Malvina Reynolds was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songwriting, particularly the songs “Little Boxes”, “What Have They Done to the Rain” and “Morningtown Ride”. Her parents were David and Abagail Milder, Jewish immigrants. Her mother was born in Russia and her father was born in Hungary. They became socialists when Reynolds “was a little girl”, to which she attributes her lifetime proximity to the socialist movement in the United States. They opposed involvement in World War I.
As a child, she took violin lessons and “fooled around” with pianos, writing music occasionally. Reynolds earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she remarked that she got “all the degrees possible”. She earned a doctorate there, finishing her dissertation in 1938. Though she played violin in a dance band in her twenties, Reynolds began her songwriting career later in life. Reynolds claims that as soon as folk music came to the forefront, she knew it was for her.
She was in her late forties when she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger, and other folk singers and songwriters. She returned to school at UC Berkeley, where she studied music theory. Reynolds went on to write several popular songs, including “Little Boxes” (1962), recorded by Seeger, Chilean singer Victor Jara, and others, “What Have They Done to the Rain” (1962), recorded by The Searchers, The Seekers, Marianne Faithfull, Melanie and Joan Baez (about nuclear fallout), “It Isn’t Nice” (1964) (a civil rights anthem), “Trun Around” (1959) (about children growing up, later sung by Harry Belafonte), and “There’s a Bottom Below” (about depression). Reynolds was also a noted composer of children’s songs, including “Love Is Something (Magic Penny)” and “Morningtown Ride” (1957), a top-5 UK single (December 1966) recorded by The Seekers.
In 1962, Reynolds composed her most famous song, “Little Boxes”, which was made famous by her friend Pete Seeger the following year. “Little Boxes” was inspired visually by the houses of Daly City, California. Nancy Reynolds Schimmel, Reynolds’ daughter, explained: 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 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.
Another of her songs that still resonates today was ‘I Don’t Mind Failing in this World’. In the Notes and Comments to her songbook The Muse of Parker Street Malvina writes: “Reverend Stephen Fritchman, of the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles, gave one of his great sermons, ‘The Fine Art of Failing,’ in January 1964. Bud has distributed hundreds of copies, and I have done what I can to spread the message in this song. The ideas are Fritchman’s, the wording is mine. For those that are put out by cuss-words, I’m sorry about the phrase in this, but that is the way the song wanted to be.”
