Lyrics and Legends; 15; Labor and Modern

Come, all of you good workers, good news to you, I'll tell of how the good old union has come in here to dwell. Tell me which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on, they say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there, you'll either be a union man or a thug or JH, Blair. Tell me, which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on, you on? Tell me, which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on? You know it wasn't so long ago that I was on the campus at Brynmark College and I heard a couple of co-eds singing the song which side are you on and it brought a sort of curious paradox into focus for me because these

girls might very well have been the granddaughters of the people against whom this song was written and it's the story of this paradox that we're going to bring you on lyrics and legends now I have a chart over here which sort of sums up the history of protest singing in the United States. It begins with the labor songs or union songs about the turn of the century and proceeds on down into the period right after the Second World War with the people's songs and then to the modern craze for folks singing that have swept through the colleges and the freedom songs of the 60s. Now you know as well as I do that unions have become prosperous and that now they're very businesslike organizations and as this happened to them the need for the singing union and the inflammatory song vanished but the singers didn't vanish nor did the love of these songs or the urge to sing these songs and so after the Second World War in 1946 Pete Singer and people like informed the people's songs movement and the idea here was to keep protest singing going and to

use the old labor songs and new songs to grumble against the wrongs of the world and particularly the wrongs that were outlined by the depression of the 30s. Now a book like John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath practically became a Bible to this movement and these people were good performers and good singers and they knew about mass media outlets they knew about radio and records and the new television and they used these things to make folks singing popular and they created a national craze for folks singing which is the modern college folk nick craze of the 50s and 60s. Now one thing you have to remember here the youngsters in the colleges and the teenagers who made this craze in the 50s and 60s embraced it because of two things one they liked the general aura of protest that was still in these songs because they were at an age when protesting against the established order is fashionable and then also it simply became the thing to do in the 50s and 60s to play a guitar and to sing folk songs. Now as this whole movement went into the colleges

obviously the communism was weakened and weakened and weakened in it so that by the time you get down to the 50s and 60s communism is only a vestige. At the same time that this is happening commercialism and that is the prosperity of this whole movement is increasing. Now prosperity always brings with it a kind of political moderation and respectability and so that you find that the successful singers of the people songs movement as they move into the 50s and 60s tend to restrict themselves to acceptable forms of protest and the old rabble rouser of the early 20th century is pretty much a thing of the past and then lo and behold in the 60s the integration movement and the freedom song movement came into being and this enabled the people songs protest singers and the college folks to kind of unite around an area of singing that was completely respectable. Now this whole movement is a movement of men singing to groups and it has been dominated by

personalities and one of the greatest personalities in this a man who really kind of incarnates the whole thing is Pete Seager who was a labor singer who started the people songs movement who's revered by the college folk mix and who has been singing freedom songs and we're going over here and meet Pete Seager right now. Triss I'm afraid I have to disagree with you right off the bat. I feel it in a sense there've been protest songs well if not for as long as people have been singing at least for an awful long time. You had Robin Hood songs and the people were singing how Robin Hood was a great hero. Later on there were wars and people had songs telling why they were fighting them whether it was religious wars of the 16th to 17th century or revolutions we had hundreds maybe thousands of songs if you could collect them all about the American Revolution there were election songs Tom Jefferson had a honey of an election song. The gloom

the night before us flies it's rain of terror now is or it's gags in quizatoras and spies it's herds of harpies are a no more then you had abolitionist songs and everybody knows John's Brown's body certainly that was a protest song I think to the people it made it up. Well Pete don't you think that probably the labor unions were the first group to really organize this kind of protest material and focus it on something specific. Well if they weren't the first they sure did a pretty solid job on it at least back in 1906 which is the date you mentioned the old IWWs the wild wild wobbly's Joe Hill they're a greatest songwriter had this little song book and they distributed by the hundreds of thousands. I would take issue with you also I don't think they tried to incite people to riot anybody who's been in a riot doesn't look forward to another one but they were trying to incite people to action of some sort. Well that little red song book has a

