64
Popular Culture Review
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
The solution to this religious brainwashing was for the workingmen of all
countries to unite and take control over the means of production. To the tune of
the hymn ‘There is Power in the Blood,” Hill wrote “There is Power in a
Union,” telling workers.
There is pow’r, there is pow’r
In a band of workingmen.
When they stand hand in hand.
That’s a pow’r, that’s a pow’r
That must mle in every land—
One Industrial Union Grand.
And this power was not silenced by Hill’s execution, for the musical
propagandizing of Hill and other Wobblie minstrels was kept current through
publication of the IWW’s Little Red Song Book. According to Hill’s biographer
Gibbs M. Smith, “Over the years, the contents of The Little Red Song Book
dramatized the class conscious philosophy of the IWW and reflected in many of
the items the spirit, humor, and experiences of migratory and seasonal
workers.”"^
With the crisis of capitalism in 1929 and the onset of the Great
Depression, The Little Red Song Book and the legacy of Joe Hill once again
resonated within the culture. In 1936, composer Earl Robinson and poet Alfred
Hayes met at the Communist Party’s Camp Unity in New York and collaborated
upon “The Ballad of Joe Hill,” or as it is often called “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill
Last Night.” Three years later, Bryan Garman writes, Paul Robeson, “the black
All-American football-player-tumed-communist-cultural worker and civil rights
leader, popularized the legend among left-wing audiences by making the song
part of his repertoire.”"^
Also in 1936, Woody Guthrie left Pampa, Texas, and headed out to
California in order to ascertain what the great migration of Okies really meant.
Guthrie was shocked at the prejudice with which many in California greeted the
Dust Bowl refugees. Traveling by freight, he encountered many former
members of the IWW, and these old Wobblies introduced Guthrie to Joe Hill’s
legendary music. Guthrie began to carry around with him a copy of The Little
Red Song Book. After a sojourn in California and a stint in Oregon working for
the Bonneville Power Administration, Guthrie joined Pete Seeger, Lee Hayes,
and Millard Lampell to form the Almanac Singers, who were performing labor
songs in the tradition of Joe Hill. According to Seeger, “There was a job we
could do, intellectually and organizationally. We could make a singing labor
movement, take up where Joe Hill left off, and carry the tradition on. Woody’s
and Lee’s method of writing songs made sense, taking old tunes and putting new
words to them, not getting picky about being original all the time.”"^ Thus,
Guthrie followed in Hill’s tradition of composing parodies of old standards.