In the early part of the 20th century, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) were in conflict with the Salvation Army, which they referred to as the “Starvation Army.” It used to be a very big thing among Christians to say that we didn’t need to worry about earthly possessions because God would reward us in the afterlife. Well, the Wobblies weren’t too keen on that. They had this thing about eating.

So in 1911, Joe Hill wrote another of his songs, “The Preacher and the Slave” — often referred to as the refrain, “Pie in the Sky.” It is a parody of the hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By.” Here is the great Utah Phillips doing the song live. “Folk music belongs to everybody…” That’s no lie!

I can’t decide if I should do a straight series of worker songs. But when in doubt, I always go with a set schedule. So I thought today we would listen to Woody Guthrie doing “Union Burying Ground.” It is a commemoration of all the union workers and organizers who were killed in the struggle. It is filled with a religious conviction. It celebrates martyrdom. For example, it says, “Every new grave brings a thousand members…” And also, “I’m a gonna sleep in a union coffin…” These are committed statements.

As I noted before, I don’t have much ability when it comes to faith. This is why I make a terrible activist. You can’t work for change unless you think it is a real possibility. Cynicism gets you nowhere. At the same time, our own cynicism is the capitalists’ greatest tool. The last refuge of a conservative is, “They’re all the same! It’s all corrupt!” John Stuart Mill said, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” He wasn’t talking about the capitalist class, but he should have been.

Today, we’ll do one of the classics, “There Is Power in a Union.” It was written by Joe Hill, just two years before the state put him to death for being a labor activist. Of course, that wasn’t the explicit reason that he was executed. But it rarely was. It was trivial to get labor organizers convicted by a jury of their “peers” for pretty much anything. It is as I say more and more: the justice system has always been about reinforcing power and never about justice.

This version is by folk musician Joe Glazer. And the video is of the violence that erupted as a result of the Little Steel strike. People talk about how violent unions are. You will note who is violent in this video — it isn’t the workers. I find it perhaps the greatest triumph of the power elite that they have managed to make most workers have a bad opinion of the one kind of institution that has done them the greatest good: unions.

I’m going to try to do a little series of union or at least worker songs for the Morning Music posts. Since it was brought up the other day in comment, I thought I would start with Billy Bragg performing his song “There Is Power in a Union.” It is not the Joe Hill song (which I will do tomorrow). It is his own lyrics to more or less the melody of “Battle Cry of Freedom.”

He introduces it with a brief discussion of faith. It is something that is near to my heart. But it also explains why I would never make a good activist of any kind. I’m not good with faith. I don’t believe in promises. My experience in life is that things stay the same, but just get more so. But I want to believe. And I know that it is true that there is power in a union.

There are few things I hate quite as much as television commercials that use music that I like to sell their pathetic products. And that is especially true of Summer of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, because I don’t much like anyone enjoying that because I think people like it for all the wrong reasons. So I’m kind of annoyed to be hearing a commercial for something using the third movement of that piece. It is thrilling — far more so than whatever it is that is being sold.

One thing that I always liked about Vivaldi as a player is that his stuff wasn’t hard — but it sounded like it was. Most composers are the opposite: they write stuff that sounds easy and is really hard. But in the following performance of the presto from Summer, Mari Samuelsen makes it look and sound easy, even as she flies all over the fingerboard.

I went through a period when I really liked Nanci Griffith — especially her live album, One Fair Summer Evening. I’ve always liked that kind of alt-country — or at least country music that was homey and not racist and nationalistic. Griffith has always been politically liberal. In fact, I saw her live when when I was in graduate school. I went with a Republican friend of mine, and she was none too fond of some of the things that Griffith had said. It served her right: I could never get a straight answer out of the woman about why she was a Republican other than that her family had always been Republican. That made absolutely no sense to me.

Anyway, I’m especially fond of the song “Once in a Very Blue Moon” — originally off her 1984 album of the same name. It’s a beautiful song by Pat Alger and Eugene Levine. It was eventually recorded by Alger on his 1991 album, True Love & Other Short Stories. It doesn’t much matter who does it — that’s the mark of a great song. You can hear Alger’s version of the song on YouTube. But Griffith really does belt that song out. It’s hard not to love it.

There is something very special about television theme songs. It wasn’t until I started doing these Morning Music posts that I realized just how often it is these songs that go over and over in my head. But it is hardly surprising. Even a really big hit will only be played so much over a short period of time. But you may hear a theme song for years. And when I was a kid, we actually watched reruns, because there really wasn’t anything else on.

So today I bring you the song that has been oppressing me all day long: the theme to Bonanza. When I was a kid, I didn’t much like westerns. In fact, it wasn’t until my early teens when I saw A Fistful of Dollars that I realized that westerns could be really cool. Most westerns I had seen up to that time had been too “clean.” I didn’t like that and I still don’t. But there was a reason that I liked Bonanza: Hoss, played by Bonanza — the Sergeant Schultz of the old west. (I mean as the genial fat guy archetype.)

The Bonanza theme was written by the songwriting team of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Actually, although they were both composers, when working together, Livingston wrote the music. And Evans wrote the lyrics. You can hear some of those lyrics in a cut version from the pilot of the show and from Buddy Morrow’s recording of it. But let’s listen to Johnny Cash do his version with a different set of lyrics:

I continue to be appalled by the fact that over the past 60 years, the capitalist class has managed to get the working class to turn against itself and see the world from the perspective of the rich. The first thing that most people think of when they hear the word “union” is “violence.” But the violence was first and predominantly caused by the capitalists. And to this day, no one questions but that companies should be able to organize themselves. But the idea that workers should be allowed the same right is disputed. The truth is that the rich will one day regret what they are doing to our society. They ought to be able to give a little to get a lot. But right now, they can take a lot and get a lot more. So they are.