pream. To fan the flames of discontent. You know Bali's the Wade system. Oh well aeraticals there's no doubt about it. Now these songs get made up and they get forgotten too every age has seen thousands of them but occasionally a good one will be remembered. Old man John Loomax man a collected cowboy songs. He came across a woman down south singing a song and this had been traced back to the days when girls up in Massachusetts went to work in a textile mill before they get married they would work there for a few years to make some money in the old textile mills and no more shallow work in the factory to greasy up my clothes no more shallow work in the factory with splinters in my toes then pity me my darling pity me I say pity me my darling carry me away no more shallow here the supercom all dressed up so proud for I'm gonna marry a country boy

before the year is out no more shallow where that old black dress greasy all about no more shall I wear the old black bonnet and holes all in the crown no more shall I hear the bosses stay boys you better clean off no more shall I hear the bosses say spinners you better dog I've never worked in a textile mill and yet I got a right to sing the song it it gives me a feeling of what that girl's life must have been like and if a person could like a Shakespeare play

or read a the book of all books about people that lived thousands years ago and I could I could sing the song even though as I say I never worked in a mill could I take off my coat this is shirt sleeve music Pete when you talk about shirt sleeve music you're talking about what he got through his music aren't you yeah I guess so in a way what he got through was a big influence on me I was about 20 years old when I met him in 1939 he's about six years old and I am and came from Oklahoma I was raised in New England and like any prejudice New England or I didn't think there was anything west of the Hudson River worth seeing and he said Pete there's a big beautiful country out there and you ought to see it we teamed up together we used to go around singing for trade unions labor unions in Detroit and Midwest West Coast what do you know wrote more than 500 or 1000 songs everywhere he went

he made up songs union made it's that old union feeling in my soul and so on but he wrote a lot of other songs to have children songs when he was in the merchant marine in World War II you wrote the songs about the sinking of the Reuben James and so on I think maybe his greatest though our songs about the Dust Bowl you was born in Okema Oklahoma you left there in 1935 when the dust storms hit went out to California and wrote so long it's been good to know you that's been on the hit parade and well I don't know what I was singing it's one he wrote for all the migratory workers they ever were in a sense all the people that had a dusty road to travel it's mighty hard road that my poor hands has hold my poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road out of your dust bowl and westward we rode and your deserts was hot and your mountains was cold

California, Arizona, I make all your crops then it's on up to Oregon to gather your hops dig the beats from your ground cut the grapes from your vine to set on your table your lights sparkling wine green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground from the grancoli dam where the waters run down my land I'll defend with my life if it be for my pastures of plenty must always be free

you know remember once you told me that Woody Guthrie was 50% of your education and the other 50% was from Lead Valley yeah I guess so they both taught me something I never could learn out of a music school uh Lead Valley of course was older he died in 1949 he was in a giant of a man in a way although he wasn't tall he had muscles though it was just like iron bands he'd let a hard and violent youth but when I knew him he was a gentle courteous man in his 50s and he was living in New York and I guess he must have been amused to see a young fellow out of college wanting to learn his kind of music he died before we got to put his song Good Night Irene on the hit parade but just this year I located some movie film that he made in 1946 it's the only piece of movies I think he ever made an amateur uh filmed him but then never put the film together because

it was all in little bits and pieces and I spent a couple weeks uh pasting it all together and uh we have one song here I thought you'd like to see it well I think so because an awful lot of people have heard of Lead Valley but they they've never seen him they don't really he's just a legend to them and yet he was a central part of this whole movement wasn't he yeah well you see him you'll see why he was great and this is another way song when we pick cut you got to jump down to pick a bill of cut in a day you can't fool around and we sing see

Neither Led Valley nor Woody Guthrie were labor singers in the strictest sense of the word,

but they both did sing labor songs and they sang in front of labor unions. And in fact, I think Guthrie was a member of the NMU for a while. But they reached much broader audiences than just the labor groups. And when songs like Good Night Irene or so long, it's been good to know you got on the hit parade, people all over the country began to know about Led Valley and Woody Guthrie. And these people began to respond to folk songs and the songs of social protests because they found that they were good songs. And I guess that's the thing you've really been selling since 1946, isn't it, Pete? I think so. In those days, we call them Hoot Nannies because it was just kind of a party, Shindig, and we held them in New York City. Now that these weren't the songs that were the Hoot Nannies, that was the gathering that sang the song, right? Oh, you're right. You call it people's songs, I guess. You know what? People's songs was what we called our organization. We were going to spread the songs or labor in the American people. Organization folded, but the songs kept on going. That's right, Pete, but I'll tell you one thing,

when you sang in a Hoot Nannie back in the 40s, the people knew what those lyrics meant, the protest in them. But if you go out to a modern Hoot Nannies, such as the college kids hold at the edge and Bryn Mawr, you get the impression that these kids couldn't care less about the lyrics of the songs. We shall not be moved, we shall not be moved,

we shall not be moved, just like a street, that stand by the poor. We shall not be moved, we shall not be moved, we shall not be moved, like a street, we shall not be moved, like a walk together, we shall not be moved, like a walk together, we shall not be moved, like a street, just stand by the poor, we shall not be moved, Oh, we shall not be so happy to. We shall not be so happy to, just like the three. The trend of light will draw them.

