This is fascinating, especially for a lyrics freak like me:
At Woodstock, Joan Baez sang a famous folk ballad celebrating Joe Hill, the itinerant miner, songwriter and union activist who was executed by a Utah firing squad in 1915. “I never died, said he” is the song’s refrain.
Hill’s status as a labor icon and the debate about his conviction certainly never died. And now a new biography makes the strongest case yet that Hill was wrongfully convicted of murdering a local grocer, the charge that led to his execution at age 36.
The book’s author, William M. Adler, argues that Hill was a victim of authorities and a jury eager to deal a blow to his radical labor union, as well as his own desire to protect the identity of his sweetheart.
Also too, I didn’t know until this day that “they tell me there’s a pie up in the sky, waiting for me when I die” (from “The Harder They Come”) dates back to Joe Hill.
Jewish Steel
Mmm. Sky pie.
jeffreyw
She walks these hills in a long black veil.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jewish Steel: Better than floor pie?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Ever read “In Dubious Battle”?
Jewish Steel
@Omnes Omnibus: Not according to my dogs.
celticragonchick
Interesting one here from Celtic rock band Seven Nations.
The Ballad of Calvin Crozier
(Words and music by Kirk McLeod, arranged by Seven Nations)
Good people of this town
You’d do well to gather around
There is something that I must say
A good man died here on this day
You’d do well to know his name
And it’s here his gravestone lays
He was free and the soldiers didn’t understand
When he returned and gave his life for another man
Calvin Crozier
They made him dig his grave
Calvin Crozier
Then they shot him where he lay
Then the soldiers danced, well they danced all night
On the shallow grave of Calvin Crozier
He had fought for four long years
Seen his share of blood and tears
He had earned his long ride home
In a boxcar for the night
Union soldiers for delight
Came to make their presence known
He was free and the soldiers didn’t understand
When he returned and gave his life for another man
Calvin Crozier
They made him dig his grave
Calvin Crozier
Then they shot him where he lay
Then the soldiers danced, well they danced all night
On the shallow grave of Calvin Crozier
Some background here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jewish Steel: Excellent.
On Topic: I had lunch outside on Madison’s Capitol Square on Friday and there was a union singalong going on. Both songs referenced by Big Baby DougJ were sung.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
And here’s a good version of the Joe Hill song from which “pie in the sky” originated:
The Preacher and the Slave
Jewish Steel
@Omnes Omnibus: The violent-est union song I know of. My favorite, I think, too.
youtube.com/watch?v=MiC3k8xQdhQ
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jewish Steel: Thompson is a fucking killer!
“I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags. The hawks against the doves”
PIGL
“He wrote his words to the tunes of the day,
to be passed along the Union vine.”
Phil Ochs, “Joe Hill”
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Steve Earle
I’m a Harlan Man
Went down in the mine when I was barely grown
It was easy then
‘Cause I didn’t know what I know now
But I’m a family man
And it’s the only life that I’ve ever known
But I’m a Harlan Man
Just as long as my luck and lungs hold out
I’m a mountain man
Born in east Kentucky and here I’ll stay
And if it’s the good Lord’s plan
I’ll wake up in the mornin’ and find
I’m lookin’ at the end
Of another long week and I can draw my pay
‘Cause I’m a Harlan Man
Never catch me whinin’ cause I ain’t that kind
I’m a union man
Just like my daddy and all my kin
I took a union stand
No matter what the company said
I got me two good hands
And just as long as I’m able I won’t give in
‘Cause I’m a Harlan Man
A coal minin’ mother ‘til the day I’m dead
Stillwater
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Brother Steve and the Del McCoury Band. It really doesn’t get much better than that.
I saw Steve Earle open for Mary Chapin Carpenter once upon a time (about 7 years ago) and he WAS PISSED. Bitched about the chick crowd, how dudes would appreciate THAT song, smashed his guitar into a Marshall stack.
Great show.
ETA: MCC played the one song my wife wanted to hear her play about 4 songs in: passionate kisses by Lucinda Williams. We left after that.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Stillwater: Del is here next week. I have to admit I went to see Earle here and Athens and I was lost. Everyone knew every lyric and the only thing I knew was that stupid fucking song about the Nam vet and snakes or whatever. He’s been pretty good on the Wire and Treme.
Linda Featheringill
I have read that when Joe Hill died, nobody knew where he came from and his friends weren’t sure where to bury him. So they had him cremated and his ashes were divided into 48 parcels. These packets were sent to the 48 states [to sympathetic folks presumably] and scattered in the wind all across the land. So he finally went home. Wherever that was.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Billy Bragg Which Side Are You On?
Svensker
@Jewish Steel:
Wow. Never had that one — fantastic. Thank you.
Chet
@jeffreyw: Astonishingly, that song is not a traditional ballad, but was actually written in 1959 for the man who first recorded it (Lefty Frizzell).
Constance
@jeffreyw:
Mick Jagger version?
LM
#15 Linda Featheringill
He was born in Sweden and lived wherever the IWW needed him to organize. But his ashes weren’t released in Utah, the state whose kangaroo court convicted and executed him. In fact for years, unions refused to drive through the state, spend the night or deliver anything there etc.
