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02 Sep 07 - 01:14 PM (#2138966) Subject: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Stringsinger (from Sunday's Chicago Tribune): Seeger protests Stalin --better late than never ALBANY, N.Y. - Pete Seeger has the Joe Stalin blues. Decades after drifting away from the Communist Party, the 88-year-old banjo-picker has written a song about the Soviet leader that's as scathing as any tune in the folk legend's long career. "I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. He ruled with an iron hand. He put an end to the dreams of so many in every land," Seeger wrote in "The Big Joe Blues." Seeger said he left the Communist Party around 1950 and apologized years ago for not recognizing that Josef Stalin was a "very cruel misleader." But he told The Associated Press on Friday that the song he finally finished this year is a first for him, despite three visits to the Soviet Union beginning in the '60s. "It's the first overt song about the Soviet Union," Seeger said during a phone interview from his Hudson Valley home in Beacon. "I think I should have though, when I was in the Soviet Union -- I should have asked, 'Can I see one of the old gulags?'" Seeger calls it a yodeling blues song and said it's the sort of song his old buddy Woody Guthrie might have written in the '50s. |
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02 Sep 07 - 11:37 PM (#2139365) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: alanabit Yes, a lot of good people were fooled by Stalin at the time. However, most of them, like Pete Seeger, told the truth when they realised what he was. I fear we may have to wait a good bit longer for the Pinochet apologists to appreciate that the guy did have his flaws... There seems to be someting about the word "communist", which puts you beyond redemption. I suspect Pete Seeger has enough sense of humour not to be bothered too much by this. |
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03 Sep 07 - 07:00 AM (#2139538) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Folk Form # 1 Didn't Ewan Maccoll (I know I've probably mis-spelt his name) write a song called The Ballad of Joe Stalin in the 50s? Knowing Maccoll, it was probably less critical than Seeger's song. |
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03 Sep 07 - 08:07 AM (#2139577) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Wolfgang Ballad of Stalin (MacColl) Wolfgang |
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03 Sep 07 - 11:15 AM (#2139690) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: dick greenhaus Finally! an answer to "When will they ever learn?" |
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03 Sep 07 - 04:25 PM (#2139958) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Charley Noble Be nice to see the rest of the lyrics. Charley Noble |
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03 Sep 07 - 06:06 PM (#2140026) Subject: ADD: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: McGrath of Harlow JOE STALIN BLUES (Pete Seeger, 2007) I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe, He ruled with an iron hand He put an end to the dreams Of so many in every land He had a chance to make A brand new start for the human race Instead he set it back Right in the same nasty place I got the Big Joe Blues (Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast) I got the Big Joe Blues (Do this job, no questions asked) I got the Big Joe Blues. |
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03 Sep 07 - 08:28 PM (#2140127) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Joe_F Penguin Egg: Yes, Ewan MacColl did write a song in praise of Stalin, "The Ballad of Stalin". Peggy Seeger included it, with due apologies, as an appendix to _The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook_. The copyright date is 1992, but he seems to have written it in 1956, after Stalin's death but before Khrushchev's denunciation. John Manifold, the Australian Communist poet to whom we are indebted for "The Griesly Bride" and "The Bunyip and the Whistling Kettle", wrote a treacly elegy at about the same time. |
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04 Sep 07 - 09:35 AM (#2140555) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Janice in NJ If you read the entire article in the August 31 issue of The New York Sun by historian (and Friends of Old-Time Music founder) Ron Radosh, you will discover that Pete Seeger wrote The Big Joe Blues in 1982. The condensation in The Chicago Tribune is old news. As other people have pointed out, what Seeger said to Radosh is substantially the same as what he wrote in the first edition of Where Have All the Flowers Gone? in 1993: "At any rate, today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was simply a 'hard driver' and not a supremely cruel misleader." That being said, Radosh is the latest in a group of critics who have raised an important issue. That is, why do so many biographers, journalists, filmmakers, and historians tread so lightly (if at all) when dealing with subjects who have a Communist Party past? Not all of the critics who have raised this issue have been on the political right. Some have been independent socialists, Trotskyists, or anarchists. Others have simply been people of all political leanings who feel the issue is important enough to deal with squarely. |
