American Industrial Ballads

by Pete Seeger

American Industrial Ballads cover art
  • Type: Album
  • Released: 1 January 1956
  • Label: Folkways
  • Country: United States
  • Community rating: 4.05/5 from 1 rating

Album Notes & Community Reviews

'American Industrial Ballads' presents 24 songs sequenced in chronological order by date of composition, from 'Peg and Awl' in the early 1800s to songs by Woody Guthrie and Les Rice from the 1940s. Seeger accompanies himself mainly on banjo and sometimes on guitar, singing Jim Garland's 'The Death of Harry Simms', Della Mae Graham's 'Ballad of Barney Graham' and the train wreck narrative 'Casey Jones'. Irwin Silber supplied the liner notes, and the program documents coal mines, textile mills and highways across a century and a half of American labour.

Genres

Descriptors: protest, political, storytelling, acoustic, traditional

Tracklist

  1. Peg And Awl (1801-04)
  2. The Blind Fiddler (1850)
  3. Buffalo Skinners (1873)
  4. Eight Hour Day (1886)
  5. Hard Times In The Mill (1890)
  6. Roll Down The Line (1890)
  7. Hayseed Like Me (1890-96)
  8. The Farmer Is The Man (1890-96)
  9. Come All You Hardy Miners (1900-10)
  10. He Lies In The American Land (1900)
  11. Casey Jones (1906)
  12. Let Them Wear Their Watches Fine (1910)
  13. Weave Room Blues (1924)
  14. Cotton Mill Colic (1926)
  15. 7c. Cotton And 40c. Meat (1929)
  16. Mill Mother's Lament (1929)
  17. Fare Ye Well, Old Ely Branch (1930)
  18. Beans, Bacon And Gravy (1931)
  19. The Death Of Harry Simms (1932)
  20. Winnsboro Cotton Mills Blues (1932)
  21. Ballad Of Barney Graham (1933)
  22. My Children Are Seven In Number (1933)
  23. Raggedy, Raggedy Are We (1936)
  24. Pittsburgh Town (1941)
  25. 60% Parity (1948-49)

Credits

  • Andrew Kovaly - music by, words by [original slovakian]
  • Ella May Wiggins - music by, words by
  • Aunt Molly Jackson - written-by, music by [as sung by]
  • Les Rice - words by, music by
  • Irwin Silber - liner notes
  • David Hancock - mastered by
  • Moses Asch - recorded by
  • Finlay "Red Ore" Donaldson - words by
  • Anonymous - words by
  • Jim Garland - words by
  • Della Mae Graham - words by
  • John Handcox - words by
  • Woody Guthrie - words by

More from Pete Seeger: full discography