Little Boxes: Jim, Malvina Reynolds and ‘Weeds’

Ready for the next entry into our never-ending game of “Sixth Degrees of Jim Marshall?” It’s a game of finding connections and serendipitous linkages between Jim’s life and work and (fill in the blank important person or hugely popular happening or historic event) that we at Team Marshall never get tired of playing. Today’s blog explores the connection of Jim to the just-concluded after eight seasons and much-adored Showtime series, “Weeds”  … and, no, the connection is not the fact that “Weeds” is about drug dealing (too obvious, guess again). Give up?  OK, the connection is that the series’ theme song, “Little Boxes” was nearly as much a part of “Weeds” as, well, weed was.  Malvina Reynolds wrote “Little Boxes” in 1962, simultaneously putting the phrase “ticky-tacky” into the people’s everyday speech and conveying a witty indictment of the middle class and bourgeoisie of the time with their conformity and head-in-the-sand attitudes. And whose wonderful black-and-white portrait of Malvina Reynolds was on the cover of her hugely influential 1967 album “Malvina Reynolds … Sings the Truth”? An album that featured three different versions of “Little Boxes”?  You guessed it: Jim Marshall.

And they all look just the same

Here’s the lowdown from various Wiki pages on Malvina and her impact: “ ‘Little Boxes’ ” is a song written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963.

“The song is a political satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It refers to suburban tract housing as ‘little boxes’ of different colors ‘all made out of ticky-tacky,’ and which ‘all look just the same.’  ‘Ticky-tacky’ is a reference to the shoddy material used in the construction of housing of that time. “Reynolds was a folk singer-songwriter and political activist in the 1960s. Nancy Reynolds, her daughter, explained that her mother came up with the song when she saw the housing developments around Daly City, CA built in the post-war era by Henry Doelger, particularly the neighborhood of Westlake.

‘My mother and father were driving South from San Francisco through Daly City when my mom got the idea for the song. She asked my dad to take the wheel, and she wrote it on the way to the gathering in La Honda where she was going to sing for the Friends Committee on Legislation. When Time magazine (I think, maybe Newsweek) wanted a photo of her pointing to the very place, she couldn’t find those houses because so many more had been built around them that the hillsides were totally covered. “Pete Seeger’s rendition of the song is known internationally, and reached number 70 in the Billboard Hot 100. Seeger was a friend of Reynolds, also a political activist, and like many others in the 1960s he used folk songs as a medium for protest.

“The profundity of the satire is attested to by a university professor of the time who said, “I've been lecturing my classes about middle-class conformity for a whole semester. Here’s a song that says it all in 1½ minutes.” I’ve talked about it many times.  Ultimately, I have a feeling that every blog I write about my relationship with Jim makes the same point: He used to delight in teaching me.  The education often came out via some strange factoid or odd bit of trivia that invariably led to a bigger truth or something that he sensed would help me make sense of the wider world. And that was the case with Malvina Reynolds. Jim loved to drive and we were probably heading from SF State past Daly City somewhere down the Peninsula.  I can hear his rasp now: “See all those ticky-tacky houses, Michie!  Ticky-tacky and they all look just the same!  Do ya know who came up with that line? Do ya know what it means? Didya ever hear of Malvina Reynolds?  You should know about her, nobody remembers her but she was a really important songwriter, a class act ….” And so I did learn a bit, though truthfully I didn’t really do much more than store the factoid away in case I needed to out-trivia someone in NYC.  I also really don’t remember ever seeing these other wonderful shots of Malvina that we dug up in the archive.  And I REALLY didn’t understand how her message and point of view continue to resonate.  Until now.

“Little Boxes”
By Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.

There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.