"My Curly-Headed Baby" was also my lullaby sung to me both by my mother and my grandmother. It has had an amazing effect on me to think about it again after all these years when I have not even thought about it.

When it was sung to my younger brother - five years younger than me - I can remember both mum and granny telling me that they they had learned it from Paul Robeson and that he was a very fine and important man and that he helped the miners - two of my uncles had been miners before being killed in the First World War. It was not just that he was a fine entertainer and was in a number of prominent British-produced films in the '30s and '40s but I'm not sure that it is widely known now what an important political figure he was in Britain, during those years.
The Wikipedia summary of him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson
gives a good summary of this great, charismatic man