In the early 1930s, the Harlan County War took place — an actual armed conflict between coal miners on one side and the coal mine owners (with the complete assistance of local law enforcement) on the other. It was only ended when state and federal troops were sent in to disarm the miners. This is the way it always is: the executive and the judiciary take the side of capital. So many workers lost their lives in the struggle. But today, workers who benefit from that struggle see them as the aggressors. It’s incredibly sad.

Florence Reece was the wife of Sam Reece, an organizer with the United Mine Workers, during the Harlan County War. After being terrorized by the local sheriff, JH Blair, she wrote “Which Side Are You On?” to the tune of the hymn “Lay the Lily Low.” It is saying that you have to pick a side in the struggle: “They say in Harlan County; There are no neutrals there; You’ll either be a union man; or a thug for JH Blair.” It went on to become one of the great songs of the labor movement. Here it is sung by Natalie Merchant with a nice photo montage:

My sister was telling me about how her husband is always complaining that he can’t sleep. I immediately thought of the song from the 1950s that starts, “I couldn’t get to sleep at all last night.” So I went searching for it online and all that came up was “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep at All” by The 5th Dimension. I don’t especially have a problem with that song, but by and large, I find The 5th Dimension to be pretty anemic stuff. And that definitely wasn’t the song that I was looking for.

Then I remembered that the refrain of the song was, “Tossin’ and Turnin’.” Interestingly, the lyric is not actually “I couldn’t get to sleep at all last night.” A Google search of that (without the quotes) really does bring up nothing but The 5th Dimension song. The actual lyric is, “I couldn’t sleep at all last night.” And that very similar phrase (again, without quotes) brings up nothing but “Tossin’ and Turnin'” by Bobby Lewis. He didn’t seem to have much success besides this song. It’s sad, because much of the rest of his work is equally great. (This was originally a live version of the song, it was taken down.)

I really don’t like the band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Part of it is just that whole southern — draped in the Confederate flag — thing. Certainly, I came down firmly on the other side of their whine fest against Neil Young. But another thing is that I just don’t think that much of them. They are certainly a competent band. But they are highly slappable even without the “southern pride that absolutely positively has nothing to do with racism” nonsense.

I want to discuss “Freebird.” My friend Will cannot pick up a guitar without starting to play “Freebird.” The reason for this is that it is about the only song that he knows. And I hate the song. Lyrically, it’s just pathetic — a man whining about how he needs to be “free.” But what kills it is the music which plods along, “God this song is really boring!” So it really bugs me when Will plays the song.

But I can’t be too down on Will, because he made me laugh a great deal once in reference to “Freebird.” We were listening to a live version of the song. It might be the version that I’ve embedded below. If I had to sum it up, I’d have to say it was: inauthentic. It can’t decide if it’s rock or country. It’s a muddle, and it errs too far into silly country. So it’s almost too much when Ronnie Van Zant croons “I’m as free as a bird now” (5:25 in the video). But then he yells out to the audience, “How ’bout you?!” And Will, without missing a beat, said, “How ’bout your horse?!” It still makes me laugh, because in those four words, Will summed up the pretense of the song and the band.

Well, yesterday I mentioned that I was researching today’s post. Norm commented on the Morning Music featuring The Manhattan Transfer that if people liked that song they should check out Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. I thought I would second that recommendation.

The connection between this two posts is that Annie Ross had written the song “Twisted.” In fact, the trio recorded the song. You can hear their album cut on YouTube. But you know, I try to limit the morning posts to actual live performances — or something similar. So here they are in 1961 at Jazz à Juan doing the Eddie Vinson[1] song “Four” backed by Les McCann. I assume the group created the lyrics, but I don’t know.

If you want to hear some amazing scatting, check out this video on YouTube.

[1] According to Wikipedia, the song is often misidentified as a Miles Davis composition because he recorded it first. I checked my fake book, and sure enough, it says “Miles Davis.”

I was doing some research for tomorrow’s Morning Music. What I wanted was to find a live version of Joni Mitchell doing the song “Twisted.” It’s an interesting song. It is based upon a saxophone solo by Wardell Gray in a session with Al Haig. Annie Ross took the solo and molded it into the classic song we all know today. But since I couldn’t find a Mitchell version of the song, I went searching for Bette Midler because I knew she did it on her self-titled album.

All I could find was a version of the song that Midler did with Rosie O’Donnell on her show. It’s not exactly a great version, but it’s fun. I seem to be one of the few people on the planet who likes O’Donnell. I don’t know what it is about her, but far too many people have an attitude toward her. Whatever. But as she will admit, she isn’t a great singer. She does, however, make up for it with a raw love for music that many greater musicians would be well served to copy.

But the real reason I knew I had to share this clip is the guy at the piano: Marc Shaiman. What the hell was he playing piano for a daytime talk show? The only reason I know what he looks like is that years ago I watched Broadcast News and he played one of the composers who come into the studio to preview the new theme. It turns out that Shaiman has worked with Midler a lot. Anyway, here it is: