The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #49916 Message #4048539
Posted By: GUEST,henryp
26-Apr-20 - 04:46 AM
Thread Name: DTStudy: Songs of Joe Hill
Subject: RE: DTStudy: Songs of Joe Hill
Joe Hill’s best known song is The Preacher and the Slave - a parody of the hymn Sweet By and By - with the chorus;
You will eat, by and by In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray, live on hay You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
Harry ‘Haywire Mac’ McClintock, another notable Wobbly composer, claimed to be the first person to sing it at a street meeting in Portland; it was an immediate success and the words appeared in the Little Red Songbook of 1911.
From popsike.com;
HAYWIRE MAC by Harry McClintock Folkways Records FD 5272 1972.
Recorded by Sam Eskin. With 4-page insert with descriptive notes.
Harry K. McClintock, better known as Haywire Mac, was a well-known busker often seen and heard in the hobo jungles, union halls, and wherever Wobblies had occasion to gather in their struggles. In the mid-1920s he was a radio entertainer and cut some phonograph records which are collector's items today.
Side One: Hoboes, Wobblies,and Muckers
HALLELUJAH, I'M A BUM; BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN; LONG HAIRED PREACHERS; CASEY JONES (I.W.W. VERSION); ANECDOTE ON JOE HILL; TALE: MARCUS DALY ENTERS HEAVEN;
Side Two: A Lifetime of Song
SUBIC; CASEY JONES (SAUNDER'S ORIGINAL VERSION); JORDAN AM A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL; POOR BOY; PADDY CLANCY; UTAH CARL; UNCLE JIM'S 'REBEL SOLDIER'; ANECDOTE ON PETE WELLS, CANAL BOAT FIREMAN.
From Wikipedia;
"Big Rock Candy Mountain", first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, is a folk song about a hobo's idea of paradise, a modern version of the medieval concept of Cockaigne. It is a place where "hens lay soft boiled eggs" and there are "cigarette trees." McClintock claimed to have written the song in 1895, based on tales from his youth hoboing through the United States, but some believe that at least aspects of the song have existed for far longer. It is catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index No. 6696.
The song was first recorded by McClintock, also known by his "hobo" name of Haywire Mac. McClintock claimed credit for writing the song, though it was likely partially based on other ballads, including "An Invitation to Lubberland" and "The Appleknocker's Lament". Other popular itinerant songs of the day such as "Hobo's Paradise", "Hobo Heaven", "Sweet Potato Mountains" and "Little Streams of Whiskey" likely served as inspiration, as they mention concepts similar to those in "Big Rock Candy Mountain". Before recording the song, McClintock cleaned it up considerably from the version he sang as a street busker in the 1890s.
Folklorist John Greenway published the song in his American Folksongs of Protest (1953), redacting only the second to last line. Bowdlerized versions are included in Irwin Silber's Songs of the Great American West (1967) and Alan Lomax's The Penguin Book of American Folk Songs (1964).