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04 Sep 07 - 11:08 AM (#2140622) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Stringsinger "Uncle Joe" even fooled FDR. Man, the naievete of the Left folkies in those days was amazing! I always had doubts about Stalin and never praised him even if I didn't know what was really going on. I don't like militarists of any stripe whether they emerge as monsters like Stalin or not. I go with Smedley Butler. I think that biographers, journalists, filmakers and historians who are sympathetic to Progressive ideas are afraid of the Rethuglicans making hay out of the excesses of the Political Left which apparently they have done successfully. That said, there is no Centrist position. It's a myth. "They say in Harlan County, all centrists are in flight. You'll either be in the Union Or a thug for the political Right." Which side are you on? Frank |
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27 Apr 14 - 08:00 PM (#3622662) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Thomas Stern Tuesday, October 09, 2007 An open letter to Pete Seeger: About your Stalin song by Karl Dallas http://folknews.blogspot.com/2007/10/open-letter-to-pete-seeger-about-your.html |
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27 Apr 14 - 08:51 PM (#3622672) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Joe Offer I got this article from the Washington Post, but I guess I have to admit it probably caught more attention on the Fox News Website. Pete Seeger Sings Out Against Stalin By MICHAEL HILL The Associated Press Friday, August 31, 2007; 3:26 PM ALBANY, N.Y. -- Pete Seeger has the Joe Stalin blues. Decades after drifting away from the Communist Party, the 88-year-old banjo-picker has written a song about the Soviet leader that's as scathing as any tune in the folk legend's long career. "I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. He ruled with an iron hand. He put an end to the dreams of so many in every land," Seeger wrote in "The Big Joe Blues." Seeger said he left the Communist Party around 1950 and apologized years ago for not recognizing that Josef Stalin was a "very cruel misleader." But he told The Associated Press on Friday that the song he finally finished this year is a first for him, despite three visits to the Soviet Union beginning in the '60s. "It's the first overt song about the Soviet Union," Seeger said during a phone interview from his Hudson Valley home in Beacon. "I think I should have though, when I was in the Soviet Union - I should have asked, `Can I see one of the old gulags?'" Seeger calls it a yodeling blues song, and sings the chorus so it sounds like "I got the Big Joe Bloo-ew-ew-ews!" He said it's the sort of song his old buddy Woody Guthrie might have written in the '50s. The song's existence also touches on a sensitive political issue: the view by critics on the right that the left recognized Stalin's tyranny only belatedly. Partial lyrics were cited Friday by author Ron Radosh in a New York Sun column. Radosh, an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, accused Seeger in the newspaper two months ago of failing to criticize the communist regimes he once backed. Radosh took banjo lessons from Seeger in the '50s - two dollars for three hours - though Radosh took a very different political path from his childhood hero. In a follow-up column Friday, Radosh said he was tickled to receive a warm letter last week from his old idol with a copy of the song attached. He provided a copy of the song to the AP on Friday, and said he still admires Seeger. "I think he is a man of principle," Radosh said. "He's often wrong." Seeger said he hopes to publish the song in the folk magazine "Sing Out." Though Seeger's voice has been reduced to a throaty croak, he said he has performed the song for friends. Seeger is still politically active, concerned about the fate of humanity - and puckish. He agreed to answer questions on the phone from an AP reporter only if the story included lines from a song he wrote after the Sept. 11 attacks about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It goes like this: "Don't say it can't be done, the battle's just begun, take it from Dr. King, you too can learn to sing. So drop the gun!" "I get the whole crowd singing on it," Seeger said. "I've never failed to get an audience singing, whether they're 8 years old or 80 years old." As far as I can tell, the lyrics posted by McGrath of Harlow above, are the entire song. |
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28 Apr 14 - 06:29 PM (#3622813) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues From: Young Buchan 'Yes, Ewan MacColl did write a song in praise of Stalin, "The Ballad of Stalin".' He is also sometimes attributed (whether accurately or not, I don't know) with the song that begins: Hitler's a non-smoker and Churchill smokes cigars; They're both as keen as mustard on imperialistic wars. But Uncle Joe's a worker and a very decent chap; He even smokes a pipe and wears a taxi-drivers cap. The German drive on Stalingrad is ging mighty slow; They've got a room in no. 9 of Slobaskaya Row. Hitler makes the blunders and his generals take the rap; But Joe just smokes his pipe and wears his taxi-driver's cap. It would be difficult today to say which is less PC - the attitude to Stalin or the attitude to pipe smoking.
