Larry Cohen, past president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and founding chair of Our Revolution, the successor organization to the Bernie Sanders campaign of 2016, generously lent his name and a short memoir to the liner notes of George Mann’s new album:
“When it comes to A Tribute to Hard Working People Everywhere, Si Kahn and George Mann sure know what they’re singing about. Having both spent many years as close-to-the-ground union organizers, they know first-hand the hardships and challenges everyday working people face—but also how with courage and hope we can organize together to realize our dreams.
“I first met George 25 years ago, when we were both hard-working organizers with the 600,000-member…CWA. Even back then, he was already a fine labor singer and songwriter.
“Si and I go back even further, to 1987, when I asked him to emcee the founding convention of Jobs with Justice, today a powerful national organization working and fighting for the rights of all workers. Si played important roles as an organizer in such historic winning union campaigns as the Brookside Strike in ‘Bloody Harlan’ County, Kentucky with the UMWA, and the J.P. Stevens Campaign across the South with ACTWU.
“Si wrote these 21 songs (one a co-write with Tom Chapin) to celebrate workers and our organizing. As Si turns 80 [April 23, 2024], please join me in celebrating not only generations of courageous union organizers and musicians but your own life and work, as we organize and build our movement together: ‘For the Union Makes Us Strong’”
In his concept of this new album, Mann cites “two guiding principles: getting a bunch of Si’s unreleased songs and recordings out there, and including selections from some of the many artists who have recorded Si’s songs over the years. We also wanted to keep the focus on songs of workers, work, and the trade union movement that is so dear to both of us.”
Among the voices we hear, apart from Kahn and Mann themselves, are Peggy Seeger (still with us at 89), Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Vivian Nesbit and John Dillon, Michael Johnathon and Odetta (who passed in 2008), Laurie Lewis, Joe Jencks, John McCutcheon, Tom Chapin, Kathy Mattea and a crew of musicians and backup singers Mann works with. Clever engineering allows voices from past recordings to meld seamlessly with today’s performers.
The 62-minute album also serves to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Si’s album New Wood with re-recordings of such songs as “Aragon Mill,” “Gone Gonna Rise Again,” “Lawrence Jones,” and “Truck Driving Woman.” I thought I knew quite a few of Si Kahn’s songs, but most of these were new to me. Not every one of them, of course, is going to find its way onto picket lines and into union halls in the very near future, but some will like the labor classics alluded to in more than one number.
Solidarity is a natural theme, and “Solidarity Day” dates from September 19, 1981, performed when over 250,000 union members and supporters filled the streets of Washington, D.C., to protest Pres. Reagan’s firing of 12,500 air traffic controllers, his opening salvo on the labor movement that set the tone for the next two generations of right-wing battles against organized labor. I like to quote some of the most moving and poetic lyrics in songs (although the printed texts available here do not always coincide with the sung words): “There’s a lot of heroes gone over to the other shore / Each one did their work and had their say / Their vision leads us onward towards a future bright and fair / We follow on Solidarity Day.”
Organizing is another topic frequently addressed, starting with the opening number, “Back When Times Were Hard,” honoring the union organizers who at great personal sacrifice helped whole communities of workers make a better life for themselves: “Outside the gates at midnight / In a hundred company towns / They talked about the truth that makes us free / The power of the union / The strength that’s in us all / The vision of a day that’s still to be…. Some of them were beaten / Some got thrown in jail / Some of them were ridden out of town / But the unions that they organized / Are here with us today / Proud and strong, they’ll never keep us down.”
“The Old Labor Hall” celebrates the Socialist Party Labor Hall in Barre, Vermont, erected in 1900 by immigrant Italian granite workers and saved from the wrecking ball by Chet Briggs. The song honors the procession of historic organizers and lecturers who addressed crowds there: “Big Bill Haywood stoops to enter / He’s nearly six feet tall / Bringing children from Lawrence /To the Old Labor Hall / He nods to Emma Goldman / So fiery yet so small / She’s arguing with Eugene Debs / At the Old Labor Hall / [chorus] We still tell their stories / We still share their pride / ’Cross a century of struggle / We’re still on their side.”
Another nostalgic number is “They All Sang Bread and Roses”: “The more I study history / The more I seem to find / That in every generation / There were times just like that time / When folks like you and me / Who thought that they were all alone / Within this honored Movement / Found a home / [chorus] And they all sang ‘Bread and Roses’ / ‘Joe Hill’ and ‘Union Maid’ / They linked their arms and told each other / We are not afraid / ‘Solidarity Forever’ / Would go rolling through the hall / ‘We Shall Overcome’ together / One and all.”