The Preacher and the Slave is a wonderful song. It was written because in Everett and Seattle and other towns, in the years leading up to America’s only real general strike, ordinances prohibited the unions from standing on soapboxes in public to organize/speak. But they allowed The Salvation Army to speak/pray/sing on those corners. So more than once, the IWW would set up a soap box opposite the Salvation Army and a Wobblie would get on it to sing The Preacher and the Slave. Soon he or she (the IWW was not segregated by gender or race like most unions of the day) would get dragged off the soapbox and arrested. Immediately another Wobblie would step up and sing from the exact point the other had left off. This went on till the jails were full. But the Wobblies never stopped staging “Free Speech Actions” and singing from their Little Red Songbook.
They were crushed as a union, their leadership thrown in prison by Pres. Wilson’s Attorney General and local law enforcement. The top guys got 20 years at hard labor–for nothing, for union organizing at a time everything the left did was considered sedition–and the lower eschalons got 5 years at hard labor.
Tom
@Chet:
So, was this case inspiration for the song? We’re these details known back then? If not, it’s pretty weird that the song was kind of retroactively played out.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Tom: It has nothing to do with Joe Hill:
Constance
@Chet:
The only version I’ve heard is on an album of traditional Irish folk songs (Mick Jagger singing) and I’m so happy I never told anyone it’s a traditional Irish folk ballad.
Just ordered the Joe Hill book. Looks like a good read.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Constance:
1960 The Country Gentlemen, Country Songs, Old and New
1960 Carl Mann
1963 Jerry & Sarah, Top of the Tangent, Palo Alto 02-02-1963 Jerry Garcia and his first wife Sarah.
1964 Johnny Williams and The Jokers (Went to #1 in Houston)
1968 Wolfe Tones, Rights Of Man
1969 The Byrds, Boston Tea Party, live recording – citation
1969 Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash
1970 Bill Monroe, Kentucky Bluegrass
1971 Looking Glass
1971 Hank Williams, Jr., Sweet Dreams
1980 Jimmy Ellis aka Orion
1981 Taco
1982 Berlin
1984 Marianne Faithfull, Rich Kid Blues – originally recorded 1971
1984 Baby Opaque featuring Ian Mackaye.
1986 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Kicking Against the Pricks
1988 Cameo
1988 The Proclaimers
1992 Michael Nesmith
1995 Don Walser, The Archive Series Volume 2
1995 Don Williams, Borrowed Tales
1997 Sally Timms, Cowboy Sally
2000 Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Tony Rice, The Pizza Tapes – originally recorded in 1993
2000 Daryle Singletary That’s Why I Sing This Way
2011 Carter Hulsey Cover
2000 John Duffey, Always In Style: A Collection
2002 Jason & the Scorchers, Wildfires + Misfires
2002 Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, Distance Between.
2003 Johnny Cash, Unearthed
2003 The Pine Valley Cosmonauts (vocals by Sally Timms & Edith Frost), The Executioner’s Last Songs: Volumes 2 & 3
2003 Rob Coffinshaker “Fairytales from the Dungeon” single.
2003 Harry Manx, Johnny’s Blues: A Tribute To Johnny Cash
2004 Ani Difranco, Gillian Welch and Greg Brown, Live in Madison, WI
2004 Dave Matthews Band, The Gorge (6-Disc Special Edition).
2005 Tim O’Brien, Fiddler’s Green
2005 Bruce Hornsby, Intersections:1985-2005 (Cameoed in the middle of “White-Wheeled Limousine”)
2006 Mike Connolly
2006 Crooked Fingers, Like a Version 2 (Australia)
2006 Richard Hawley, (B Side for “Just Like The Rain”)
2007 Justin Mack, ‘Long Road Home’
2007 Uncle Douglas “Joe” St. Pierre
2007 Stoney LaRue, Live at Billy Bob’s Texas
2007 David Gray,”A Thousand Miles Behind” live USA
2007 Professor Louis and the Crowmatix (The Spirit of Woodstock)
2008 Diamanda Galás, Guilty Guilty Guilty
2009 Aunt Martha, Candymaker Tour NYC
2009 Razzy Bailey, Damned Good Time, (with Johnny Cash)
2009 Rosanne Cash (Feat. Jeff Tweedy)
2009 Caroline Herring, Golden Apples of the Sun
The Stanley Brothers
Bobby Bare
Chris Ledoux
Banks & Shane
Bob Dylan
Nazareth
Jimmy Kelly
Tom
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Right, which is pretty much the same circumstance (allowing for some poetic license) as these new revelations about the Joe Hill case. It’s just such an extraordinary story that it’s hard to believe (but not impossible) that such a high-profile case occured prior to the song yet didn’t inspire it. But I guess all the details haven’t been widely known until now.