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17 Apr 16 - 03:14 PM (#3785771) Subject: RE: The Big Joe Blues (Pete Seeger) From: keberoxu I wonder if this has been actually published as a song. If it has, I fail to locate it in my search just now. The lyrics turn up in news-media articles online (which is where I first saw them, in 2007). There is a website called unionsongs which lists the words. Does this thing have a tune? |
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27 Mar 17 - 01:36 PM (#3846979) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,keberoxu Never mind whether or not the lyric has a tune. What bothers me today, is this: Stalin was Uncle Joe to FDR, I guess to Truman as well. Today, it is more like Cousin Vladimir, according to US President Trump. Wonder if people will be writing songs about Putin one day? |
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24 Aug 18 - 02:16 PM (#3946054) Subject: RE: Pete Seeger songs From: GUEST,keberoxu I have a question regarding the Joseph Stalin piece. This is the one Seeger authored and promulgated late in life. Does it have a tune? Or is it just a recitation? |
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24 Aug 18 - 06:00 PM (#3946088) Subject: ADD: The Big Joe Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Joe Offer Hi, keberoxu. I don't think that one has been posted at Mudcat. I found this at https://unionsong.com/u580.html The Big Joe BluesA Poem by Pete Seeger©Pete Seeger 2007 I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe, I got the Big Joe Blues
I didn't find any evidence of a tune, and couldn't find a recording. |
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25 Aug 18 - 12:09 PM (#3946202) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: keberoxu All right, one of the interviews posted to this thread says a specific thing or to, to justify my question. See post dated 27 April 2014 which references The Washington Post. Here are the details: Pete Seeger, interviewed over the phone, "calls it a yodeling blues song, and sings the chorus . . ." and: "hopes to publish the song in the folk magazine 'Sing Out.' " Okay, I don't read Sing Out. There have to be Mudcatters who do so. Did this song ever turn up, with or without a tune, in 'Sing Out' magazine? |
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25 Aug 18 - 03:11 PM (#3946226) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Joe Offer Nope. No sign of "Big Joe" or "Joe Blues" in the Sing Out! Song Index. The index covers Volumes 1-55, which is all the issues that have been printed so far. -Joe- |
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26 Aug 18 - 05:27 AM (#3946285) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST The truth of the matter is that any revolutionary move from a capitalist economy to a communist/ radical socialist one, even today would involve loss of life and massive social upheaval. In the context of the second world war, and the concerted attack on Russia by the "Axis powers", the results are unsurprising. China has lifted many millions of people out of poverty through the pursuit of socialist policies and curtailment of what we regard as democratic institutions. The Chinese government now appear to be relaxing some of their economic structures, but the people have learned the value of self discipline, while we demand more personal freedom without regard to our perilous economic situation. |
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26 Aug 18 - 05:32 AM (#3946286) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,akenaton Sorry that was me and I forgot to add that Mr Seeger seemed to me a rather confused Communist......his confusion seems to have worsened with age......or perhaps his Stalin song was an attempt to rescue his reputation in a rapidly changing "Folk" world. |
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26 Aug 18 - 04:15 PM (#3946380) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,keberoxu Old friend, I'm not sure Mr. Seeger was any sort of Communist at all. This is a man who wrote an idealizing song lyric with chorus lines like "and I was never alone, "and I was not far from home..." floating in a small boat in the badly polluted Hudson River, before the big clean-up. Where did he get that capacity to visualize an ideal with pollution literally floating the boat he was on? |
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26 Aug 18 - 05:46 PM (#3946395) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,akenaton I'm sorry keberoxu, but you will have to explain that one to me, I don't understand your meaning. I have read that Mr Seeger was a Communist for many years, and it is a truism that once you accept the doctrine you never really refute it. It ties in with the assumption that all liberals are socialists, when in reality, most liberals would be appalled by a radical socialist regime.....they just don't realise much about humanity and have assumed great political power through the offices of the various media, they have lost touch with the real people all over the world and like the new folk music intelligencia, speak only to themselves. I'm sorry to say that Mr Seeger appears to have been only a liberal masquerading as a socialist......a very dangerous species. There is no doubt that someday we will all be forced to accept socialism, whether we wish to or not, simply through necessity. No one should assume that socialism will be any sort of Utopia, quite the reverse, but there will be no viable alternative. |
