The `Communist' Way

" THE LAND OF PROMISE" 1960 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AFL-CIO HISTO...

A Symbol For Me

Oliver Anthony - Rich Men North Of Richmond

Lover! Comrade!

The People On The Hill

Stop Luxury Construction!

Joe Worker (Micki Grant)

Mike Gold

Landlord - Josh White

Pity The Downtrodden Landlord

MERLE TRAVIS - Sixteen Tons

Why Did Vanguard Records Refuse To Produce Bev Grant's 1970's Album?

 

Bev Grant and The Human Condition band in the 1970's

In the Spring of 1975, U.S. anti-war protest folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs organized a concert in New York City's Central Park, at which he and other U.S. protest folk singers, like Joan Baez and former Newsreel Movement organizer and post-1975 long-time People's Music Network organizer Bev Grant, performed before tens of thousands of anti-war protest folk music fans; to celebrate the end of the War in Viet-Nam.

Vanguard Records had produced vinyl records of Joan Baez singing protest folk songs during the early 1960's. Yet in the 1970's, Vanguard Records apparently refused to produce a vinyl record album in which radical feminist blues, labor movement and People's Music singer Bev Grant and her band, "The Human Condition," recorded the protest folk songs that she wrote in the early 1970's.

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane (who also co-founded the non-commercially-motivated Paredon Records label that did eventually record a vinyl album of Bev Grant and The Human Condition in the 1970's, titled Working People Gonna Rise!, which included the protest folk songs that Bev Grant had written) indicated why Vanguard Records apparently refused to produce Bev Grant's album in the 1970's:

"Beverly...got signed with Vanguard. Vanguard run by Maynard Solomon. Maynard Solomon wrote a book called, something? What was it? Marxism and Culture. He considers himeself, you know, a political guy.

"And he's the one who put out Paul Robeson's records and Joan Baez and what have you.

"And he said to her: `Come by and bring your--I want your most outrageous, you know--your most political songs.'

"So she brought them over there. And she called me afterwards and said: `Well, he told me to bring my most outrageous songs. But when I got there he said, "`Oh! I didn't mean that far out."'

"So they didn't do a record for Vanguard. Did it for us. Okay..." 

Revisiting IWW's `Wage Workers, Come Join The Union' protest folk and labor song Lyrics

As the 2007 book, The Big Red Songbook, which Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont and Salvatore Salerno edited, noted, the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] protest folk and labor song, "Wage Workers, Come Join The Union," was written by an anonymous worker in the early 20th-century.

And the following "Wage Workers, Come Join The Union" lyrics can be sung to the same traditional folk song tune which the melody of "John Brown's Body," "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Solidarity Forever" songs utilize:

"We have seen the reaper toiling in the heat of summer sun,

We have seen his children needy when the harvesting was done.

We have seen a mighty army dying, helpless, one by one,

While their flag went marching on.

(chorus)

Wage workers, come join the union!

Wage workers, come join the union!

Wage workers, come join the union!

Industrial Workers of the World.

O, the army of the wretched, how they swarm the city street--

We have seen them in the midnight, where the Goths and Vandals meet;

We have shuddered in the darkness at the noises of their feet,

But their cause went marching on. (chorus)

But no longer shall the children bend above the whizzing wheel,

We will free the weary women from their bondage under steel;

In the mines and in the forest worn and helpless man shall feel

That his cause is marching on. (chorus)

Then lift your eyes, ye toilers, in the desert hot and drear,

Catch the cool winds from the mountains.

Hark! the river's voice is near;

Soon we'll rest beside the fountain and the dreamland will be here

As we go marching on. (chorus)

 

Revisiting IWW's `The Banner Of Labor" protest folk and labor song lyrics.

Until around 5 years ago, most sports fans in the United States never questioned why "The Star Spangled Banner," rather than a labor song like "Solidarity Forever," was played or sung inside a stadium before a football or baseball game begins. And in 2020, after more people pointed out that the lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner" were written by someone who had owned some slaves in early 19th-century, Francis Scott Key, some more people in the USA began to question whether it still made sense in 21st-century for "The Star Spangled Banner" to continue to be the U.S. national anthem.

