There was no TV or radio in the days of Joe Hill (b. Joel Hagglund 1879 - d. 1915). It was the time of a popular pushback against the Gilded Age, of the "nadir" in race relations, and the dead-ball era in baseball, not to mention the great European powers blundering their way into World War I. Nationwide Prohibition would soon come to the U.S., and the aluminum beer can lay over a distant horizion. This diary will try to bring Hill's work into the modern age, as best as possible.
I'm well aware of the pitfalls of drawing paralells between different historical eras. No two eras are EXACTLY the same. Still, the work of this Swedish immigrant and IWW organizer can be very enlightening and instructional today. To better understand it, however, you need to "get" the cultural references. Sort of like the young folks watching re-runs of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and saying "WTF??"
On the other side of the sideways treble clef we will see how Hill skilfully adapted tunes that many Americans heard either in church or the local opera/vaudeville house, or might have played using sheet music on the parlor piano.
Probably Hill's best-known song is "The Preacher and the Slave" , based on an old hymn. If this one isn't installed in karaoke bars near college campuses it damn well should be:
Here's a link to a modern, though slightly offbeat version, "The Preacher, the Rabbi and the Slave" (USE DISCRETION. CONTAINS PROFANITY):
In "The Girl Question" Hill wryly addresses an old dilemma which many women find themselves in today (and sadly, the indifference of many men), based on "Tell Mother I'll Be There":
A little girl was working in a big department store
Her little wage for food was spent, her dress was old and tore
She asked the foreman for a raise so humbly and so shy
And this is what the foreman did reply:
Why don't you get a beau?
Some nice old man, you know!
He'll give you money if you treat him right.
If he has lots of gold,
Don't mind if he is old.
Go! Get some nice old gentleman tonight.
The little girl then went to see the owner of the store
She told the story that he'd heard so many times before.
The owner cried, "You are discharged! Oh, my, that big disgrace,
A ragged thing like you around my place!"
The message here was that this situation was the result of, you guessed it, disparity of wealth, and what we now call the "power dynamic". Women were quite active in Hill's union, the IWW, as the leadership knew that any rift between the sexes (today called the "gender gap") would do no good. It was important, in their belief, that men and women see a common origin ,and therefore a common solution, to their problems.
Joe was not averse to "pushing the envelope", though that expression may not have existed then. I will provide a link to "Scissor Bill" ("scissorbill" was slang for a fool or dope), but before you open it be warned: this CONTAINS RACIAL AND ETHNIC SLURS. You might well find this to be offensive, or perhaps you will think that Hill is trying to show the workers that bigotry and xenophobia are counterproductive. He seems to be saying, as the comic-strip character Pogo would say five decades later, "We have met the enemy and they are us."
He also appears to anticipate by a century the question that many Kossacks think they are asking here for the first time: "Why do so many of the working class vote against their own interests?" (Some of us detect a little class condescension in that, but that's a diary for another day.)
Please keep in mind that the IWW was open to immigrants of all nationalities as well as blacks. Now that you have some context, first listen to a few bars of the parent song*, then, if you wish, open and read "Scissor Bill".
*by a popular white recording artist of the day, singing in dialect.
lyrics (USE DISCRETION): http://www.musicanet.org/...
Hill wrote many anti-war songs. "Should I Ever Be a Soldier" was based on the 1906 song "Colleen Bawn". This is an obscure tune today, but you can hear a scratchy version here (starts at 2:54). It begins:
Colleen Bawn the golden dawn is rising o'er Killarney
The minstrel boy to war has gone and left behind his blarney
The harp that once thro' Tara'r hall now rings a war-like story
It's calling me across the sea to fight for love and glory.
Coleen Bawn, your tears are falling
Kiss me farewell, my Colleen
Can't you hear the pipers calling?
'Tis the wearing of the green.......
No doubt my fellow Veterans For Peace would agree with at least some of Hill's lyrics. In today's parlance, "he really nailed it".
We're spending billions every year for guns and ammunition
Our Army and our Navy dear to keep in good condition
While millions live in misery and millions died before us
Don't sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" but sing this little chorus:
Should I ever be a soldier
'Neath the red flag* I will fight
Should a gun I ever shoulder
It's to crush the tyrant's might.......
*("Red" was not a dirty word to many of the working class at this time. That came later.)
A good contemporary arrangement of another Hill anti-war song, "Don't Take My Papa Away": (lyrics): http://www.musicanet.org/...
Then, as now, miliarism, the class divide, and economic hardship were closely linked. Hill took a popular WWI marching song and turned it into a song for the unemployed:
Bill Brown was just a working man like others of his kind
He lost his job and tramped the streets when work was hard to find
The landlord put him on the stem, the bankers kept his dough
And Bill heard everybody sing, no matter where he'd go:
It's a long way down to the soupline
It's a long way to go
It's a long way down to the soupline
And the soup is thin I know-o-o-o
Good-by good old pork chops
Farewell beefsteak rare,
It's a long, long way down to the soupline
But my soup is there.
.
Ever the poet, Hill wrote this in his jail cell on a scrap of paper as he was awaiting execution:
My will is easy to decide
For I have nothing to divide
My kin don't have to fuss and moan
Moss does not grow on a rolling stone.
My body, ah! If I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will
good luck to all of you,
Joe Hill