happy? - May 7

Subject: happy? - May 7
From: Abby Sale
Date: 07 May 05 - 08:55 AM

"On the seventh day of May, 19 and 30, during the strike, the miners built a soup
kitchen out of slabs over in the meadow. The little children was all bare-footed, and the
blood was running out of the tops of their little feet and dripping down between their little toes
and running onto the ground. You could track them to the soup kitchen by the blood."

                  All the women in the coal camps are sitting with bowed down heads,
                  Ragged and bare-footed, and the children cryin' for bread.
  

                "Ragged Hungry Blues," by Aunt Molly Jackson; in & on RD Cohen
                & D Samuelson, Songs For Political Action (accompanying
                book), Bear Family Records, 1996.

[thanx Manfred Helfert, http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/index.html

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved

Subject: RE: happy? - May 7
From: skipy
Date: 07 May 05 - 03:15 PM

?

Subject: ADD: Ragged Hungry Blues (Aunt Molly Jackson)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 May 05 - 05:33 PM

I guess this hasn't been posted at Mudcat, so I think I'll post the entire text.

Ragged Hungry Blues
(Aunt Molly Jackson)

Part 1
I'm sad and weary, I've got the hungry, ragged blues.
Not a penny in the pocket to buy one thing I need to use.

I woke up this morning, with the worst blues I ever had in my life;
Not a bite to cook for breakfast, a poor coal miner's wife!

When my husband works in the coal mines, he loads a carload every trip;
Then he goes to the office at the evening to get denied of scrip.

Just because they took all he made that day to pay his mine expense,
A man that will work for just coal oil and carbide, he ain't got a stack of sense.

Part 2
All the women in the coal camps are sitting with bowed down heads,
Ragged and bare-footed, and the children cryin' for bread.

No food, no clothes for our children, I'm sure this head don't lie;
If we can't get more for our labor we'll starve to death and die!

Don't go under the mountains, with a slate hangin' o'er your head;
And work for just coal oil and carbide, and your children cryin' for bread.

This mining town I live in is a sad and lonely place
Where pity and starvation is pictured on every face!

Some coal operators might tell you the hungry blues are not there.
They're the worst kind of blues this poor woman ever had.

from the book accompanying the Bear Family Records collection, Songs for Political Action

You'll find a very slightly different transcription from Greenway at History in Song.

Subject: RE: happy? - May 7
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 10 May 05 - 01:25 AM

Now Joe - don't you go steppin on any of Abby's toes.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: happy? - May 7
From: Abby Sale
Date: 10 May 05 - 08:20 AM

Au contraire, Garg, but a sincere thanks. I appreciate any comments, elucidations, additions, corrections and objections. Or even questions - I often (but not always) have a good deal more material on a Happy than I actually post.

In this case, Joe has added the song in question to the forum. (I wonder if it will get harvested?)