Street.”
During our next rehearsal, I raised the idea of recording a CD, which during the intervening years had replaced cassettes as the primary medium for recorded music. Kenny again vehemently argued that he should produce the album at a local studio, this time adding that otherwise he wouldn’t participate.
“You’re replaceable,” I told Kenny. “I can find better keyboard players than you who have enough sense not to show up at a recording studio with a broken instrument and for that matter, don’t miss sessions entirely.” I was very tempted to continue my rebuttal by explaining to the choir how Kenny had single-handedly cost them a recording contract on a prominent label, but restrained myself. It’s not in my nature to cut someone to ribbons in front of their family in ways from which they’d never recover. I simply concluded by saying, “You know as much about producing a record as I do about repairing submarines. There’s no way I’m writing a check to some wanna-be sound engineer in Whiteville, and let the two of you make an embarrassment out of a project the rest of us have put our hearts and souls into.”
Three months later, we were all shaken by unexpected news: Melvin had reunited with her former husband and was relocating several hours away, naturally meaning she had to resign from the choir just as we were beginning to rehearse for our next album. But in the spirit of true union members, the choir elected Anna as their new leader and re-coalesced around her. Fortunately, they had enough sense not to vote for Kenny.
Anna rose to the occasion by assuming Melvin’s role as primary singer. Her powerful voice trembled with passion and her stage presence became compelling during performances. But she was not a natural leader and prioritized avoiding conflict at all cost. The unpleasant task of maintaining the choir’s work ethic now fell entirely on my shoulders, and Kenny faced little opposition when ranting and raving about how I was stealing their profits.
Rehearsals intensified as we prepared to record a CD the following spring. Melvin’s parting gift had been an arrangement of the Detroit song that synergized protest lyrics with a unique blend of rock and gospel…like a gourmet recipe combining the perfect amount of each ingredient.
A background vocalist named Cynthia Stanley blossomed into not only a good songwriter, giving us several new originals, but a lead singer as well. She performed duets with either Anna or Robert on several songs.
We gathered at TGS Studio on a Friday evening in May, 1999 to begin recording our second album. Kenny had used part of his proceeds from tape sales and gigs to buy a new keyboard, and we laid down two good tracks before the choir returned to their hotel.
The Saturday morning session began with Kenny entering the mixing room to ask, “I don’t see why we can’t record both cassettes and CDs. Some people still only have tape players.”
“I wish we could,” I told him “but the manufacturing processes are totally different and we don’t have money for both in the account, unless of course, you’d like to contribute another $1,000.”
I saved “Marching in the Street” for the second song that day, when the choir would be fully awake and warmed up. Anna shone like never before and we nailed it in one take. “Wow!” said Steve, who wasn’t easily impressed, shaking his head after the song faded. “They’ve really come a long way in the past three years.”
Kenny naturally insisted on lending his expertise to mixing and mastering. “Steve is all booked up,” I told him. “He was barely able to squeeze us in for this session. I’ll let you know when he’s available.”
The following morning I joined Steve at the mixing board. It was an easier process than the first album because we’d already figured out the best system to highlight the choir’s strengths while camouflaging their weaknesses. As an afterthought, I asked him to tack on the “Solidarity Forever” recording at the end, adjusting its sound levels to match the other songs. The album was titled Union Power.
Manufacturing CDs was far more complex and expensive than cassettes during the early years of transition from analog to digital. Various set-up charges were so prohibitive that the only cost effective option was to order a thousand copies up-front and then wait two months for delivery.
Patricia accompanied me to the Southern Regional convention in early June, despite being deeply shaken by the recent death of her mother. It seemed preferable to remaining home alone. Though usually vivacious and interactive at union events, she spent most of her time alone and avoiding others. The choir encountered her on Saturday afternoon, sitting by herself with tears streaming down her face. Anna and Ruby took seats on either side to ask what was wrong, and then offered to pray for her.
Patricia was encouraged to stand, encircled by choir members with several hugging her as they prayed out loud for ten minutes, poignantly surrounding her with the same heart and magic they poured into their music.
A representative from Oasis Disc Manufacturing called in early July to inform me the CDs were ready. I was on the road for a week of negotiations and meetings at several locals and instructed him to hold delivery until the weekend, explaining that my uncovered porch was exposed.
On Wednesday morning I was driving from Charlotte to my next destination when the car phone rang and I was cheerfully informed my albums had been delivered. The entire central part of the state was immersed in torrential thunder storms and my girlfriend was out of town visiting a cousin. I hit my brakes then jammed the gas pedal, making an illegal U-turn and heading toward home at 90 mph through the blinding rain, steering with one hand while the other held my phone to cuss out the rep. I envisioned finding the entire shipment ruined once I arrived.
Two hours later I was relieved to discover the rain was lighter in Chapel Hill and although the boxes were soaked, the CDs, encased in shrink wrap, would be OK after some towel time.