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26 Aug 18 - 06:16 PM (#3946397) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,keberoxu Explain idealism, my friend? I wouldn't dare; my own prejudice is toward the stoic, not the idealist, philosophy. You see, I tipped my hand there. Who but a flaming idealist could visualize home sweet home while surrounded, about and beneath, by a badly polluted river? The socialism of which you speak, sounds anything but idealistic, and in this we are in agreement; I think Seeger chose what he chose, bad as this sounds, the better to seek refuge from something else, rather than because it was the appropriate choice for him. Seeger is not the first idealist to flee the pragmatic materialism of the generation into which he was born. Thus, it is sadly no surprise that he would have enormous blind spots and miss what was in plain sight to others. It means that Seeger is not the happiest role model in terms of the choices he held to. I listened for years to what Seeger had to say, and I took note when he expressed himself with questions rather than answers. He questioned censorship and asked how it would be possible to get free speech on television; and that's a darned good question to this day. The answers in which he sought refuge tell a different story. Seeger was not a simple man and there will always be paradox and ambiguity in him the closer one looks. |
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26 Aug 18 - 06:33 PM (#3946398) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Steve Shaw You are on a hiding to nothing, keberoxu. You are allowing a once-persistent troll, excluded from below the line, to engage you in a non-musical argument in a place where it shouldn't be happening. Your business, of course. |
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27 Aug 18 - 02:31 AM (#3946437) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,akenaton Thank you for that considered and reasonable response keberoxu. Very well written......I would agree with a large portion of it. |
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08 Oct 19 - 05:07 PM (#4012594) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: keberoxu My apologies if the link I (attempt to) provide in this post has been posted already, elsewhere on the Mudcat forum. This is Ron Radosh, who triggered the whole "Big Joe Blues" thing. First he wrote an editorial in light of a recently released Pete Seeger documentary, asking Seeger to "repent" as regards Stalin. Then Seeger sent him a letter, which Radosh details in New York Sun, August 31, 2007. Radosh's follow-through editorial reports that "Mr. Seeger attached the words and music for a song he had written" to Seeger's letter to Radosh. Which, I guess, is the closest thing I'm going to get to an answer to my question. The answer being: yes, "The Big Joe Blues" does have music. |
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08 Oct 19 - 05:14 PM (#4012595) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: keberoxu And by the way, I'm looking evidence to support the assertion in the post dated 4 Sept 2007 by Janice in NJ, that 1982 is the date when Seeger wrote "The Big Joe Blues." 1982? Would somebody be specific? Because I don't find this date. |
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08 Oct 19 - 06:52 PM (#4012610) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jack Campin Did Seeger ever apologize for the murderous Zionist song "The Road to Eilat" he translated for The Hootenanny Song Book (1963)? |
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08 Oct 19 - 07:27 PM (#4012614) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,Starship keberoxu, perhaps you missed this post. Subject: ADD: The Big Joe Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Joe Offer Date: 24 Aug 18 - 06:00 PM |
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09 Oct 19 - 11:14 AM (#4012702) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: PHJim In Boy Scouts in the fifties we used to sing a song, to the tune of Vive La Compagnie called Vive La Joe Stalin. I recall a couple of verses: Come all you Communists let us unite, Vive La Joe Stalin. We will make you our satellite, Vive La Joe Stalin. Vive La, vive la, vive la Joe, Vive La, vive la, vive la Joe, Vive la Joe, Vive la Joe, Vive La Joe Stalin. Yuri Gagarin's our cosmonaut, Vive La Joe Stalin. We put him up on our very first shot, Vive La Joe Stalin. Vive La, vive la. . . |
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09 Oct 19 - 11:33 AM (#4012704) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Stringsinger Just before he passed, I had a conversation with Pete. He did a 180 on the Soviet Union. I asked him what he thought of Gorbachev. He said, "He's just another apparatchik". Pete, like Robeson were disillusioned. If many members of the Communist Party of the USA were interviewed today, I bet they would come to the same conclusion. The USSR was not a legitimate Socialist society. Under Stalin, it was a dictatorship. The CPUSA did a lot of good for this country, supporting labor unions, women's rights, racial equality, fighting the class struggle and most of them, (I knew many of them) had no clue as to what Stalin was up to. The idea that they were taking orders from Moscow is absurd. They had rose colored glasses because they wanted to believe in a more just, tolerant, loving world. |
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09 Oct 19 - 08:42 PM (#4012799) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,Gerry PHJim wrote, *In Boy Scouts in the fifties we used to sing a song... *Yuri Gagarin's our cosmonaut, *Vive La Joe Stalin. *We put him up on our very first shot, *Vive La Joe Stalin. They put Gagarin up in 1961, so if the Boy Scouts sang this in the fifties, they were well ahead of their time. |
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10 Oct 19 - 04:03 AM (#4012824) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,akenaton Interesting reading, but it does call into question the folk community's attitude to Burl Ives as opposed to Mr Seeger. I see double standards at work. I believed Mr Ives to be a genuine folk singer in the true sense, but he was ostracised by the politically inspired performers and his career ruined? |
