An hour long study of the songs of the Labour movement presented by the great Dublin singer and collector of songs Frank Harte.
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thesingingvoiceoflabour/
Well worth an hour I’ll tell ye 
Slan,
D.
I noticed it’s in Real Audio format. Have they cleaned up their act, or is installing their player still equivalent to putting spyware on your machine? I’ve been avoiding RealPlayer for quite some time, but I’d really like to hear this!
I’ve never understood the hassle people have with Real player.Works fine for me without any popups or spyware at all, at all 
Slan,
D.
From [u]How To Deal With Spyware[/u]:
Realnetworks Products
Realnetworks practically invented spyware. They were sued for their privacy violations. They were sued again. Their spying drew the attention of the FTC. By now, the activities of RealDownload are well-known, as are those of RealJukebox. Would you trust a company with this record?
The article has links to more info on the lawsuits, etc.. Like I said, I don’t know whether or not they’ve changed their ways, so I’ve remained hesitant to install any of their software.
John
Check this out…
And, in the interest of getting this thread back on topic (before anyone can accuse me of hijacking it ), does anyone have further info on Frank Harte? The first I heard of him was in references by Karan Casey in her CD liner notes crediting him with giving her many of the songs she sings. Does he have any albums of his own? Are there any good online sources of info about him?
Thanks!
John
(PS: Thanks for the Real Alternative link, Dub; I’ll check it out.)
I have all his albums
Put his name into Google and all will be revealed
Slan,
D.
Which would you recommend to start with?
They are all excellent but try this one first..superb.
http://www.celtic-music-direct.com/productdetails.asp?ProductID=SPINCD995
Slan,
D.
“Daybreak And A Candle-End” … I’d like to hear the story behind the name of the album …
Looks good! I recognize a few of the song titles; I’ll definitely be ordering this one. (And, undoubtedly, you will have given me yet another addiction, and I’ll eventually end up ordering all his other albums, too. :roll: )
Thanks!
John
He is a first class singer with a vast collection of songs under his belt.
Check your PM’s
Slan,
D.
If I could keep songs under my belt, I’d have room for more of them than I can fit in my head…
My kind of show, dubhlinn. Not that anyone on this board needs a reminder of the power of music, but on a personal note I can say that ever since I heard Which Side Are You On for the first time many years ago, my commitment to workers’ rights has been unwavering. And I’m sure we all can think of either live shows or recordings of Irish or Scottish musicians that have included songs of working people (Dick Gaughan or even John Doyle and Crooked Jack, for example) and the depth they add to the experience. We are lucky in Chicago to have Bucky Halkerkeeping the union songs alive.
Thanks so much for the link. Great show.
Carol
Which Side Are You On was sung a lot during the United Mine Workers of America strike in 1988. My husband was a coal miner then and ended up getting himself arrested and being one of 100 miners who took over the company’s coal tipple . Needles to say, I love songs of labor.
the following is how it came to be written-
"In 1931, coal miners in Harlan County were on strike. Armed company deputies roamed the countryside, terrorizing the mining communities, looking for union leaders to beat, jail, or kill. But coal miners, brought up lean and hard in the Kentucky mountain country, knew how to fight back, and heads were bashed and bullets fired on both sides in Bloody Harlan.
It was this kind of class war – the mine owners and their hired deputies on one side, and the independent, free-wheeling Kentucky coal-miners on the other – that provided the climate for Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are You On?” In it she captured the spirit of her times with blunt eloquence.
Mrs. Reece wrote from personal experience. Her husband, Sam, was one of the union leaders, and Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men came to her house in search of him when she was alone with her seven children. They ransacked the whole house and then kept watch outside, ready to shoot Sam down if he returned.
One day during this tense period Mrs. Reece tore a sheet from a wall calendar and wrote the words to “Which Side Are You On?” The simple form of the song made it easy to adapt for use in other strikes, and many different versions have circulated.
Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer, Songs of Work and Protest, New York, NY, 1973, p. 55.
Lyrics as reprinted (with minor corrections by Manfred Helfert) in Ronald D. Cohen & Dave Samuelson, liner notes for “Songs for Political Action,” Bear Family Records BCD 15720 JL, 1996, p. 85.
