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Red Neck, Red Flag - Left Wing Country

deeyo said:
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?
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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.
 
deeyo said:
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)

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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 :D, 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.
 
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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'.)

 
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petee said:
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 :D, 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.
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Could the no union dues just be emphasising the point he's not got the sort of formal steady gig where you might?
 
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.

 
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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:




humorinamerica.wordpress.com

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 humorinamerica.wordpress.com

Dashboard Poet: Roger Miller - Southern Cultures

www.southerncultures.org www.southerncultures.org

americansongwriter.com

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 americansongwriter.com
 
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.
 
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:

 
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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.'
 
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