Songs about Industrialization

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:38 AM

There's a song which Sara grey sings and which I'm fairly sure comes from New York State. Well it's a bit closer to New England than some of ths stuff people have suggested.

It's called When McGuinness gets a Job, AKA Last Winter was a Hard One,and turns up in Cazden, Folk Songs of the Catskills and Sandy Ives, Drive Dull Care Away.

If you can't access a copy, let me know and I'll send you a scan of the words.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 12:44 PM

There's an interesting album by Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson called "Industry". Not folk, but very relevant.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 12:29 PM

Search the DT (Digitrad) - on the front page of the Mudcat Forum - for words like; 'weave' 'cotton' 'mill' 'steam' 'canal' or 'railway' and for mining 'disaster'.

HANDLOOM V. POWERLOOM
For our cotton masters have a wonderful new scheme:
These calico goods now wove by hand, they're going to weave by steam.

THE WEAVER AND THE FACTORY MAID
Where are the girls, I will tell you plain:
The girls have all gone to weave by steam,

KING COTTON (Mike Harding)
See how the lint flies out over the moorland,
See how the smoke to the valley clings,
See how the slate roofs shine in the drizzle,
This is the valley where Cotton is King.

THE SHERAT WEAVER
Ee dear, if yon Yankees could only but see
How they're clemming and starving poor weavers like me
I think they'd soon settle their battles and strife
And send us some cotton to keep us alive.

THE OXFORD AND HAMPTON RAILWAY
Ri-fan, Ti-fan, mirth and fun, Don't you wonder how it's done?
Carriages without horses run, On the Oxford and 'Ampton Railway.

PADDY WORKS ON THE RAILWAY (1)
In eighteen hundred and forty one, I put my corduroy breeches on
I put my cordury breeches on, to work upon the railway.

WHEN THIS OLD HAT WAS NEW
But now long journeys are so short, they seem but as a dream,
For they travel in hot water, and they melt long miles by steam.

ROLL ON COLUMBIA (Woody Guthrie)
Roll on, Columbia, roll on,
Roll on, Columbia, roll on
Your power is turning our darkness to dawn,
So roll on, Columbia, roll on

TELFORD'S BRIDGE (John Warner (c) 1994)
The aqueduct's channel is seven feet wide,
With a stout iron rail on the broad towpath side;

GOODBYE TO THE THIRTY FOOT TRAILER (Ewan MacColl)
The old ways are changing you cannot deny
The day of the traveler's over
There's nowhere to gang and there's nowhere to bide
So farewell to the life of the rover

Goodbye to the tent and the old caravan
To the tinker, the rover, the travelling man
And goodbye tae the thirty foot trailer

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,mee too!
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 12:38 PM

i need some help with finding a poem and song about any industrialization too!please help!!!

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: curmudgeon
Date: 27 Mar 03 - 03:11 PM

Marc -- While also of "Old" England, you should listen to The Iron Muse, a collection of English and Scottish industrial songs. Also read the chapter on The Industrial Songs in Lloyd's Folksong in England.

Also, some years back the McGarrigle Sisters did a song, "Jacques et Jill" about French Canadians coming south to work in the mills.

When you have a chance, please PM me. I'm very interested in this project you're working on.

Good questing -- Tom

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: JudeL
Date: 27 Mar 03 - 11:07 AM

The Mike Nicholson CD "Stone by Stone" has a number of songs on it that have the effects of industrialisation as part of the theme. One song in particular "Empty Echoes" is about the change from horsepower to mechanisation.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: MMario
Date: 27 Mar 03 - 10:19 AM

anyone able to provide the tune?

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,marc
Date: 22 Nov 00 - 04:38 PM

Once again Thanks. Marc

Subject: Lyr Add: BILLY COCKED HAT^^
From:
Date: 22 Nov 00 - 10:16 AM

I think this was originally an English song, but it works for both sides of the pond.

BILLY COCKED HAT

1) I am a young man, I'm in my prime
I work as hard as any man can.
Digging and a-picking on the railroad line
As a rough and a tumble navvying man

CH) In me billy cocked hat, silken waistcoat
Corduroy trousers tied at the knee.
A shovel, a pick, a one wheel barrow
And a jug full of gin when I takes me ease.