During the second half of 1999, the Whiteville Choir was about to increase its presence on the national stage. Later in July, I joined them in Miami for UNITE’s international convention, where the new album would make its dramatic debut. Boxes of CDs had been shipped to the hotel in advance. The choir was scheduled to begin singing at 8:30 a.m. as delegates began entering the huge auditorium. I suggested they hold “Marching in the Street” until 9 a.m. when the place would be packed.
At the appointed hour, as International President Jay Mazur was approaching the podium to open the session, Anna began belting out what would become their new hit song, while four thousand delegates rose to their feet and spontaneously began marching in a huge circle around the room. A few of the singers had tears running down their cheeks while performing, amazed they’d ignited such a truly awesome spectacle.
Bruce stepped to a microphone, briefly preempting the President. “Brothers and sisters, that was the Whiteville Choir from UNITE’s Southern Region!” proudly exclaimed the man who would have spit in my face had we been in the same room when he learned of the first recording. Following lunch, Al Gore addressed the convention and I handed his aide a CD to give him. During the five-day event, between CDs and cassettes, we ended up selling over 250 albums.
I spoke with the choir for a few minutes after the conference had adjourned. “I’ve been thinking about something ever since the CDs were delivered to me. As musicians, you do deserve a royalty for your albums, so this is what we’re gonna to do. After every performance, I’m gonna slip you twenty percent under the table and doctor my reports to indicate we’re selling at a discount. That’s twice the amount record labels normally pay. We’ll have to be really discreet about this. Does everyone agree?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” asked Ruby with a smile, then turned to face the other choir members, encouraging them to say yes, which they naturally did. I handed Anna $700 which had been tightly rolled in my fist.
If Bruce ever discovered this, the confrontation would have made his initial phone call seem like season’s greetings by comparison. He’d have threatened to fire me but wouldn’t have. I was too valuable a resource. The next time a company hired professional union busters, who else could he send to engage them?
The Whiteville Choir was invited to perform at the national AFL-CIO convention being held in Los Angeles during September. As was my practice, I flew in a day early to make sure the proper arrangements had been made. Two clean cut young men in suits introduced themselves, explaining they’d been assigned by the AFL-CIO to assist me.
I asked where the boxes of albums, delivered by UPS several days earlier, were being kept. They escorted me to a storage room which was empty. After trying several more possible locations one of them said, “We’ll do our best to find them before the conference opens.”
“Not good enough. I want them now! Contact whoever you report to and tell them I need someone who’s capable of figuring this out.” An hour later, I was instructing people where to locate cartons within the enormous convention hall. I glanced toward both sides of the stage and inquired, “Where’s the sound system?”
“What are you talking about?” my two assistants asked in unison. Following my explanation, one of them replied, “We assumed you’d brought your own equipment.”
“Yeah right. On an airplane! My stuff isn’t even powerful enough to fill a place like this. I want to meet with someone immediately who has authority to make decisions.” The sound equipment and microphones had in fact never been rented. After several stress-filled hours, I was finally overseeing set-up.
At 8:45 the next morning, I was seated with the choir in the front two rows of the auditorium, awaiting their first performance which was scheduled in an hour. A man about my age, wearing a suit, approached us and introduced himself as a representative of the Musician’s Union (AFM). “These people need to sit on the other side of that partition,” he proclaimed, pointing thirty yards to our right. “Only union members are permitted on the convention floor. They’ll be notified when it’s their time to perform.”
I stood up and walked toward him. “These are union members!” I said with irritation. “They’re members of UNITE Local 1077 and work in a clothing factory. I’m an International Representative of UNITE. Here’s my card.”
“Well, no matter. According to AFM bylaws, only AFM members should be allowed to perform at venues such as this. They have no business being here at all.”
“They were invited by someone way above your pay grade who obviously thought otherwise.”
“Well, I can’t control that, but these singers still have to take seats behind the partition now!”
I moved a few more steps in his direction. “Look, let me make this really simple for you. If you can kick my ass here and now, they’ll sit wherever you want.” I didn’t raise my voice or use profanity, just stared into his eyes with the dead calm that precedes a hurricane. After a few seconds, the haughty AFM rep pivoted and walked away.
“Do we still have to move?” asked Ruby who had partially risen along with several others.”
“No. Stay right where you are. No one else is gonna bother you.”
At 10 a.m., the choir mounted the stage and mesmerized thousands of delegates who’d been expecting uninspired renditions of songs they’d already heard countless times.
A glorious year that had opened doors to endless possibilities came to a crushing end when Whiteville Apparel shut its doors, laying off five hundred workers. The venerable suit manufacturer could no longer compete within the environment of free trade agreements which ultimately destroyed the domestic clothing industry.
Over the holidays, I traveled to Whiteville, where the group enthusiastically agreed to remain together. But going forward, maintaining cohesion became increasingly difficult. They could no longer communicate every day at work and several had to relocate for new jobs. The downward spiral became apparent in March, when at the last minute they reneged on a contract to perform at a prestigious venue. Word spread quickly through the North Carolina grapevine and we never again received an offer from outside the union. But the slowly dwindling Whiteville Choir remained a fixture at the Atlanta conference and still showed up on weekend picket lines.
