Red Neck, Red Flag - Left Wing Country

[ouirdeaux]

ah, the eternal question. when miller (ft worth, texas) penned 'old worn out suit & shoes/ i dont pay no union dues' - was he telling us to organise for decent wages or was it an expression of his left wing communist view that revolutionaries shouldn't join conservative trade-unions?

Surely the point is that for the character in the song -- who is not necessarily, or even probably, identical with the songwriter -- union dues are irrelevant, because he doesn't have a regular job. His income is derived from variety of interesting activities, legal and illegal. The closest thing to employment is two hours of pushing broom, which I take it is casual labour for cash in hand.

 

[Knotted]

Don't know if it counts as country strictly speaking but here's Leadbelly's anti-nazi song.

 

[petee]

ah, the eternal question. when miller (ft worth, texas) penned 'old worn out suit & shoes/ i dont pay no union dues' - was he telling us to organise for decent wages or was it an expression of his left wing communist view that revolutionaries shouldn't join conservative trade-unions?




(looking for stuff about mr millers politics i found this article bout why king of the road wouldnt have been written today)

You are being redirected...

it's remarkable that 16 Tons reached no. 1 on the charts. unimaginable now i think. a great, great tune and ernie ford's voice is honey but still. some of the lyrics are quotes from workers (see wiki).

and while i'm sure miller was a left-communist , i took that line to mean that he's scrambling for work anywhere he can get it and that not paying dues saves him a few dollars.

 

[petee]

Folk music is not country.

a fair point, in my defense i was posting just stuff i knew from a workers' perspective and with a guitar usually.

 

[Humberto]

 

[zahir]

 

[zahir]

 

[zahir]

 

[zahir]

 

[zahir]

 

[zahir]

 

[zahir]

 

[RD2003]

Don't know if this counts as left-wing (kind of does) or even country (maybe it doesn't, even if country was a significant component of this group's early sound. I've heard them described as the pioneers of 'Alt-Country'.)

 

[JimW]

it's remarkable that 16 Tons reached no. 1 on the charts. unimaginable now i think. a great, great tune and ernie ford's voice is honey but still. some of the lyrics are quotes from workers (see wiki).

and while i'm sure miller was a left-communist , i took that line to mean that he's scrambling for work anywhere he can get it and that not paying dues saves him a few dollars.

Could the no union dues just be emphasising the point he's not got the sort of formal steady gig where you might?

 

[petee]

Could the no union dues just be emphasising the point he's not got the sort of formal steady gig where you might?

fair point.
where was the IWW?

 

[RD2003]

dp

 

[RD2003]

For instance with the Band... I suppose a sympathetic take on ethnic cleansing/displacement can be considered a left-wing theme. And a countryish sound. Although I am aware of what Belboid says above about the difference between folk and country (I am a relative newcomer to country.) And I know they were a rock band really.

 

[deeyo]

ouirdeaux next you'll tell me the bridge in can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd aint a call to revolution.




...i must confess, 'part from king of the road' & 'chug-a-lug' i don't think i could've named any tunes by mr miller until mentioned by petee in this thread. i've read & listened up a little this last week.

seems a very talented & funny man with a dark & rebellious undercurrent. as an artist and a person, he definitely was an anarchist, and his lifestyle may have been closer to his hobo (anti-)hero than one wouldve thought. made a lot of brilliant music over the years, the songs to the huck finn musical 'big river' for instance.

his son, maybe a bit overly awed by daddys talent, says he still finds new meanings in the lyrics to king of the road & apparently mr miller wanted it to be his 'mack the knife'.
bangor, maine - the destination of the train in the song - is supposedly a strong union town, might be intentional or not.

besides, he wrote this:

Roller Skating in a Buffalo Herd

He’s a nut. But he’s the most talented nut I’ve ever known. – Minnie Pearl Roger Miller had no off switch. In a career that took him from the dive bars of Lower Broad to the Broadway stage –…

humorinamerica.wordpress.com

Dashboard Poet: Roger Miller - Southern Cultures

www.southerncultures.org

Roger Miller, "King Of The Road" - American Songwriter

"He had no fear in his creativity and followed no rules or boundaries," his son Dean said. More

americansongwriter.com

 

[marty21]

How are we on page two without:

 

[deeyo]

strangely enough, there's not many country songs bout english royalty.

d.a coe references liz r in 'linda lovelace' but thats just stupid crap and i'm not gonna link to that.

mojo nixon wrote 'the ballad of diana spencer' - apparently 5 consecutive days of round the clock dead di coverage catapulted nixon into a psychotic shit-rain of outrage...



johnny cash got the inspiration for 'when the man comes around' - his song about armageddon - from a dream bout the queen. true story. (starts at about 2.20)



not much marmalade or corgis in the clouds in those lyrics.

 

[deeyo]

too much mining songs on the thread. let's have some cotton.



proto-country by workers for workers, from the 1920s. the back story is interesting too.

& in the same vein, from the 30's



the late, great nancy griffith (seguin, tx):



and last but not least, a real hidden gem (petee ): cotton mill by eddie noack (houston, tx) who wrote songs for lefty frizzell, george jones, ernest tubbs & many more:

 

[zahir]

 

[deeyo]

resuscitating my old thread cause i wanted to post this one, by steve earle (hampton, virginia) :




'...there'll be no barricades then
there'll be no wire or walls
and we can wash all this blood from our hands
and all this hatred from our souls
and i believe that on that day all the children of abraham
will lay down their swords together in jerusalem.'

earle: 'i'm not negative 'bout this kind of stuff, i'm pretty positive /.../ i'm so optimistic that i.. i wrote this song and....people think this is hopelessly optimistic but i'm just gonna keep ... singin it until either ... i die or it comes true - whichever one happens first.'