Cowtime, terrific stories of real courage. Thanks for sharing those.
A few years ago when I was pitching in on some organizing efforts for service workers, I was playing a lot of labor songs at home. My then 7-yr-old son got Union Maid stuck in his head–just LOVED it–and he used to want to listen to it every night during the bedtime routine, over and over and over. I’d often hear him singing it to himself as he went about his 7-yr-old business–light-sabre fighting, sprinkler running, that kind of thing. He came with me to the rallies sometimes and we talked about that stuff a lot. I think it awoke something in him that will be with him always.
Last year MarkB, btw, pointed me to another bighearted labor musician carrying on the tradition: Len Wallace.
Irvine/Gaughan’s Parallel Lines is one of my favorite albums. Incredible guitar & mando/bouzouki playing. (And if only I could have Gaughan’s voice… ). The “Dodger Song,” a Woody Guthrie number I think, is the weakest track. The Lads of the Fair is a great song, great words, my favorite:
You can see them aa, the lads o the fair
Lads frae the Forth an the Carron water
Workin lads an lads wi gear
Lads wha’d sell ye the provost’s dochter
Sodjers back frae the German wars
Peddlers up frae the border
An lassies wi an eye for mair than the kye
At the trysting fair at Falkirk.
and the last verse:
The wark o the weaver’s over
Likewise the days o the drover
An the ploughboy sits on a tractor nou
Too high to see the clover
The warkin’s no sae steady,
But the lads are aye still ready
Tae drink a health tae the working man
In Falkirk toun the morn.
Oh.
And here I’ve been doing a cigarette and eighty bottles of scotch a day… while that may not have been the devil after all, but my landlady; I can’t be sure.