2) Living in a shanty, feeding fleas
Digging in muck all through the day.
Maggots and meat and mouldy peas
And the tommy shop takes nearly all me pay.

3) Every Sunday I goes on the randy
Finds my way to the nearest town.
If I sees a peeler with 'is truncheon handy
I ups with me fist and I knocks 'im down.

4) Blasting tunnels where the line runs deep.
Digging out bodies where the roof has fell.
There's many a navvy took a long, long sleep,
Reward for is labours a funeral bell.

5) Contracts finished, the navvys gone
And trains now run on the lines 'es laid.
People will wonder in the days to come
At the work that been done by the navvying trade.

Hope this helps,

Peter Benson

HTML line breaks added. -JoeClone 20-Mar-01.

---

Song has been added to the Digital Tradition (click). Songwriter is Don Bilston.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,Marc
Date: 21 Nov 00 - 02:40 PM

Once again, Thanks people. I,m really enjoying this search. I'm coming up with some real interesting stuff from all over the place. Thank you Sandy, I will check out that Bob Coltman song, thats exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Marc Bernier

Subject: Lyr Add: CIRCULAR BOG (trad. Ontario)
From: Willie-O
Date: 21 Nov 00 - 12:18 PM

Well, industrialization came to the fields and forests too, you know. Here's a song my friend John Foreman, a logger in Bancroft Ontario, collected locally about the mechanization of the logging industry in the thirties or forties. Paudash Lake is a man-made lake north of Peterborough in central Ontario. Geographically the area is very similar to the woods of Maine and as with many older lumbering songs, you could change a couple of place names and it would be an American song!

Willie-O

Circular Bog
Author Unknown

A bunch of true young bushmen set out to Paudash Lake
Their orders were to clear a spot, a lumber camp to make.
They searched the place from end to end to build their camp of logs
And they finally settled in a place and they called it Circular Bog

They cut a trail into the camp, there were some awful holes
And the horses got sore shoulders from hittin the wagon poles.
They cut it here and bridged it there, a dozen places or more
Until the trail from end to end was just one big detour.

One day it rained and then it rained, that night it rained some more
And the water it just piled right up, twelve inches on the floor
Old Walter Powers got up that night, the camp was very dark,
Thought he was back in Bible days, floatin' round in Noah's Ark.

The Hunter boys nearly every night would get together and play
Such tunes as Turkey in the Straw and Darling Nellie Gray
Tom Motta and Jack Williams would shake their heels and toes
Until the chore boy he'd come in and say "It's time to go!"

We'd climb up to our cozy bunks and try to get some sleep
While all around the bunkhouse the lice and bedbugs creep.
Then in the early morning we'd hear the awful shout
It disturbed our dreams and peaceful thoughts when old Tommy yells "Roll out!"

Then we'd climb into our clothes when we're just half awake
We'd go on into breakfast and eat corn syrup and pancakes.
We'd sit around and smoke awhile and wish the day was o'er,
Then with our boots just halfways on, Jack Karsh yells "All aboard!"

Now the boss is old Jack Karsh, and sometimes he gets sore
He'll make you go and get the logs you should have got before.
"Now Mikey, in your last skidway you left two hardwood trees,
You'd better draw them out today, and the road gang follow me."

The sleighing now is started, we're busy haulin' logs
There'll only be tag alders left at poor old Circular Bog
We have to work both day and night in rain and hail and snow,
And when we all come in at night, we wish we were all below.

Now the horses were not fast enough, so we bought two Chevrolets
And then a couple of diamond teeth to go haulin' on the sleighs.
At fifty miles an hour they're haulin' down the road
And in a few more minutes, they're back for another load.

Our garageman's Arnold Brinklow, he's busy day and night.
Bending springs, fix rear ends, and screwin' things up tight.
He just gets one truck set to go without it being towed,
Looks round and sees another one come limping up the road.

One morning just at daybreak, we heard an awful roar,
And saw a poor old tractor outside the cookhouse door.
It lay there quite contented, just on its left-hand side,
Us boys all thought the dear old thing had laid right down and died.

The boss came in the cookhouse, his eyes all blood and fire,
Saying "Get out, you lazy buggers, there's a tractor in the mire!"
So we hitched it to the rear end to haul it from the muck,
And pulled the whole compartment out from underneath the truck.

