J. Galt,

Welcome aboard the Mudcat. As you can see, your request was an 'easy one.' If you didn't get to search the forum, one thread says everything I know about the song. Click here if you haven't already found the thread.

The song brings back some memories for me. As a very young folkie, some friends and I bought tickets to see Joan Baez. She was performing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. about 50 miles away. About 6 of us piled into someone's father's station wagon (he had to drive) for our first real "folk" concert. Well, Joan had an opening act. His name was Pete Seeger. I had barely heard of him, buy Joan was trying to expose her audience to the "real Mc Coy". It had not been so long before that Pete had been blacklisted because he was a "Commie sympathizer."

Well, if you are Pete Seeger, an old friend of Lead Belly's, and you are singing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., well you'd just have to sing this song. I think Pete was along for the incident in D.C. that provoked Huddie to write the song. An additional irony is that Constitution Hall was a "bourgeois hall" run by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They were infamous for allegedly refusing to allow a famous black woman to sing in their hall. Some 'Catter will refresh my memory with the name of this famous woman.

Thanks for the memory J. Galt. Hope you stick around.

Roger in Baltimore