Omnes Omnibus
@LM: There were Wobblies at the Wisconsin Capitol protests. Posters calling for a general strike are still up in parts of Madison.
trollhattan
I’ll see your Joe Hill and raise you one Cameron Todd Willingham.
huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/gov-rick-perry-cameron-to_n_321710.html
I give 50:50 odds Perry gets the nomination, and I’d love to see him hung in the rope of public opinion based on this case alone.
Bastard.
drkrick
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): The Band also did it on their first album, Music From Big Pink.
Delia
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
The Band also did an outstanding cover of LBV. This is a live version.
On the Wobblies in Utah: if you go to Park City and do the little tour of the old jail (it’s part of the summer tourist circuit now), you can see the spots where the prisoners dug IWW into the walls indelibly.
Constance
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
You know, I’m 71. I’m not sure I have time. :) I’ve been awestruck for the last hour how much everyone here knows about music. I’ve noticed it before but it stuck this time.
You are all pretty amazing.
Thanks for the list. I have a friend I can work through it with.
Chet
@trollhattan: So would I. But when a guy’s last words are to call his ex a “b—-” and “c—” and tell her to “rot in hell”, I fear an awful lot of people are going to find it hard to get too worked up about his execution, regardless of what exculpatory evidence is trotted out.
Once again, the electorate you have versus the one you want, and so forth.
(another) Josh
Dude, exculpatory evidence is an advantage when you’re dealing with Perry’s base. Google “Perry” “Hutchison” and “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Harlan Man. Damn good song, damn good album. Too bad Steve Earle and Del McCoury didn’t get along.
OT: Biggest musical surprise of my life so far: Del and his two sons played at my son’s HS graduation. Turns out they’d graduated from the same school years before.
I was the only one anywhere around me who recognized them or how cool that was.
ETA: PS You can probably drop the (formerly stuckinred) at this point.
Yutsano
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: I think it’ll cause another moderation hell moment. However the nym change has definitely stuck, at least in my brain.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Yutsano: Perhaps Raven can do the nym change on a thread that isn’t a big draw, so it won’t be a big hassle.
Like one from our bloghost f’rinstance. :-)
Ed Drone
Joe Hill’s ashes were not scattered in Utah, since he claimed, “I don’t want to be caught dead in Utah.” And a few packets of the ashes were confiscated from union organizers somewhere, and were, up to a few years ago, evidence that Joe is still in Federal “custody,” an ironic and symbolic fact, for sure.
My favorite Wobbly was T-Bone Slim, who once said, “Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is to attack.” Sounds right to me!
Ed
honus
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): how can you have all those and miss one of the best, The Band, on Music from Big Pink?
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
how violent do you suppose the next union surge will be? With the power of the media against them, then brave new world where everyone can be tracked and eavesdropped on. The machine gunning of the miners tent city in Colorado will look like a picnic in the park, there will be hundreds of Joe Hills murdered by the State to silence them instead of a couple of dozens and there will be thousands injured & killed in street battles. And the odds are still with the Masters Of the Universe.
normal liberal
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): I’ll be damned. I sang that a lot as a kid, having learned it from the Baez album played incessantly by my older brothers. I always thought it was one of those ye olde traditional ballads.
My mother, although sympathetic to Baez’s politics (particularly after my brothers hit draft age), couldn’t stand her voice, and having me chime in drove her batshit. She still complains when we trot out the Baez Christmas album.
xian
for the Dead heads here:
Down the road to Union Station running through the fog
I thought I saw Joe Hill last night grinning like a dog
“I understand they did you in for everyone to see”
He smiled – shook his head – “that’s a lie,” said he
“I been on a mountain top observing from a cloud
Been in the hearts of workers milling with the crowd
My tears are shed for freedom and equality of means
My blood and perspiration oil the gears of your machine”
Down the road to Massachusetts driving through the night
I thought I saw Jack Kennedy hitchhiking by a light
I hit the brakes – backed up slow, and Kennedy got in
I said, “It’s nice to see you lookin’ back in shape again
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe they gunned you down”
He just shook his head and looked off sadly with a frown
Said, “bullets are like waves, they only rearrange the sand
History turns upon the tides and not the deeds of man”
Driving down to Fiddler’s Green to hear a tune or two
I thought I saw John Lennon there, looking kind of blue
I sat down beside him, said “I thought you bought the store”
He said “I heard that rumour, what can I do you for?”
“Have you written anything I might have never heard?”
He picked up his guitar and strummed a minor third
All I can recall of what he sang, for what it’s worth
“Long as songs of mine are sung I’m with you on this earth”
From the corner of my eye I saw the sun explode
I didn’t look directly ’cause it would have burned my soul
When the smoke and thunder cleared enough to look around
I heard a sweet guitar lick, an old familiar sound
I heard a laugh I recognised come rolling from the earth
Saw it rise into the skies like lightning giving birth
It sounded like Garcia but I couldn’t see the face
Just the beard and the glass and a smile on empty space
Paul in KY
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): I have a neighbor, born & raised in Harlan, KY. He is 92 now. Once he was joking about Harlan, and he asked ‘How can you pass as someone from Harlan?’ The answer was ‘paint your face green, always carry a gun & only laugh at funerals’.
The local Harlan High, their colors are green & white.