Big Red Songbook

Description

In 1905, representatives from dozens of radical labor groups came together in Chicago to form One Big Union—the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as the Wobblies. The union was a big presence in the labor movement, leading strikes, walkouts, and rallies across the nation. And everywhere its members went, they sang.

Their songs were sung in mining camps and textile mills, hobo jungles and flop houses, and anywhere workers might be recruited to the Wobblies’ cause. The songs were published in a pocketsize tome called the Little Red Songbook, which was so successful that it’s been published continuously since 1909. In The Big Red Songbook, the editors have gathered songs from over three dozen editions, plus additional songs, rare artwork, personal recollections, discographies, and more into one big all-embracing book.

IWW poets/composers strove to nurture revolutionary consciousness. Each piece, whether topical, hortatory, elegiac, or comic served to educate, agitate, and emancipate workers. A handful of Wobbly numbers have become classics, still sung by labor groups and folk singers. They include Joe Hill’s sardonic “The Preacher and the Slave” (sometimes known by its famous phrase “Pie in the Sky”) and Ralph Chaplin’s “Solidarity Forever.” Songs lost or found, sacred or irreverent, touted or neglected, serious or zany, singable or not, are here. The Wobblies and their friends have been singing for a century. May this comprehensive gathering simultaneously celebrate past battles and chart future goals.

In addition to the 250+ songs, writings are included from Archie Green, Franklin Rosemont, David Roediger, Salvatore Salerno, Judy Branfman, Richard Brazier, James Connell, Carlos Cortez, Bill Friedland, Virginia Martin, Harry McClintock, Fred Thompson, Adam Machado, and many more.

Sujets

• Working class
• Labor history
• Rebel
• Hobo
• Gospel

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629632605
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Born into a pro-IWW Finnish farm family in Wisconsin, Jenny Lahti Velsek (1913-2006) joined the union in 1933 and remained a true-blue Wobbly her whole life. A popular accordionist at IWW social events, she was also a longtime member of the Board of the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company.

This book is dedicated to our friend and Fellow Worker JENNY LAHTI VELSEK (1913-2006)
The Big Red Songbook: 250 IWW Songs!
Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, and Salvatore Salerno
PM Press 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher
Originally published 2007 by Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company
PM Press
C.H. Kerr Company
PO Box 23912
1726 Jarvis Avenue
Oakland, CA 94623
Chicago, IL 60626
www.pmpress.org
www.charleshkerr.com
Cover design by Josh MacPhee
ISBN: 978-1-62963-129-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930963
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
CONTENTS
Tom Morello: Foreword
By Way of Introduction: On Wobblies Their Songs
Archie Green: Preface
Franklin Rosemont: Lost and Found: Other IWW Songs and Poems
David Roediger: Their Horrid Gold : John Handcox and the Uncopyrighted Red Songbook
Salvatore Salerno: Sizzlooks, Scissorbills, Sab Cats and Songs: Language and Image in Wobbly Expressive Art Forms
All the Songs from the IWW Songbook: 1909-1973
Other IWW Songs Poems: Somehow Not Included in the Little Red Songbook
Variants Parodies: How Wobblies Others Adapted and/or Updated Their Songs
Songwriters Tell Their Stories
Jim Connell: How I Wrote the Red Flag
Harry McClintock: On Hallelulia on the Bum
Richard Brazier: The Story of the IWW s Little Red Songbook
Carlos Cortez: Joe Hill the Wobbly Song Tradition
History Commentary: Diverse Reflections on the Wobbly Song Tradition
Archie Green: John Neuhaus: Wobbly Folklorist
A Glossary of Labor Language
Fred W. Thompson: The Older Songs of Labor
Judy Branfman: How Long Are You in Town? : Two Stolen Songs Find Their Way Home
Bill Friedland: Labor Arts and the First Recorded IWW Album
Virginia Martin: Feeling a Thought through Song
Fred W. Thompson: Charles H. Kerr and America s First Socialist Songbook
Utah Phillips: Afterword
A Checklist of IWW Songs Songbooks in Chronological Order
Alphabetical List of Wobbly Songs
Bibliography
Adam Machado: Recorded I.W.W. Songs: A Working Discography
Notes on Contributors
Index

