(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/02/jeff-sessionss-denials-of-contact-with-russians-are-falling-apart-quickly/?utm_term=.b62aa3d9be78)
". . . Attorney General Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman released a statement . . . after The Washington Post reported Sessions had spoken twice with Russia's ambassador last year — contacts he failed to disclose in his confirmation hearings. . .“I never met with any Russian officials to discuss the issues of the campaign,” Sessions said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”. . .This is a remarkably misleading non-denial denial. Sessions, in the course of three sentences, manufactures a straw man, props him up and then knocks him down. He is denying a report that doesn't exist. . ."
A false allegation circulated that the song was written by a high-school student named Lorre Wyatt and subsequently purchased or plagiarized by Dylan before he gained fame.
This allegation was published in a Newsweek article in November 1963; while the story left the claims unconfirmed, it prompted much speculation. Several members of Wyatt's school (Millburn High) and community (Short Hills and Millburn, New Jersey) reported having heard his singing the song and claiming authorship a year before it was released by Dylan, or made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary. Wyatt even told his teacher that he'd sold the song for $1,000 and donated the money to charity, when asked why he had suddenly stopped performing it.
The plagiarism claim was eventually shown to be untrue. Wyatt had performed the song at school and elsewhere months before it was made famous, but not before it had been published and credited to Dylan in Broadside magazine. Wyatt finally explained his deception to New Times magazine in 1974. He credited his initial lie to panic that he wasn't pulling his weight as a songwriter in the school's male folk group, The Millburnaires.
Ironically, an early release of the song appears on The Millburnaires' self-published LP album, "A Time To Sing", released in April 1963. On the disk label, the song is credited to Wyatt, not Dylan. The album later was picked up for national release and renamed "Teenage Hootenanny," by The Millburnaires '63. On "Hootenanny," unlike the self-published album, the song is no longer credited to Wyatt. The Millburnaires' version of the song has a slightly different, somewhat less strident, melody from the versions subsequently released by Dylan and by Peter, Paul & Mary, possibly because Wyatt, who had heard Dylan perform it in a New York club, did not remember it precisely when Wyatt introduced it to his schoolmates.
OHO's
"Ocean City Ditty," the
CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if
you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak
My latest solo release, '2014' of original, instrumental piano music, can be downloaded digitally at:
(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)
