‘I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night’
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execution, Caligiuri concludes, “Since then, songs of protest have waxed and
waned with times of turmoil. Out of the Depression strode Woody Guthrie, who
followed in Hill’s footsteps, and like-minded folk singers such as Pete Seeger
and Leadbelly. The 1960s birthed battles over civil rights and the Vietnam War,
and helped forge the careers of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Joan Baez. The spirit
of Joe Hill resonated everywhere, particularly in Country Joe & the Fish’s
Woodstock anthem, ‘1 Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.’”^’
Hill’s musical genius was his ability to take popular tunes and provide
revolutionary lyrics espousing the political message of the IWW and the
concerns of working class people. Hill perceived his songs as educational in
nature, insisting, “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 I maintain
that if a person can put a few cold, common sense facts to a song, and dress
them up in a cloak of humor to take the dryness off of them, he will succeed to
reaching a greater number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent
to read a pamphlet or an editorial on economic science.”'" For example, in
verses set to the popular tune “Ta-Ra-Ra Boom De-Ay,” Hill tells the story of
workers laboring sixteen-hour days for little pay on the wheat harvests of the
Northern Plains. In order to get better pay and conditions, one worker drops his
pitchfork in the threshing machine, while another loosens the wheel on the
farmer’s wagon, causing an accident. It is a call to direct action and sabotage,
concluding,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
That rube is feeling gay;
He learned his lesson quick.
Just through a simple trick.
For fixing greedy slobs.
This is the only way,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
Hill’s most famous composition was “The Preacher and the Slave,”
sung to the tune of the spiritual “Sweet Bye and Bye.” In the song. Hill
embraces the Marxist perspective that religion was employed by the ruling class
to manipulate and keep the working class in place by promising them a reward
in heaven for toiling without complaint. In his opening verse. Hill proclaimed.
Long-haired preachers come out every night.
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
Chorus:
You will eat, bye and bye.
In that glorious land above the sky;