A Note on Mini-Cartoons: Starting in the early 1920s, and continuing through the late 1940s, IWW cartoonist William Henkelman did a series of postage-stamp-size cartoons (see example above) in which well-known capitalist ads and trademarks were subversively and satirically revised, in a Wobbly spirit. Several of these mini-cartoons are reproduced in this book, as space allowed.
Foreword
T he Industrial Workers of the World invented the protest song for the modern age, and here s the proof: The Big Red Songbook .
The Big Red Songbook is an enlightening and inspiring catalog of protest music and a template for how to do it right . These songs look an unjust world square in the eye, slice it apart with satire, dismantle it with rage, and then drop a mighty singalong chorus fit to raise the roof of a union hall or a holding cell. Then repeat until we win.
The Industrial Workers of the World (or Wobblies as they were widely known) were the shock troops of the early twentieth century labor movement. They practiced revolutionary industrial unionism and their tactics, goals, and credos were truly revolutionary. Unlike other unions of their time they accepted all workers as members: blacks, women, unskilled laborers, sex workers, immigrants of every race and creed. They sought to forge One Big Union of the entire global working class and used direct action, sabotage, and the power of song in their open class war with the ruling class. And while the Wobblies have yet to achieve their ultimate goal of the abolition of the wage system, their reputation as a kickass union fueled by kickass songs remains the stuff of legend.
The IWW literally wrote the book on protest music. These songs, some written many decades ago, address the same issues facing us today: poverty, police brutality, immigrant rights, economic and racial inequality, militarism, threats to civil liberties, union busting. Often set to familiar tunes and popular hymns of the day, these songs united workers from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The music was the message: solidarity. What s the antidote for divide and conquer ? Work together, fight together, sing together. One Thousand Songs, One Big Union.
I ve been a member of Local 47 Musicians Union in Los Angeles for twenty-seven years and I m a proud card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World. My mom was a union high school teacher, and the Morellos were hardworking coal miners in central Illinois. I m a union man and an unapologetic musical rabble-rouser. The cause of workers rights is in my blood. I ve been greatly influenced by many of the songs and songwriters contained in this book, and under my Nightwatchman moniker I ve penned dozens of tunes that owe a significant debt to this union and its remarkable history of song. Much of my career has been one long audition to be included in the next edition of this tome.
The tunesmiths of the IWW laid the sonic and ideological groundwork for those who followed in their footsteps: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Public Enemy, Billy Bragg, Ani DiFranco, System of a Down, and Rage Against the Machine. Without the songs in this book there s no This Land Is Your Land, no We Shall Overcome, no Masters of War, no London Calling, no Killing in the Name.
Defiant and hopeful, The Big Red Songbook is People s Poetry. The unapologetic mission statement is emblazoned right there on the front cover: Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent. The goal was (and is) a simple one: boost morale, promote solidarity, and lift the spirits of the working class. Traveling songs, spreading-the-news songs, stirring-folks-up songs-penned by hobos and the homeless, itinerant workers and immigrants these songs combine harmonizing and hell-raising, rhythm and rebellion, poetry and politics, singing and striking. The IWW aimed to create a new world within the shell of the old and you can hear that new world here , where song meets struggle.
Joe Hill, the unofficial poet laureate of the working class, epitomized the IWW s anarcho-poet-warrior. He is my favorite musician of all time even though there are no known recordings of him playing or singing. Why? Because he was a tireless crusader for justice through his music. Joe Hill s greatest hits are included in this volume and are a fine starting point for aspiring rebels. Joe was an IWW organizer and a true musical and political revolutionary. He walked it like he sang it. That s why the powers that be were afraid of him. That s why they killed him. Joe Hill famously said, A pamphlet, no matter how good, is only read once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. The fact that you are holding this book proves he was right. These songs are still sung today, and will be tomorrow.
I ve traveled far and wide to pay my respects to the heroes of the IWW. I ve placed flowers on Mother Jones s grave in Mount Olive, Illinois. I ve hummed The Internationale at Big Bill Haywood s resting place in the Kremlin Wall. And while on tour in Sweden I made the hundred-mile trek from Stockholm to Gavle, the birthplace of Joe Hill.
I sat by the little old tree in the backyard that blooms because Joe s ashes were spread on the ground beneath it in 1915 and I sang the song I came there to sing, I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. The tiny room in the building where he and his family lived now serves as a union headquarters and museum. Union guards are posted twenty-four hours a day because fascists regularly try to blow the place up, because one hundred years after Joe Hill s death they re still afraid of him. They re still afraid of these songs, and they should be. Paul Robeson sang it true, Joe Hill ain t dead! Not just Joe s songs but all these songs live on wherever working people stand up for their rights and dream and scheme and struggle for something better than what was handed us.
For over a century the songs contained in The Big Red Songbook have been sung on picket lines, at the barricades, and through the tear gas haze of G8 protests. Facts and feelings set to melody, skewering the oppressors of their day, and ours, with wit and fire. Always a fighting union, the IWW was just as importantly a singing union and their mighty tunes of equality, justice and freedom are both a reminder of struggles won and lost and the battle hymns of struggles to come.
So get out there and start creating that new world. Learn some of these world-changing jams. Then write some of your own.
Solid,
Tom Morello
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

The Fourth Edition of the Songbook (1912)
National organizer J. H. Walsh and the IWW Brass Band Industrial Worker , June 17, 1909
PREFACE
Archie Green
F ew workers associations in the United States exist long enough to celebrate their centennials. Trade unions, fraternal organizations, and neighborhood alliances all fall victim to shifts in ideological or physical environments. Before a labor union reaches its hundredth year, it is likely to have merged with parallel or subordinate