Millicent Martin - the Mississippi number from the Last TW3 - '63 - live

Ironic that Milly should be backed by the George Mitchell Singers - The Minstrels and Singers were collectively known as The Black And White Minstrels and were demonised as racist, some years later - in a piece that rages against the then-institutional racism that existed in America's Deep South. The emotional power of this piece still chills the marrow.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Millicent
• Martin
• George
• Mitchell
• Singers
• That
• Was
• The
• Week

[eriks74342]

I am so blown away by this clip -- apparently it was the second and last performance of this tune; the other is also on YouTube. Even as satire and (rather heavy-handed) commentary, and despite the salutory point it was trying to make, it wouldn't make the cut today, for obvious reasons. My jaw falls open that this aired on TV, anytime, anywhere. This and other YouTube clips make me wonder -- where on Earth can I see more of TW3? What a show it must have been. And how about the U.S. version?

[disparatedan]

@eriks74342 There are several OTHER clips from this very last episode of TW3 on THIS CHANNEL (I would have uploaded the whole show, but YT didn't permit long uploads when I uploaded these). However, the clips sorta work best separately anyway.

The clip where they SHRED the then-Home Secretary is a classic - and I love the climax - TV at its best.

[ajay999999]

Why was it called TW3?

[disparatedan]

@ajay999999 - Sorry - as an OLD BRIT, I forget that not EVERYONE could KNOW (also, the title was too long to get onto YT's heading!) It's "That Was The Week, That Was" - it pioneered British TV political satire. It was pushed off the air, when a General Election loomed, citing "possible bias" - but it never returned! And it took YEARS for such programmes to return (the '80s, really). But thankfully, today, British political satire is alive and WELL.

[WJCairns]

I gather hat the US ambassador almost had a stroke when he saw this!

[rockinmusicman]

Great Song great words

[sf1987a]

@davidkaplan7 The lyrics were written by Herbert Kretzmer.

[Minirizla]

wow. I cant imagine something like this getting anywhere near a TV screen nowadays they simply wouldn't have the bottle. I'm not sure if thats a good thing given the subject, or rather sad we cant take this kind of brutal honesty anymore without going apoplectic.

[AnElephantsChild]

@lexo30

This isn't a funny song, it's satire, which may be funny sometimes, but frequently is not. There was a large studio audience there that night & I didn't hear a single laugh, giggle or snigger.

I was allowed to stay up as a child to watch this & it made my blood run cold then as it did today. I'm afraid back then they did need to sneak anti-racist opinions under most people's radar, as even here in Britain, racism was still considered the 'respectable' point of view.

[shakeypitt]

@davidkaplan7 This was all British; much as I love Tom Lehrer, he wasn't the only satirist in the world.

[monstersoftheid]

I recall watching this on New Years Eve 1963. It propelled me from teenage apathy to political awareness.  Thanks for posting it!

[lexo30]

This strikes me as one of those occasions when I think you needed to be an adult in 1963 to really appreciate this. I was born in 1970, long after this show ended, and I have to work hard to imagine a cultural context in which the racist murders of civil rights activists seemed like something you could do a funny song about. Nowadays, it's obvious that the racists were criminal but perhaps then, it needed something like this to point up the racism of sentimental songs about the old South.