Bruce Springsteen in performance singing the ballad "Joe Hill" (Tampa, FL 05/01/14)
Earl Hawley Robinson (1910 – 1991) was a composer, arranger and folk music singer-songwriter from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is remembered for his music, including the cantata "Ballad for Americans" and songs such as "Joe Hill" and "Black and White", which expressed his left-leaning political views. He wrote many popular songs and music for Hollywood films. He was a member of the Communist Party from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Robinson studied violin, viola and piano as a child, and studied composition at the University of Washington, receiving a BM and teaching certificate in 1933. In 1934 he moved to New York City where he studied with Hanns Eisler and Aaron Copland. He was also involved with the depression-era WPA Federal Theater Project, and was actively involved in the anti-fascist movement and was the musical director at the Communist-run Camp Unity in upstate New York.
A fellow staff member he would meet at Camp Unity was the British born writer Alfred Hayes who had written the well-known poem about Joe Hill, "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night". Born in Whitechapel, London to a Jewish family that moved to the United States when he was three, Hayes graduated from New York's City College (now part of City University of New York), worked briefly as a newspaper reporter, and began writing fiction and poetry in the 1930s. During World War II he served in Europe in the U.S. Army Special Services, the so-called "morale division". Afterwards, he stayed in Rome and became a screenwriter of Italian neorealist films. He was an uncredited co-writer of Vittorio De Sica's neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) for which he also wrote the English language subtitles.
Paul Robeson
Robinson decided to set Hayes' poem to music in 1936, and wrote and performed "Joe Hill", a song that became a popular labour anthem. It was recorded by Paul Robeson, and became almost a signature performance by Robeson at rallies and protests around the world. The song was used in the 1971 film Joe Hill, directed by Bo Widerberg.
Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976), as an American bass baritone concert artist and stage and film actor, was internationally renowned for both his cultural accomplishments and for his political activism. Educated at Rutgers College and Columbia University, he was also a star athlete in his youth. At Columbia, he sang and acted in off-campus productions. After graduating from Colombia, he became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance with performances in The Emperor Jones and All God's Chillun Got Wings.
Between 1925 and 1961, Robeson recorded and released some 276 distinct songs, many of which were recorded several times. The first of these were the spirituals "Steal Away" backed with "Were You There" in 1925. Robeson's recorded repertoire spanned many styles, including Americana, popular standards, classical music, European folk songs, political songs, poetry and spoken excerpts from plays.
Robeson performed in Britain in a touring melodrama, Voodoo, in 1922, and in Emperor Jones in 1925, and scored a major success in the London premiere of Show Boat in 1928, settling in London for several years with his wife Eslanda. While continuing to establish himself as a concert artist, Robeson also starred in a London production of Othello, the first of three productions of the play over the course of his career. He also gained attention in the film production of Show Boat (1936) and other films such as Sanders of the River (1935) and The Proud Valley (1940).
He also studied Swahili and linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in 1934. His political activities began with his involvement with unemployed workers and anti-imperialist students whom he met in Britain and continued with support for the Loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War and his opposition to fascism. It was during this period, Robeson became increasingly attuned to the sufferings of people of other cultures, notably the British working class and the colonized peoples of the British Empire. He became active in the Council on African Affairs (CAA).
Returning to the United States in 1939, during World War II Robeson supported the American and Allied war efforts. In the United States he also became active in the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice campaigns. However, his history of supporting civil rights causes and pro-Soviet policies brought scrutiny from the FBI. After the war ended, the CAA was placed on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations and Robeson was investigated during the age of McCarthyism. His sympathies for the Soviet Union and for communism, and his criticism of the United States government and its foreign policies, caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era, a fate he shared with the composer of the ballad of "Joe Hill".
Due to his decision not to recant his public advocacy, he was denied a passport by the U.S. State Department, and his income, consequently, plummeted. He moved to Harlem and from 1950 to 1955 published a periodical called Freedom which was critical of United States policies.
Freedom of movement!
Breaking through boundaries of time and space with a phone call . . .
Information about this Science Museum video can be found in this article:
The phone call and freedom of movement
On Sunday 26 May 1957 a remarkable concert took place in London which would have an impact well beyond that one special moment. The star performer was Paul Robeson.
But Robeson himself was not there.
The new Atlantic telephone cable Transatlantic No. 1 (TAT-1) carried his voice to London from New York, as clearly as if a record had been playing.
Robeson’s singing filled St Pancras Town Hall as the new cable allowed him to perform for a UK audience, despite the US government’s restrictions on his freedom of movement.
Why was Robeson's performance so significant?
This event marked the moment when long-distance telecommunications first evaded state repression and carried messages of peace and freedom.
Amid virulent anti-communist feeling, the US State Department had voided Robeson’s passport. They argued that his left-wing sympathies and his activism on behalf of poor, black and working-class people posed a threat to the nation.
He found it increasingly difficult to obtain work in his home country, and his records were removed from distribution. His inability to travel severely hampered Robeson’s international work both as a singer and as a political activist.
This restraint on the liberty of a great artist caused an international outcry. The London Paul Robeson Committee organised a conference and concert to protest Robeson’s treatment by the US authorities.
They were able to include the live performance by Robeson himself thanks to three decades of improvements in the transmission of sound through telephone cables.
How did activists make use of the technology?
Within the first year of the new cable's operation, the London Paul Robeson Committee had seized the opportunity it provided. Organisations in many countries were holding protest meetings and other events campaigning for the return of Robeson’s passport.
Jean Jenkins, secretary of the London Committee, was the organiser of the St Pancras concert. She conceived the idea of purchasing time on the newly opened TAT-1, so that Robeson, in a studio in New York, could take part virtually via loudspeakers on stage.
After a few technical hiccups, everything worked.
American Telephone and Telegraph, in New York, and the General Post Office, in London, last night between them helped to make the United States Department of State look rather silly ... Last night some of [Robeson’s] words and music escaped, alive, through the new high-fidelity transatlantic telephone cable.Manchester Guardian
What was the impact of the broadcast?
By this time, the US government was growing increasingly embarrassed by international condemnation of its restrictions on the movement in and out of the country of those with left-wing sympathies. These included many distinguished scientists and writers as well as artists such as Robeson.
A year after his transatlantic concert, the US Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to revoke Robeson’s passport on political grounds, and the State Department allowed him to travel once more.
We have to learn the hard way that there is another way to sing.
Paul Robeson
This was the first of many times when telecommunications would play a role in upholding precious rights and freedoms.
Technology has continued to develop rapidly, and today people all over the world use the internet rather than the telephone to promote international campaigns, highlight injustice or bear witness to oppressive regimes.
One thousand people crammed into St. Pancras Hall to hear Robeson sing six numbers.
His right to travel was eventually restored as a result of the 1958 United States Supreme Court decision, Kent v. Dulles. In the early 1960s he retired and lived the remaining years of his life privately in Philadelphia.
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