Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-07-07

Day 113 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Over 500 years ago, there's a legend that Martin Luther said, "Why should the devil have all the good tunes?" And proceeded to use tavern tunes for the new hymns he was writing. So, turnabout is fair play. Hymn tunes were often used to a more secular purpose.

Sandburg writes: "This old song heard at the water tanks of railroads in Kansas in 1897 and from harvest hands  who worked in the wheat fields of Pawnee County, was picked up later by the I. W. W.'s (Industrial Workers of the World), who  made verses of their own for it, and gave it a wide fame.

"The migratory workers are familiar with  the Salvation Army missions, and have adopted the Army custom of occasionally abandoning all  polite formalities and striking deep into the common things and ways for their music and words.

"A "handout" is food handed out from a back door as distinguished from a "sit down" which means  an entrance into a house and a chair at a table."

In singing this I am attempting to channel the great folksinger Joe Glazer (June 19, 1918 – September 19, 2006), who was closely associated with labor unions and often referred to as "labor's troubadour" (which is also the title of his autobiography). Glazer recorded more than thirty albums over the course of his career and always put a great deal of energy and drama into his performances.