During early 2001, I received a call from a reporter named Sue Halpern, who wanted to write a story about the choir for Mother Jones.
“How did you hear about us?” I asked.
“I was surfing the web for possible stories about the labor movement and stumbled upon your website. Is there any chance you could arrange for me to meet them in person?”
“I can do better,” I answered. “How would you like to come to a rehearsal in Whiteville a week from Saturday?”
“That sounds perfect. I’ll bring a camera.”
Ten days later I met Sue in a Best Western conference room half an hour before the eight remaining choir members began to trickle in. The feature article appeared in March, with the reporter taking note of the choir’s opening prayer before singing: “The group takes up the Lord’s Prayer, not in that routine and possibly rote way you hear in some churches on Sundays, but rhythmically, like a poem…”
The story went into great detail about the choir’s tireless contribution to organizing campaigns:
“ ‘Kmart was picketed for three years,’ says Ruby Stanley. ‘The choir was always at the front of the line. We walked miles and miles around that place.’
“Invariably the police, in riot gear, were there to greet them.
“‘We used to call it music to get arrested by,’ Cohen laughs.
“Union membership is about having a voice. These folks can sing — really sing — because they have found, or have been given, or have given themselves, a say in their own destiny.”
When Bruce made his regular appearance at the North Carolina conference in April, I handed him the new issue of Mother Jones. A few hours later, he spoke with me before leaving to catch his flight home. “You did a really good job with this,” he said, holding up the magazine. “This is the kind of publicity the union needs. Do me a favor and send me twenty color copies of the story, so I can hand them out at the next General Executive Board meeting.”
Several months later, Jay Mazur retired as president and per the merger agreement, Bruce assumed the top position in New York. He was a far more competent administrator, but the entire Southern staff, from managers to secretaries, was delighted to see him leave Atlanta. Bruce was replaced by his brother Harris who’d been assistant director and was equally skilled, but operated with a humane approach.
The saga should end here…but not quite.
The downsized Whiteville Choir continued rocking the house every year in Atlanta, opening the convention with “Marching in the Street” as delegates rose from their seats and paraded around the room in a ritual folks never got tired of. Sunday mornings began with gospel songs taking the place of church. Eventually, only five performers showed up as old age and tragedy gnawed away at their numbers. Cynthia Stanley moved to Raleigh and then died in a car crash. But with Anna and Robert still delivering lead vocals, the music maintained its power to inspire. We continued selling CDs and the choir always returned home with their clandestine share. One evening in Atlanta, Anna confided to me that Kenny had kept half of all earnings from performances and albums for himself.
“How could you let him do that?” I asked.
“Well, he said he was entitled because he was the musician.”
On Friday evening, December 23, 2005, I received a call from Harris Raynor. “I just got back from a GEB meeting in New York. Several of the vice presidents were asking Bruce where proceeds from the Whiteville Choir had gone, and he wants you to write a report, documenting every cent in and out of the project with full explanations.”
“You’ve got to be fuckin’ kidding me,” I said. “After all these damn years!”
“I hear you, but that’s what Bruce wants. Look, send the report to me and I’ll present it to Bruce and the other GEB members in a favorable light. Just be thorough and then don’t worry about it.”
I spent the first two days of my Christmas vacation tearing my storage shed apart, looking for older materials, and then wrote what amounted to a brief in my own defense, supported with a pile of exhibits.
I was candid about the twenty percent royalty being paid to the choir, noting that while some within our organization might object, “our brethren within the AFM would have taken issue if I’d done otherwise.” Harris was on my side and now the only person with authority to fire me. The report concluded with an itemized accounting of $900 in unreimbursed promotional expenses, necessary to help the choir achieve their full potential. I explained this wasn’t a request for compensation, but “simply shared to emphasize a point.”
Several years later, Kenneth Stanley passed away in a hospital bed after a long, gruesome fight with colon cancer. He’d been a major annoyance from the beginning, causing me ongoing strife with the union bureaucracy while at the same time robbing the choir blind, but no one deserves to die like that. With his departure, the choir officially disbanded.
Upon finally retiring from full time union staff, I closed the choir account and sent the nearly $5,000 balance to Atlanta, along with the last 100 CDs. Harris distributed all of it among the few remaining singers.
Those interested in listening to the Whiteville Choir’s CD can click here. It’s available on most download sites.
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(Author’s Note: If anyone is curious about my own music after reading this, a good place to start is here. (Some online venues combine my songs with those of another Phil Cohen, which is downright embarrassing, but my material is always listed under Phil Cohen & Patricia Ford.)
Phil Cohen spent 30 years in the field as Special Projects Coordinator for Workers United/SEIU (and its predecessor unions) where he specialized in defeating professional union busters. He’s the author of Fighting Union Busters in a Carolina Carpet Mill and The Jackson Project: War in the American Workplace