Don't Mourn - Organize!: Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill
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CD Details
Edition: Music CDCD Release Date: 1992-07-13
Music Label: Smithsonian Folkways
Soundtracks:
- Joe Hill - Billy Bragg
- Joe Hill's Last Will - Utah Phillips
- Joe Hill's Ashes - Mark Levy
- Preacher and the Slave
- Joe Hill - Paul Robeson
- Paper Heart - Si Kahn
- Casey Jones - Pete Seeger, The Song Swappers
- Mr. Block - Mats Paulson
- Joe Hill Listens to the Praying - Joe Glazer
- Tramp - Cisco Houston
- Joe Hill - Earl Robinson
- White Slave - Alfred Esteban Cortez
- Narrative - Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
- Rebel Girl - Hazel Dickens
- There Is Power in a Union
Music reviews of Don't Mourn - Organize!: Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill
Music Review: Don't Mourn- Organize (And Maybe Sing A Song Or Two)
Rating: 5 Stars
The name Joe Hill evokes, or at least it used to, very strong emotions among militants of the international labor movement. A casual check of any of the old time labor songs will, more likely than not, find Joe's signature on or influence all over them. Thus, it is no surprise that Smithsonian/Folkways was able to find plenty of material and plenty of singer/songwriters ready and willing to pay tribute to an early labor militant and Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW, Wobblie) Joe Hill. As usual in a Smithsonian/Folkways production there are copious liner notes that give plenty of information about the Joe Hill's life, his exploits, his influences and his frame-up execution in Utah in 1915. I will thus not spend much time on those areas but rather spend time on the highlights of the performances here.
By all indications Joe Hill was ready, as ready as a man (or woman) is ever ready to face his death by execution when the deal finally went down in 1915. That is the source of his legend and of the forthright admonition that he transmitted to fellow Wobblie the labor leader "Big Bill" Haywood- Don't Mourn- Organize, or words to that effect. That sort phrase gives the substance of what Joe was trying to do every since he had landed in America several years earlier. As Hill pointed out one of the key ways that workers then (and now) get a sense of their conditions of life and from there get inspired to action is through song.
The long term truth of that strategy is open to debate but not the premise that song historically has been important to every progressive social movement (and others, as well, but here I am concerned with the international labor movement). In the propaganda wars of the class struggle Joe Hill produced some memorable songs that were set to popular melodies of the day or old time religious tunes. Those efforts are on full display here in such songs as "The Preacher And The Slave", "The White Slave" and "Rebel Girl". So if you hear melodies that sound familiar, as well as words that express the social concerns of his day and ours (white slavery, wage struggles, the influence of religion, union organizing, the fight against the bosses, etc.) your ears are not deceiving you.
As to the performances here there is a virtual who's who of the labor left cultural workers, from the past and the present. Billy Bragg on the late pro-labor folksinger Phil Ochs' tribute "Joe Hill". The recently departed old unrepentant Wobblie Utah Phillips reciting "Joe Hill's Last Will". A nice piece about "Joe Hill's Ashes" by Mark Levy. "The Tramp" by Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie's old traveling companion and comrade (who was an important folk figure in his own right). The above-mentioned "The White Slave" by Hill contemporary old Wobblie Alfred Cortez as well as "The Preacher And The Slave" by "Haywire Mac" McClintock of "Hard Rock Candy Mountain' fame. That is enough to whet any labor historian or militant's appetite. However there is more.
I want to pay special attention to three tracks. One is the powerful version of Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson's "Joe Hill" done by Paul Robeson. Anyone familiar with that name knows what I mean both about the voice and about his commitment to the labor movement (as a supporter of the Communist Party and its various cultural organizations). If not, then you are certainly in for a treat. The other is a narrative by the old ex-Wobblie and later Chairperson of the American Communist Party Elizabeth Gurley Flynn introducing the song that Joe Hill wrote for in 1915 just before his death, "Rebel Girl". In the end she may have been less of a rebel girl than Brother Hill would have liked, but in those days she was a very effective militant IWW woman speaker (and pleasing to the male eye as well, a not unimportant trait in those days). Just hearing that voice from the history of the American labor movement talking about its heroic period was worth the price of admission. The then well-known mountain music singer and worker/woman's rights advocate Hazel Dickens does the song. History, labor movement music and a tribute to Joe Hill. Nice.
Description of Don't Mourn - Organize!: Songs Of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill
Joe Hill's powerful songs moved Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, Si Kahn, and countless others to blend politics and song. This dramatic tribute to the Industrial Workers of the World songwriter and activist Joe Hill, features songs by and about Hill performed by Billy Bragg, Hazel Dickens, Earl Robinson, Paul Robeson, and others. Compiled by Lori Elaine Taylor. "A treasure for anyone interested in American folk or labor music." -- Washington PostUrban Folk CDs
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