The Digital Tradition has a number of songs written by and about Joe Hill. Since these are "composed" songs, I think the discussion of them may be limited, and that it might be worthwhile to group all the Joe Hill Songs into one study. Feel free to use this thread also to post Joe Hill songs that are not in the DT.
I was working "Joe Hill" up for performance, and I noted a missing songwriter attribution. there were also a couple of discrepancies with the lyrics I found in other sources. I transcribed the following from The People's Songbook (People's Artists, New York, 1848 & 1956). The DT has one line that's substantially different, and I listed that line as an alternate.
-Joe Offer-
JOE HILL
(Alfred Hayes & Earl Robinson)
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead,"
"I never died," says he
"I never died," says he
"In Salt Lake, Joe, by God" says I,*
Him standing by my bed,
"They framed you on a murder charge,"
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,"
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."
"The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
They shot you, Joe," says I.
"Takes more than guns to kill a man,"
Says Joe, "I didn't die,"
Says Joe, "I didn't die."
And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Joe says, "What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize,
Went on to organize."
"Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
"Joe Hill ain't never died.
Where workingmen are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side."
"From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize,"
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill,"
Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead,"
"I never died," says he
"I never died," says he
*alternate: "In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
Source: The People's Songbook (1948)
Words by Alfred Hayes
Music by Earl Robinson
copyright 1938 by Bob Miller, Inc.
Joe Hill, a great organizer and poet, was executed in 1915 on a murder charge which union circles have always considered a frame-up. This song, written in his memory, is one of the most moving of all the labor songs.
Recorded by Paul Robeson, Baez- One Day at a Time
@union @work @IWW
filename[ JOEHILL
Tune file : JOEHILL
DC
Is the tune in the DT accurate?
In Songs of Work and Protest (1960, 1973 - also known as Songs of Work and Freedow), Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer have lyrics identical to those shown above, including BOTH versions of the second verse. The Fowke-Glazer book has some fascinating background information. "It was Joe Hill more than any other song-writer who made the Industrial Workers of the World a singing organization." That was the verdict of Ralph Chaplin, author of "Solidarity Forever" and a leading IWW poet and song-writer himself.Who was this Joe Hill about whose death —and life— so many books, articles, songs, and poems have been written?
Joe Hill —born Joel Emmanuel Hagglund in Sweden— came to the United States in 1901 when he was nineteen. In 1910, he became an active member of the Wobblies on the West Coast when he was working in the port of San Pedro.
Joe had a poetic streak in him and liked to pick out tunes on the piano. His name became known among Wobblies and other trade unionists when he wrote "Casey Jones," "The Preacher and the Slave," and many other popular union songs. He sang his songs at union meetings, on street corners, and on picket lines, and they became so popular that the 1913 edition of the IWW’s famous "Little Red Song Book" contained no less than thirteen of them.
In January, 1914, Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City, Utah, on a murder charge. Despite the intervention of President Woodrow Wilson and the Swedish government, despite the condemnation of the trial as unfair by the American Federation of Labor, despite vigorous protests from public meetings throughout the country and as far away as Australia, Joe Hill was finally executed by a five-man firing squad on November 19, 1915.
The case of Joe Hill is still being debated. In their books, The Preacher and the Slave and American Folk Songs of Protest, Wallace Stegner and John Greenway present arguments to tear down the "myth" of Joe Hill as a great labor hero and martyr, implying that Hill was the kind of fellow who might have committed the murder with which he was charged. Further evidence for this point of view is presented by Professor Vernon Jensen of Cornell University in an article, "The Legend of Joe Hill," which appeared in the industrial & Labor Relations Review in April, 1951.
However, this theory is vigorously disputed by Barrie Stavis who presents a mass of documented evidence in his book, The Man Who Never Died, to show that Hill was innocent and that he was the victim of a frame-up because he was a militant trade unionist and a well-known Wobbly.
The day before Joe Hill was executed in Salt Lake City, he sent a wire to Wobbly leader Big Bill Haywood at IWW headquarters in Chicago. Hill’s words were to become famous: "Don’t waste time mourning. Organize."
Hill’s body was brought to Chicago where 30,000 sympathizers marched in one of the greatest funeral processions ever seen in that or any other city. Eulogies were delivered in nine languages. Then, in keeping with Joe’s wishes, his body was cremated. His ashes were placed in many small envelopes and scattered throughout the United States and in countries on every continent. But no ashes were dropped in the State of Utah because Joe "did not want to be found dead there."
The night before Joe Hill was shot, a speaker at a protest meeting in Salt Lake City cried: "Joe Hill will never die!" And in a way he never did die because he has become a symbol of the hundreds of men and women who have been killed while battling for labor’s rights.
Perhaps the most important factor in perpetuating his memory is this moving song which was written by Earl Robinson and Alfred Hayes some twenty years after his death.