According to the 2007 book, titled The Big Red Songbook, which Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont and Salvatore Salerno edited, it was only in 1931 that "Congress elevated `The Star Spangled Banner' to become the national anthem of the United States; and "The Star Spangled Banner"'s lyrics are sung to the tune of "To Anacreon In Heaven" (whose collectively-written tune has been attributed to a Brit composer named John Stafford Smith). And the same book also noted that in the early 20th-century an "unnamed author" wrote the following lyrics to "The Banner Of Labor" protest folk and labor song, that can be sung to the same "To Anacreon In Heaven" tune to which "The Star Spangled Banner" national anthem lyrics of the USA is sung:

"Oh say, can you hear, coming near and more near
The call now resounding: `Come all ye who labor?'
The Industrial Band, throughout all the land
Bids toilers remember, each toiler's his neighbor.
Come, workers, unite! `tis Humanity's fight;
We call, you come forth in your manhood and might.

Chorus
And the Banner of Labor will surely soon wave
O'er the land that is free, from the master and slave.

The blood and the lives of children and wives
Are ground into dollars for parasites' pleasure;
The children now slave, till they sink in their grave
That robbers may fatten and add to their treasure.
Will you idly sit by, unheeding their cry?
Arise! Be ye men, see, the battle draws nigh. (chorus)

Long, long has the spoil of labor and toil
Been wrung from the workers by parasite classes;
While Poverty, gaunt, Desolation and Want
Have Dwelt in the hovels of earth's toiling masses.
Through bloodshed and tears, our day star appears,
Industrial Union, the wage slave now cheers. (chorus)

  

Revisiting IWW's `Walking On The Grass' protest folk and labor song lyrics

As the 2007 book, The Big Red Songbook, which Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont and Salvatore Salerno edited, noted, the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] protest folk and labor song "Walking On The Grass," "represents IWW songs with authors unknown," was "probably composed in response to a Missoula, Montana ordinance prohibiting public assembly" in the early 20th-century and "addressed issues raised in free-speech campaigns waged by Wobblies in the Northwest and California." Following are the lyrics to the "Walking On The Grass" song, which can be sung to the traditional tune of "The Wearing Of The Green" Irish rebel protest folk song:

"In this blessed land of freedom where King Mammon wears the crown
There are many ways illegal now to hold the people down
When the dudes of state militia are slow to come in time
The law upholding Pinkertons are gathered from the slime.
There are wisely framed injunctions that you must not leave your job
And a peaceable assemblage is declared to be a mob.
And Congress passed a measure framed by some consummate ass,
So they are clubbing men and women just for walking on the grass.

"In this year of slow starvation, when a fellow looks for work,
The chances are a cop will grab his collar with a jerk;
He will run him in for vagrancy, he is branded as a tramp,
And all the well-to-do will shout: `It serves him right, the scamp!'
So we let the ruling class maintain the dignity of law.
When the court decides against us we are filled with wholesome awe,
But we cannot stand the outrage without a little sauce
When they're clubbing men and women just for walking on the grass.

"The papers said the union men were all but anarchists,
So the job trust promised work for all who wouldn't enlist;
But the next day when the hungry hoard surrounded city hall,
He hedged and said he didn't promise anything at all.
So the powers that be are acting very queer to say the least
They should go and read their Bible and all about Belshazzar's feast,
And when mene tekel at length shall come to pass
They'll stop clubbing men and women just for walking on the grass." 

Revisiting UK Protest Folk Songwriter/Miner Tommy Armstrong

UK Miner/Protest Folk Songwriter Tommy Armstrong

As John McDonnell noted in the 1979 book, Songs of Struggle and Protest, which he edited:

"The songs of workers composed and sung sometimes in the workplace itself, are...different...They express the feelings of...workers...The mining industry has been particularly noted for its fine songs. Probably the harshness and isolation of the conditions of work, and the danger which fostered the spirit of comradeship among the miners, have contributed to this creativity..."