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10 Oct 19 - 04:17 AM (#4012827) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jim Carroll Burl Ives was ostracised because he co-operated with the McCarthy witch hunt trials when they were diving left wingers out of the entertainment industry - not because of his politics He was one of several folk musicians to do so Your postings are persitently political Ake so stop slagging up those of us who find them obnoxious and take the opposite view If you are allowed to take a political stance so is everybody else To suggest otherwise is MacCathyism - a philosophy that shamed a nation Jim Carroll |
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10 Oct 19 - 05:12 AM (#4012835) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,HiLo co - operation with McCarthy was a very political act. to suggest that wasn’t,t is absolute nonsense. |
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10 Oct 19 - 06:56 AM (#4012858) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jim Carroll "is absolute nonsense." And is also very political HiLo Jim |
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10 Oct 19 - 06:56 AM (#4012860) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jim Carroll Incidentally - I believe Josh White was another Jim |
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10 Oct 19 - 01:29 PM (#4012915) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Stringsinger Pete told me about Josh. The FBI were hounding him. He received death threats. He was a black man in trouble in a white world. Pete forgave him. Burl's situation was different. He had achieved popularity on a commercial industry level. Many blacklisted people eventually reclaimed their jobs after McCarthy was defeated. They were courageous to stand up to McCarthy. There was a time when folk music was deemed subversive. It got so bad that Pete who (although he didn't invent the term) popularized the concept of a hootenanny and was barred from appearing on Jack Linkletter's Hootenanny TV show. It was like Charlie Parker being banned from Birdland but the former was strictly on political grounds. |
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10 Oct 19 - 02:23 PM (#4012926) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jack Campin There was safety in numbers in praising Stalin when the full story about what he was responsible for hadn't become public knowledge. There was safety in far greater numbers when he had become a publicly demonized subject of fantastic exaggeration by people who wanted to sweep their own genocidal crimes under the carpet. Zionism is different. It was a safe option for Americans to support its racism, thieving and mass murder when Seeger did that song, but it is still just as dangerous for them to oppose it. You can lose your career that way. Very few Americans have recanted their youthful Zionism in effective, public statements. (Chomsky comes to mind). I don't think Seeger had enough guts to face the damage he'd done. |
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10 Oct 19 - 02:53 PM (#4012930) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jim Carroll I have to say I wasn't aware of THIS before Jack's heads up - thanks for that I have no time for Zionism and, while I have tried to understand Stalinism, am no supporter of that either On the other hand, taking Seeger's actions in context I'm not sure I'm prepared to wholeheartedly condemn him for things he did or sang over half a century ago Many of us, me included, bent over backwards to hope that Israel turned out a half-decent refuge for those who escaped the Holocaust - my intended marriage to the daughter of Holocaust survivors ended when her I fell out with her mother refusing to accept her describing the then Israeli Government as "a bunch of murdering Fascists" - she was right, of course We live and learn if we are lucky and try to make up for past mistakes From Pete's track record regarding Israel, I think at least he has made the effort Jim Carroll |
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11 Oct 19 - 03:30 AM (#4012979) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,HiLo Couldn’t,t resist could you Jim ? |
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11 Oct 19 - 03:45 AM (#4012981) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jim Carroll "Couldn’t,t resist could you Jim ?" Resist what? If you mean you, how could I when you're so attractive I can't imagine you are suggesting I shouldn't criticise Israel Jim |
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11 Oct 19 - 05:21 AM (#4012993) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: Jack Campin Somebody farted - it's only polite to ignore it. Nobody posts anonymously on threads like this with honest intentions. |
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11 Oct 19 - 07:36 AM (#4013013) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: GUEST,HiLo Yes, they do Jack. |
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11 Oct 19 - 09:35 AM (#4013026) Subject: RE: The Joe Stalin Blues (Pete Seeger) From: PHJim GUEST,Gerry - PM Date: 09 Oct 19 - 08:42 PM PHJim wrote, *In Boy Scouts in the fifties we used to sing a song... *Yuri Gagarin's our cosmonaut, *Vive La Joe Stalin. *We put him up on our very first shot, *Vive La Joe Stalin. They put Gagarin up in 1961, so if the Boy Scouts sang this in the fifties, they were well ahead of their time. **************************************************************** You are right GUEST,Gerry. This sliver of memory often lets me down these days. I guess I was still in Scouts into the sixties. |