Howelings
Is it possible that Phil Ochs, the iconic American protest singer of the Sixties, was driven to hang himself because of what he knew about the President Kennedy assassination? So claims William E. Kelly, Jr. in a posting on John Simkin’s much-visited history site, Education Forum.
Ochs committed suicide on April 9, 1976 at the age of 35. In 1963 Ochs claimed knowledge of a plot to kill the president before it happened and, according to his college roommate and best man Jim Glover, was a witness to the assassination in Dallas as “a national security observer” at Dealey Plaza. Glover believes Ochs kept those facts secret in fear for his own life.
Phil was born in El Paso, Texas in 1940. His father, Dr. Jacob Ochs, had been drafted by the U.S. Army and in 1943 was shipped overseas, returning two years later with a medical discharged. He was immediately institutionalized and did not return to his family for another two years. During that time, he was subjected to electroshock therapy and was later described by Phil’s sister as “like a phantom.”
It was at Ohio State in Columbus that Glover, today still a working folksinger, met Ochs and became his roommate, taught him how to play guitar, gave him his first guitar and they formed a folk duo, the Singing Socialists, later changing the name to the Sundowners.
Meanwhile Ochs had developed an interest in politics, particularly with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. He served as a sergeant in the Air Force ROTC at Ohio State and allegedly infiltrated student protest groups even as he began writing protest songs and himself fomenting unrest.
Both Ochs and Glover eventually moved to New York City and became a part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene. Phil Ochs became known for writing songs such as “I Ain’t Marching Any More and “Love Me, I’m a Liberal.” It was at this time he was also working for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, claims Glover.
“Phil was into the investigation of a plot before Dallas. He came over to my apartment to tell me there was a plot to kill Kennedy and ask me if I knew anything.” Then Ochs decided to go to Dallas, in mid-November, 1963. “Before he went he said his mom told him to get a haircut and to go with one of the Gambino brothers, which he did.”
Glover now believes that anyone who went there to watch or report were being set up in case the ‘Oswald alone’ thing didn’t pass, that the next patsies would be us Castro sympathizers and then the Mob — or both.”
Ochs did not tell Glover who told him to go to Dallas “and it probably saved our lives because I would have talked. All my life I got in trouble because I talked. Phil did say he was working for National Security Domestic Division and that Hoover at the FBI was the bad guy. Soon after that two men identifying themselves as FBI came over and asked me if I knew where Phil was. Of course I thought they really knew and I didn’t even tell them about the Kennedy plot in order to protect Phil.”
On the Simkin site is posted is a photo in the possession of Jim Glover of a blurry Phil Ochs standing back against the Dal-Tex building, evidently taken just shortly after the assassination of because policemen with weapons drawn are looking towards the Texas School Book Depository.
“Soon after I told his story during a solo set at the Gaslight and Phil found out he said ‘Are you trying to get me killed?!’ So after that I was more cautious about talking … but I never was quiet.”
Moving right along: We’re told that in 2013, Warren Buffett earned $37,000,000 each and every day.
AARP reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is now permitting slaughtered U.S. and Canadian chickens to be processed in China and then exported back to the States. That’s disturbing news to us oldies who recall China’s terrible record in regulating toxins of all kinds.
Quote for the Week:
“When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, ‘I’m going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I’m going to work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I’m going to adopt a child. I can still live my dreams.”
— Diana Nyad
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I was teaching in NYC with Phil Ochs sister when he hung himself in her house.