JOE HILL
Created on 15/01/2008Latest update on 20/04/2024
Artist: Michael Loring
Author: Earl Robinson/Alfred Hayes
Label: TAC Records
Year: 1939
With Earl Robinson on piano. First an Alfred Hayes poem beginning with the words: "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill again", first published in New Masses in 1934. Summer '36 during a Union camp in upstate New York, same Hayes ordered co-organizer Earl Robinson to find him a fitting melody before that evening's jamboree. The result keeps Joe Hill's legend alive worldwide.
Covers:
- 1941:
Earl Robinson [author on Timely Records]
- 1942:
- 1954:
Joe Glazer [for Folkways]
- 1956:
- 1968:
Bob Dylan [inspired for I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine and as Joe Hill at the Isle of Wight in '70 (Bootleg Series Vol 10)]
- 1968:
Joan Baez [idem]
- 1968:
Julie Felix [idem]
- 1968:
Phil Ochs [his Joe Hill was based upon John Henry]
- 1969:
Joan Baez [at Woodstock; the next year a Joe Hill biopic came out directed by Bo Widerberg]
- 1970:
- 1972:
- 1975:
- 1981:
- 1990:
Billy Bragg [as I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night; his Joe Hill (on collection Don't Mourn, Organize!) is Phil Ochs's]
- 1999:
Ani DiFranco [with Utah Phillips]
- 2004:
Vic Chesnutt [as I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine]
- 2007:
John Doe [in Dylan film I'm Not There]
- 2016:
Eric Clapton [idem]
Joe Hill (born in Sweden as Joel Hagglund) came to the Americas, fought in the Mexican war and became an I.W.W. militant (Industrial Workers of the World), who wrote epic union songs (Pie In The Sky; see also: Casey Jones). In 1914 he was arrested on a murder charge in Salt Lake City and executed the following year. The whole deal was regarded as a set-up to get rid of him. He wanted to abolish the whole wage system of capitalism. His last words: "Don't mourn for me, organize" still echo across the world through film and ballad. According to Bob Dylan his real last words were: "Scatter my ashes anyplace but Utah", a perfect song title if he'd ever consider to use it. he was buried on Graceland Cemetery in Chicago ("His body lies mouldering in the grave but the cause goes marching on").
