Monday, September 05, 2016

Labour Day Jukebox...1913 Massacre.

SeeWhatYourGreedForMoney
HasDoneVille

The miners of Calumet Michigan had been on strike since July of 1913.

One of the things the striking workers wanted was support beams in the mines. The copper bosses said no. After all, dead miners in cave-ins cost them nothing.

That Christmas the Women's Auxiliary held a big party in the town hall for the miners' kids to make sure they had some cheer that miserable, penniless winter.

Tragedy ensued and Woody Guthrie wrote a song about it in 1941.

This is a cover of his son Arlo's version, mostly because our Dad brought the album home for Christmas 1972...



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Of course, 1972 was a very good year for working people in British Columbia...


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2 comments:

Danneau said...

Lovely tune, well rendered. Was also listening to Dirty Business bu New Riders Of The Purple Sage and Vigilante Man, Woody Guthrie and Ry Cooder. Dirty Business was so on point to the study of Zola's Germinal in French 420 and UBC that I appended the lyrics to my essay on the novel. Powerful advocate for ordinary folk was Zola. Prof didn't really appreciate the association, though. You weren't supposed to draw real=world parallels that made the literature so meaningful, but style, now style was really important. MrBeerNHockey would know what to say on that score.

RossK said...

Indeed Beer would Danneau.

Thanks.

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