We shall not be. Black and white together. It wasn't until the 1960s that a phrase like that had full meaning for both the people's song singer like Seager and for the college folk singer. Integration had given them a common ground. In 1962, Pete Seager went down to Albany, Georgia, and he learned freedom songs after hearing them down there. And he came back full of enthusiasm and excitement and began singing these songs to kids all over the north. There you go. Gather around here. I'll teach you a song. Well, maybe you heard it before, but not this way. Way back, October 1962. I was singing down in some of the churches of Albany, Georgia. That's where they've been having a big voter registration drive among the Negro people. And I found they were singing a song that I had known years before, but they put new verses to it.

If you go to Mississippi, no neutrals have we met. You'll either be a freedom fighter or a tom for Ross Barnett. Which side are you on singing? Which side are you on? What's more? Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on? Have you seen the patty wagon that big red likes to drive? And if you speak up for your rights, you'll take it for a ride. Singing. Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Tell me, Mary Kelly, where is your heart? We are all children of the Almighty God. Tell me, which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on? Another song I learned there was, well, we were riding along in a car once, and someone just bust out singing the verses

and I grabbed a pencil and I wrote them down. If you miss me at the back of the bus, you can't find me nowhere. Come on over to the front of the bus. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. If you miss me on the picket line, you can't find me nowhere. Come on over to the city of jail. I'll be roaming over there. I'll be roaming over there. I'll be roaming over there. Oh, come on over to the city of jail. I'll be running over there. And I don't know if you remember, but up in Cairo, Illinois, they had a drive to desegregate the municipal swimming pool. Till then, all the Negro people in town, the only place they could swim was the Mississippi River and I've been drowning in accidents

because there was no supervision. So they're saying, If you don't see me in the Mississippi River, you can't find me nowhere. Come on up to the swimming pool. I'll be swimming up there. I'll be swimming up there. I'll be swimming up there. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. I'll be riding up there. But we only have a few more minutes left and let's sing the song which is now not just a song, but it's the song to thousands of people. It's an old gospel hymn. And they added some verses to it. Mm-hmm. We shall overcome. We shall overcome. Sing that again. We shall overcome. We shall overcome something so clear. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

I'll be. We shall overcome someday we shall hold our arms on day We'll walk hand in hand We'll all hand in hand We'll all hand in hand We'll all hand in hand slowly hold our arms on day We shall overcome we shall overcome someday We are not afraid

We are not afraid We are not afraid We are not afraid We are not afraid We are not afraid We are not afraid Let's face it, union songs, freedom songs, people's songs are controversial songs. And the people that sing them are going to be controversial people. Now Pete Seager knows that I don't agree with everything that he holds dear and maybe you don't agree with him part of the time or even all of the time.

But let me tell you this, you absolutely got to understand songs like Back of the Bus or which side of you want and singers like Pete Seager, you're going to come to a real understanding of American folk song. And also you have to face the fact that the modern craze for folk singing is derived from the enthusiasm of reformers like Pete Seager. And I want to tell you, I'm very proud to have had Pete on this show. And now we come to the conclusion of the programs that we've called lyrics and legends. And I want to thank the scholars and the performers and the television people that have given us a chance to take an honest look at a subject which is frequently corrupted and cheapened. And I think it would be a good idea to end on a song like Careless Love which sort of sums up the whole thing. Here's a Negro blues, a mountain white song, a hillbilly hit, a tin pan alley hit, and a song that's very popular with a college folk mix of today. And now I want to say it's been a lot of fun and so long, it's been good to know you. And now I want to say it's been a lot of fun.

And now I want to say it's been a lot of fun. And now I want to say it's been a lot of fun. This is M-E-T National Educational Television.