And in the same book, McDonnell explained why he thought a UK miner named Tommy Armstrong was considered to be a great writer of protest folk songs:

"The greatest songwriter among miners must surely be Tommy Armstrong born in 1848 who started work at the age of nine and spent most of his long working life at Tanfield Lea...He had a real sense of responsibility to the miners...and felt a deep obligation to record the landmarks in their history...He entertained at concerts given to raise money for the victims of pit disasters, for strike funds, for reading rooms and for the miners' union. He is one of the best of all worker poets and A.L. Lloyd has described his work as `characterized by a profound class consciousness and a notable faculty for criticism of society.' Most of Armstrong's strike ballads were made during the 1880's and 1890's..."

http://www.pitmanpoet.org.uk/TommyArmstrong/TommyArmstrong.htm

Hard-Hitting Labor Songs Revisited In Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore's `Working-Class Heroes' CD

If you were inspired by Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore's updated 21st-century musical arrangements for and spirited singing of protest folk songs (that IWW organizer/Irish socialist labor organizer and 1916 Dublin Easter Rising executed leader James Connolly wrote in the early 20th century) in their 2013 Songs of Freedom  cd, you're likely to also be moved and inspired by their latest cd, Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle In Song.

As the liner notes for their 2019 Working-Class Heroes cd (which is being distributed in the USA by both PM Press and Free Dirt Records) observes:

"The most essential music is conceived by real human beings: ordinary, anonymous, often poor-people who stood up and joined together to fight injustice and institutional oppression. This is the story of  Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song, a collection of American working-class, pre-World War II folk songs revived by Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore. Here the duo presents 20 songs written by both folk canon heavyweights and lesser known but equally gifted songwriters...The album is a collection of stories as much as songs--stories of the women and men who (sometimes literally) gave their lives to emancipate the working-class.

"Heroes featured in this collection: Sarah Ogan Gunning, Ralph Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, Ella May Wiggins, Joe Hill, Paul Robeson, John Handcox, Aunt Molly Jackson, Jim Garland, and several more anonymous proletarian songwriters, whose names have been long forgotten but their words immortalized."

Most of the labor movement songs written by working-class labor movement organizers and/or working-class songwriters featured on Working-Class Heroes were included in the Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People songbook compilation, of Wobbly and 1930's Depression Era protest folk songs, that Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger put together in the early 1940's--which didn't get published until 1967. But some of these featured songs may not have been heard much by either older 20th-century or younger 21st-century labor movement activists, labor union members and U.S. working-class protest folk music fans--like "Come All You Coal Miners," "Come On Friends And Let's Go Down," "I Hate The Capitalist System," "The Mill Mother's Song" and "The Commonwealth of Toil."

In her spirited and passionate singing of the songs featured on Working-Class Heroes at a June 2019 performance of the duo at Encuentro 5 in Boston, Yvonne Moore showed that she's able to sing labor songs in as moving and intense a way as Hazel Dickens, Barbara Dane, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Bev Grant were able to sing labor songs in the second half of the 20th-century. And, at the same event, Mat Callaghan was able to explain the historical context of the labor songs in the 21st-century that the duo sang as well as Pete Seeger did in the 20th-century; and  also to sing a great, entertaining version of Woody Guthrie's "Mama Don't `Low No Bush-Wahs Hangin' Around," that most Woody Guthrie fans in USA probably have never heard performed before.

Yvonne Moore and Mat Callahan

The duo has also edited an accompanying 96-page songbook for their new cd (that PM Press is also distributing), titled Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song: A Songbook. And as the blurb for this 2019 songbook notes: 

"Most of the songs collected here are from the early twentieth century, yet their striking relevance to current affairs invites us to explore the historical conditions that inspired their creation: deep, systemic crisis, advancing fascism, and the threat of world war. In the face of violent terror, these working-class songwriters bravely stood up to fight oppression. Such courage and heroism is immortal, such heroes should be celebrated and their songs can still lift our spirits, if we sing them today..."

http://www.matandyvonne.com/

How Jim Connell Wrote `The Red Flag' Protest Folk Song Lyrics

Labor Movement Organizer and Songwriter Jim Connell

In a column that first appeared in the British Socialist Party's newspaper, The Call, in 1920, a labor movement organizer and songwriter named Jim Connell recalled how he wrote the lyrics to a classic labor song and protest folk song, "The Red Flag" in 1889, when Connell was 37 years old, by writing the following:

"...The song was first published in the Christmas number of Justice [a UK socialist newspaper] 1889, which was then edited by Harry Quelch, and it immediately became popular. Justice then was published on Thursday, and the following Sunday the song was sung in both Liverpool and Glasgow...I may...try to explain how the song came to be written...