How many times have you driven by a church whose signage outside reads “You are the ‘U’ in Church?” Si recalls: “I can’t remember where or in which organizing campaign I saw the fading poster, but there it was, edges curling up, thumbtacked to the wall, in some comparably fading union hall: You are the ‘U’ in Union. What else could I do except write this song?” It has a tone that summons up revival meetings and a brand of Christianity that is closer to the Sermon on the Mount than the commandments from Mount Sinai: “Blessed are the weak / Blessed are the poor / Blessed those who love their neighbor / Blessed are the children / Blessed are the meek / Blessed are all those who labor / [chorus] Lift up your eyes / Lift up your voice / Come to the great reunion / Give us your hand / Join in our band / You are the ‘U’ in Union / [verse] Poor from our birth / Promised this earth / Let us unite and share it / Seeking for justice / Here in this world / We shall one day inherit.”
Another song, “Were You There,” is clearly inspired by the church hymn “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” Except here it’s “when we organized,” “when we stood up to the bosses,” “when we held the line together,” “when we fought for peace and freedom,” etc.
“Hold Our Ground,” sung by Tom Chapin and The Chapin Sisters (Tom’s daughters Abigail and Lily), is a mutual compact for sticking together: “No matter what the future holds / We’ll be outspoken, kind and bold / Whether with poem or clenched fist / We’ll find the ways we can resist / The common good is still our creed / To each according to their need / Though oceans rise and high winds wail / Our quiet courage will prevail.”
“The Power of the Union” speaks of those who are nervous and undecided: “Some people can never say what’s on their mind / In hard times you hardly can find them / There’s always a few who stand first in the line / Hold on ’til there’s hundreds behind them.”
To stay or leave?
Disappearing jobs, and the big question—to stay in your community with your generational roots, or set out for the promised land of jobs and a future; these topics recur in several songs. After “the company boys” have “come down the highway,” in “We’re Not Leaving,” “they take the jobs we worked to build here,” the chorus chimes in: “This is our home and we’re not leaving / These are our jobs and we won’t go / We’ll stand together with our union / This is our work, this is our home.” And in “Go to Work on Monday,” a worker with cotton dust disease is told he can’t work any longer, but without compensation, he needs the work: “The politicians in this state / They’re nothing short of rotten. / They buy us off with fancy words / And sell us out to cotton.”
In “Aragon Mill,” the biggest workplace in town has closed and the singer asks, “Where will I go?” “And the only tune I hear / Is the sound of the wind / As it blows through the town / Weave and spin, weave and spin.”
Another worker makes a different decision, in “Spinning Mills of Home,” to try her chances elsewhere: “I wish that they would write it down / The way someone who knows their work / Can have their labor bought and sold / Like cotton by the pound / It’s just too hard to choose between / A job at home for lousy pay / And making real good money / In some Northern factory town / [chorus] On the highway heading South / On the highway heading North / Just back and forth / Sometimes I feel like a rolling stone / From the rolling mills of Gary / To the rolling hills /And spinning mills of home.”
Harlan County, Ky., made famous in labor’s music history by Florence Reece’s song “Which Side Are You On?” turns up in a couple of numbers on this album. One is an ode to “Lawrence Jones,” a 23-year-old coal miner who was shot to death on the picket line by a company guard. Another is “Long Way to Harlan,” about a man and woman who casually meet all the way out in Los Angeles and recall that they once knew each other back in Harlan.
Labor in its global context enters Kahn’s lyrical universe occasionally, such as in “We’re the Ones.” Sung by Billy Bragg in his pronounced British accent, it implies that workers almost anywhere in the world could sing a song like this, especially those who went through the Thatcher years in the UK: “We’re the ones who did the fighting / We’re the ones who fought their wars / We’re the ones who did the dying / We’re the ones who bear the scars / We’re the ones who built the railroads / We’re the ones who laid the track / All we have we had to fight for / Now they want to take it back.”
I haven’t singled out each and every song on the album, but I’d sure be remiss if I omitted “Truck Driving Woman,” one that I have heard in concert more than once: “You see me on the highway / And you nearly shift your load / You take another look good buddy / And you nearly leave the road / Ain’t you never seen a truck driving woman / Ninety pounds of fire in a five foot frame / And you better move on over / I’m right behind you in the left hand lane.”
Each song is a gem unto itself. What a great gift it would be to your favorite union supporter! Stock up on a few, maybe, ’cause those stockings will be hanging from the mantel pretty soon! This is a tremendous contribution to labor culture. Ordering information can be found on the album website.
Si Kahn & George Mann
Labor Day: A Tribute to Hard Working People Everywhere
SCR-93
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