Today’s Marketplace Morning Report features a piece on the history of labor songs and their role in sustaining strikes and other labor struggles. There is a brief discussion of Joe Hill and excerpts from several labor songs. Here’s a link to an earlier report which includes images from an IWW Songbook: https://www.marketplace.org/2024/08/12/how-song-makes-the-union-strong/ It starts like this:
Union organizer and balladeer Joe Hill, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, once said, “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over.”
and ends with this:
Want to listen to more tunes? Independent labor reporter Kim Kelly curated a playlist of labor and union songs for Smithsonian Folkways. And in 2006, a CD compilation of songs featured in “Harlan County U.S.A.” was published. Here is a Spotify link to that album.