"1889 was the year of the London Dock Strike. It was the biggest thing of its kind that occurred up to that date, and its leaders, H.H. Champion, Tom Mann and John Burns, aroused the whole of England by the work they did and the victory they won. Much occurred, however, before that to elevate me.

"Not many years previously the Irish Land League aroused the democracy of all countries. I am proud to be able to say that I founded the first branch of the Land League which was established in England...I remained its secretary until the League was suppressed...

"About the same time the Russian Nihilists, the parents of the Bolsheviks, won the applause of all lovers of liberty and admirers of heroism. Under the rule of the Czar,...the best men and women of Russia were deported to Siberia at the rate of 20,000 a year. Young lady students were taken from their classrooms and sent to work in horrible mines where their teeth fell out and their hair fell off their heads in a few months. Nobody could possibly fight this hellish rule with more undaunted courage than the Nihilists, women as well as men.

"It was my privilege to know Stepniak...His book Underground Russia, produced a greater effect on me than any `revelation' ever produced on a devotee. I was indeed `raised above myself' by the dauntless courage of Vera Sassulitch and the `endless abnegation' of Sophie Perovskaya. There happened also in 1887, the hanging of the Chicago Anarchists. Their innocence was afterwards admitted by the Governor of the State of Illinois. The widow of one of them, Mrs. Parsons, herself more than half a Red Indian, made a lecturing tour of this country soon afterwards. On one occasion, I heard her tell a large audience that, when she contemplated the service rendered to humanity, she was glad her husband had died as he did. Yes, I heard Mrs. Parsons say that. The reader may now understand how the souls of all true Socialists were elevated, and how I got into the mood which enabled me to write `The Red Flag.'

"...In a train between Charing Cross and New Cross, during a 15-minute journey, the first two stanzas, including the chorus, were completed, and I think I may say the whole of the song mapped out. After I got home, I wrote more, and little remained to be done after that. Next day, I made some slight additions and alterations, and the following day I sent it on to Quelch.

"As far as I remember, I never wrote a song in such a short time before or since...Did I, when I wrote it, think that my song would live? Yes. The last line shows I did. `This song shall be our parting hymn.'

"I hesitated a considerable time over the last line. I asked myself whether I was not assuming too much. I reflected, however, that in writing the song I gave expressions to not only my own best thoughts and feelings, but the very best thoughts and feelings of every genuine socialist I knew, Anarchists, of course included. I decided that the last line should stand."

Jim Connell's "The Red Flag" protest folk song lyrics:

(chorus)

"Then raise the scarlet standard high!
Within its shade we'll live and die!
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We'll keep the red flag flying here!"

(verses)

"The people's flag is deepest red;
It shrouded oft' our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.

"Look round--the Frenchman loves its blaze;
The sturdy German chants its praise;
In Moscow's vaults its hymns are sung;
Chicago swells its surging throng!

"It waved above our infant might,
When all ahead seemed dark as night;
It witnessed many a deed and vow;--
We must not change its colour now!

"It well recalls the triumphs past;
It gives the hope of peace at last.
The banner bright, the symbol plain
Of human right and human gain.

"It suits today the weak and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place,
To cringe before the rich man's frown,
And haul the sacred emblem down.

"With heads uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall!
Come dungeon dark, or gallows grim
This song shall be our parting hymn!"

Pete Seeger's `Rainbow Quest' Folk Music TV Show Revisited: Episode 33 with Jim Garland and Hazel Garland

https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest33