Big Red Songbook

250+ IWW Songs!

Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, Salvatore Salerno, Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, Salvatore Salerno

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781629632605
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Volksmusik

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.

IWW SONGS

Joe Hill edited and illustrated this 1912 Los Angeles edition of the Songbook. Proceeds went to the Mexican fellow workers active in the Baja Revolution.

The Songbook’s 28th edition (1945) featured IWW cartoonist William Henkelman’s portrayal of the workers of the world marching under the red flag. The same cover also appeared on several subsequent editions, well into the 1970s.

1. THE RED FLAG

James Connell

The informal committee of Spokane workers who edited the first IWW songbook in 1909 chose their opening piece wisely. Shared by rebels across national, cultural, and occupational boundaries, “The Red Flag” had become a radical-movement favorite as the twentieth century dawned. Responding to its warm acceptance in Britain, James Connell (1852–1929) wrote a reflective article for the Call, an English Socialist Party weekly (May 6, 1920), dating his song’s genesis to 1889 (reprinted here, see p. 367; also summed up by Joyce Kornbluh (p 15).

Connell’s essay is exemplary in placing “The Red Flag” in a setting of events and ideas. He assumed that his readers possessed an intelligent grasp of history. This very assumption underscores the annotations in our Big Red Songbook. To help understand individual IWW lyrics our notes decode dated polemics and illuminate obscure language. Songs played a vital role in the union’s unfolding, and offered a glimpse into the creative impulses of worker/artists.

Many of the Wobbly compositions which followed “The Red Flag” are no longer sung (some were silent at birth). Because this song is still alive, the matter of its tune remains relevant. Connell, an Irish native, intended “The White Cockade’s” music (as sung in Ireland before 1870) to be used for his composition. Presumably, he referred to a traditional version of the Jacobite classic that had crossed over from Scotland. It invoked memories of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Robert Bums, and “My Love Was Born in Aberdeen.” It distressed Connell when Adolphe Smith Headingley induced singers to use the tune “O Tannenbaum” or “Maryland, My Maryland” rather than that of “The White Cockade.”

Connell objected to the changed melody in that it did not, indeed could not, fit his poem’s voice. Beyond this bedrock conviction that a tune had to suit a text, he disliked the melody of “Maryland, My Maryland” because it derived from an old (German) religious carol, “O Tannenbaum,” memorializing a Christmas tree. Connell doubly objected to the “Maryland, My Maryland’s” text as a patriotic anthem linked to our War of Secession. (James Ryder Randall wrote a poem to his native Maryland in 1861, articulating Confederate passions.)

I have not unearthed the circumstance for Headingley’s tune switch, and appeal for readers’ help in this mystery. We look to his life story for clues to his interest in music: Adolphe Smith (1846–1925); born in Headingley, Yorkshire; devoted to radical causes. Smith’s Life in London (1877–78) is an important ethnography of workers in urban trades. Al though Connell and Smith both subscribed to socialism, their difference over a simple tune may have had a significance, now lost to us.

To my knowledge, no American ever performed “The Red Flag” as Connell meant it to be sung. Fortunately, Billy Bragg, in England, did record it with Connell’s tune (released on a 7 inch EP; reissued in Australia and America on CDs titled The International.) Subsequently, several musician/activists in Dublin, including Des Geraghty, recorded “The White Cockade” version of “The Red Flag” in 1998 (released on Songs of Irish Labour, (a Bread & Roses CD). Such belated recognition in England and Ireland was long overdue. Previous to the Irish album’s debut, labour partisans dedicated a monument to Jim Connell at Crossakiel, County Meath, near his birthplace Kislkyre.

American singers have yet to catch up to their overseas cousins in recognizing James Connell’s intentions. Despite his strictures, IWW members liked “The Red Flag,” using its music for other numbers in their songbag. However, the issues raised by Connell continue to haunt Wobbly artists (as well as other labor singer/songwriters). We ask of all items in our anthology: does a new song’s lyrics fit its source tune; does an early song’s association taint a rebel’s cause?

The People’s flag is deepest red.

It shrouded oft, our martyred dead;

And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold

Their life-blood dyed its every fold.

Chorus:

Then raise the scarlet standard high

Beneath its folds, we’ll live and die.

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,

We’ll keep the red flag flying here.

Look ‘round! the Frenchman loves its blaze,

The sturdy German chants its praise;

In Moscow’s vaults, its hymns a...