One day while near a hollow log, I run and jumped inside 'er
For what was comin' through the bush, but the crazy thing that spider
She hauls the ash from Paudash, and brings it to the camp,
She also brings in hay and oats and toils around the lamp.

Our camp is always nice and clean, although there's lots of mud.
The old bunkhouse gets washed out every time there is a flood.
The trucks and tractor haunt my dreams, my nerves are getting jaggy,
I often wish I'd stayed at home, and never left dear Maggie.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: LR Mole
Date: 21 Nov 00 - 11:51 AM

Out of left field, but it might work: Factory by Spingsteen. The Flying Picketts had a nice a cappella version. (Did they ever make it on to CD, incidentally?)And as noted, two by Phil Ochs leap to mind:"Links On the Chain" and "That's What I Want to Hear".

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 21 Nov 00 - 12:38 AM

Has anyone suggested "Weaver's Reverie" by Bob Coltman? A great song on Folk-Legacy's CD-121: For All the Good People. CLICK HERE The song is based on a letter written by one Harriet Farley, a mill girl, that was printed in The Lowell Offering, an in-house factory publication - 1840 or so. The Folk-Legacy web site has an index, just click on "browse" and look for the title of the CD.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,Marc
Date: 20 Nov 00 - 02:23 PM

Thanks again folks. This is turning out to be an interesting project. Considering the extent or indusrialism in New England , and the major social changes thatappears to resulted. There apopears to be reletively little in the way of songs from the 1rst half of the century. What I'm coming up with so far is some good stuff writen by modern song writers dealing with the textile industry and the second half, but not the first. I'm still looking though.

Jim, I'd be very intertested in any thing you have to share, however the focus of this search is songs about New England.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,lighteyes
Date: 18 Nov 00 - 12:13 AM

Maybe not a Yankee song but a great one just the same. DIRTY OLD TOWN, it paints a very vivid picture. :o}

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,(Edagar A.) a.k.a. Art Thieme
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 11:53 PM

Pete Seeger's LP on Smithsonian-Folkways -- AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL BALLADS"

The New Lost City Ramblers LP on Smithsonian-Folkways of songs of industrialization from the old-timey canons.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 04:02 PM

I have a book at home called "A Touch On The Times: Songs Of Social Change, 1770-1914," edited by Roy Palmer, published in 1974. But I think it was published in England and the songs are all from England. They are mainly taken from old broadsides. Apparently the book is out of print, and I don't know if it was ever offered for sale in the US, so you might even have a hard time finding it in libraries. (I had to look in the British Library's catalogue to verify the publishing data.)

I know it's not quite what you asked for. Do you think you could use any of these songs? I've been thinking of transcribing some of them for DigiTrad, and it might spur me on if I knew anyone needed them.

I believe "The Weaver And The Factory Maid" which is in DT, and was recorded by Steeleye Span and Martin Carthy, came from this book.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,Marc
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 03:50 PM

Thanx Guys!

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: Amos
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 01:50 PM

And, a little further West and later in time, the beautiful song "The Coming of the Roads", which I believe Joan Baez included in one of her later albums.

A

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: DonMeixner
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 01:24 PM

Songs by Ewan Macoll and Si Kahn come immediately to mind. The Work of The Weavers, Sellected songs ( Very early that is) by Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Joe Hill, U Utah Phillips, Jean Ritchie('Than Hall) Ns countless others.

Don

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: Cool Beans
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 12:59 PM

"Peg and Awl" is a good one, about a machine replacing folks who made shoes by hand. It's in the Digitrad databse. Clarence Ashley, for one, recorded it in the '60s.

Subject: RE: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,CraigS
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 09:13 AM

There's no point in re-inventing the wheel, so you should check for earlier song collectors. You usually find that manuscript collections of songs, lore, etc. end up in the area library reference collections. I don't know about New England, but I can say that contacting the library in Providnce RI might be useful.

Subject: Help; Songs about Industrialization
From: GUEST,Marc B.
Date: 17 Nov 00 - 08:19 AM

Can someone point me in the right direction? I'm looking for some songs, either modern or contemporary, that deal with industrialization in New England during the 1st half of the 19th century. It appears that in most of the collections I own, folks thought it was more important to interview farmers and sailors. Which is allright because that's what I do. Any suggestions?

Thanx Marc Bernier