ORIGINAL ISSUE: “TALKING UNION” Keynote K 302 A (Keynote album 106), July 1941
[PETE SEEGER, lead vocal]
Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.
CHORUS:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
My dady was a miner,
And I’m a miner’s son,
And I’ll stick with the union
'Til every battle’s won.
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.
Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can?
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
Don’t scab for the bosses,
Don’t listen to their lies.
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance
Unless we organize."
Another one that was big during that strike was Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down”.
It was a scary time during that strike, particularly since I had to deliver the coal company’s mail, sometimes driving through several hundred strikers. I’d tie a camoflage strip of material to my radio antenna and that told the folks on the picket line that I was “one of them”, and that my husband was on the line WITH them. That strip of material saved me more than a few busted tires, although not all. I averaged a flat a week from running over stray “jack rocks” (two large nails welded together like jackrocks and tossed in front of coal trucks as they went by).
Of all the labor songs, my all time favorite is Dick Gaughan’s version of the Worker’s Song- heck, anything he sings is gonna great, but this really is a great one-
Come all of you workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We’ve often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they’ve streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
But when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who’s given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
When we’ve never owned one handful of earth?
We’re the first ones to starve the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat’s about
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We’ve been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can
© Ed Pickford
Dick Gaughan is unsurpassable in this area. He’s also done some collaborative CDs which I don’t have at hand, I’m at work—stuff done specifically for the miner’s strike during the infamous Thatcher years. I’ll dig out the details when I get home this evening.
I have more or less grown up on that sort of stuff. My parents were dedicated to causes like the worker’s movement, my father eventually ending up in both national and european parliaments.
During the 80s I listened a lot to the lps Frank Harte did with Donal Lunny. Great stuff.
For some reason he’s not very wellknown outside singer’s circles.
(Have the one Gaughan did with Andy Irvine, Wombat?)
Cowtime, that’s quite fascinating. You should write a book about growing up in the mtns.
While not labor (labour) songs, Jean Ritchie has a couple of excellent songs about coal mining, Black Water and West Virginia Coal Mine Disaster.
I heard the Labor party in Australia dropped the “u” from Labour. Wombat?
One very nice song of Rithcie’s in this vein is Blue Diamond Mines. It’s covered by John Doyle on his brilliant solo CD. One thing I love about Doyle and Karen Casey is that they are consciously carrying on this tradition—one in which I too am steeped. They realise that the struggles of our parents and grandparents have not been won nor have they proven irrelevant. They are as relevant now as they have ever been.
The CD I was referring to earlier is The Bonnie Pit Laddie: A Miner’s Life in Music and Song by the High Level Ranters with Harry Boardman and Dick Gaughan.
While on Gaughan, just about every CD contains defiant songs championing the underdog. Even a song like Willie O’Winsbury is made to sound like a worker’s song. Never have I heard a more moving line than the one in which Willie tells the king he’ll marry his daughter but his lands can go to Hell. (Musically, I prefer the melody Sweeny’s Men use for Willie O’Winsbury to Gaughan’s slightly diifferent one but nobody does proud defiance like Gaughan. Hear Gaughan sing Crooked Jack. Phew.)
That’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed.
I remember once when I’d had a drink or two and somebody told me that a particularly obnoxious colleague was a leading member of the Socialist left faction of the Labour Party in Victoria. I rolled around under the table laughing uncontrollably for a few minutes. When I surfaced I commented: at last I know what ‘socialist left’ means, the last socialist left years ago. A few minutes later my friends stopped giggling and dragged themselves back to the table.
Recently, to my great delight, this came available.
http://celticgrooves.homestead.com/CG_Harte_Frank_Dublin.html
Frank Harte has supplied songs to anybody and everybody who singing and recording today.
The booklet is a joy , full of info and yarns…
This CD is an essential buy for anyone with an interest in Traditional song.
Trust me Folks, you need this in your collection.
You will be amazed at how many of these songs have popped up on so many well known albums recorded in the last thirty years or so.
Slan,
D.
If you are computer savy, you can use mplayer</a](http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html">mplayer</a)> to view any format (if you get it before the EU makes it illegal).