When I was growing up we always celebrated the first of May as “May Day” in my home, not as some kind of spring ritual but in honor of International Workers Day, often referred to as Labour Day. Though here in the United States, Labor Day on the first Monday in September became “the official holiday” to avoid the taint of anything that reeked of global leftism, my very left-of-center, union-raised dad made sure we honored both days. 

So on this #BlackMusicSunday, the day after May Day, I’m exploring songs and tunes from multiple genres of Black music that feature work, workers, and jobs.

Growing up with the music of Paul Robeson, I was no stranger to his deep melodious bass baritone, or his politics. He championed working men and women, and though persecuted here in the United States for his membership in the Communist Party and his stance against racism, he was beloved by workers around the globe.

YouTube Video

I was drawn to Robeson’s outreach to miners because my own family history included Black coal miners recently out of enslavement who had moved from Virginia to West Virginia right after the end of the Civil War to work in the mines.

Tim Pinnick’s blog at rootsweb, The African American Coal Miner Information Center, has a wealth of resources, links, and information, including this brief history.

The growth of the industry was rapid in the 19th century spurred by the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the railroads.  On the eve of the Civil War, coal mining operations were present in over twenty states and U.S. production stood at more than 20 million tons.  The demand for coal continued to increase throughout the decade as railroad trackage soared and the “black diamonds” became the fuel of choice for individuals heating their homes.  During Reconstruction, the coal and railroad industries became two of the primary employment opportunities for the newly emancipated black laborer as many of the more adventurous former slaves left the South.  Many found work with a large rising number of newly formed mining companies, financed by Eastern capital, which had moved in to establish their dominance in the rich coal beds of the Midwest and West.  The owners ran headlong into the initial attempts of their predominantly white miners to unionize.  One of the strategies employed to combat unionization was the use of black strikebreakers.  Mine owners utilized labor agents in the urban areas across the country, and sent labor recruiters into the South to entice disenfranchised blacks.  These southern recruits consisted not only of experienced  miners, but many agricultural laborers who were suffering under the sharecropping system.  During this time period a new form of subjugation was emerging in the Deep South in the form of convict labor.  Throughout Alabama and parts of Tennessee and Georgia, a concerted effort was made to arrest blacks, issue excessive sentences, and then lease them to coal mining companies.

Coal mining remained a steady source of employment for blacks during the first 3 decades of the twentieth century.  In 1910, over 40,500 performed work associated with coal mines, of which approximately 29,000 were miners.  However, as the 1930s arrived, increased mechanization spelled the beginning of the end of the black miner.

I think that many people, when they hear “coal miners” and talk about U.S. labor history, visualize white men. The history tells a different tale. Folk-soul singer/songwriter Bill Withers, who passed on last year, was the son of a coal miner.

The youngest of six children, Withers was born with a stutter. His father, a coal miner, died when Withers was barely in his teens. He then lived with his mother and grandmother in nearby Beckley and enlisted in the Navy in hopes of escaping the culture of coal and cycle of poverty. It was during his stint in the service that he developed an interest in singing and songwriting.

Spoken word poet, activist, and a foundational member of what would become hip-hop, Gil-Scott Heron also sang about coal miners in his epic song, “Three Miles Down.” Heron was not from a coal mining family—though as a child he lived briefly in Tennessee. From his 1983 Guardian obituary by Mike Power: 

He recalled her in the track On Coming from a Broken Home on his 2010 comeback album I’m New Here as “absolutely not your mail-order, room-service, typecast black grandmother”. She bought him his first piano from a local undertaker’s and introduced him to the work of the Harlem Renaissance novelist and jazz poet Langston Hughes, whose influence would resonate throughout his entire career.

In the nearby Tigrett junior high school in 1962, Scott-Heron faced daily racial abuse as one of only three black children chosen to desegregate the institution. These experiences coincided with the completion of his first volume of unpublished poetry, when he was 12.

YouTube Video

Lyrics (Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson)

Beyond the perils of mine cave-ins, the environmental health hazards of this kind of work are addressed in Sweet Honey in the Rock’s “More Than a Paycheck,” which is discussed in this audio recording from a program held at Michigan State University in 2014.

YouTube Video

Lyrics  by Ysaye Barnwell

I wanted more pay. But what I’ve got today is more than I bargained for when I walked through that door.

I bring home asbestosis, silicosis, brown lung, black lung disease. And radiation hits the children before they’ve even been conceived.

Songs about coal mining did not just come out of the Black folk music traditions of Robeson or groups like Sweet Honey. An unlikely place where I encountered a coal mining tune was in Black dance clubs. During my hang out and party days in the 60s, one of the most popular tunes at The Cellar, an uptown club in New York City—which was hostessed by Betty Mabry, who would later become Betty Davis after marrying Miles Davis—was a tune sung by Lee Dorsey, “Working in the Coal Mine.” The song was written by the famed New Orleans musician, songwriter, arranger, and record producer Allen Toussaint.

YouTube Video

I defy you to try to stay in your seat when you hear this.

On a more serious note, though Black coal mining history may not be familiar to most readers, anyone who has paid attention to the ugly history of Black workers and their struggles with labor organizing is probably familiar with the Pullman Porters, and A. Phillip Randolph’s role in organizing them. However the Black “Red Caps” who could be found in every major railroad station were not Pullmans. 

Here’s Louis Armstrong’s “Red Cap.”

YouTube Video

I didn’t know Red Cap history when I started writing this, but I was curious to learn the difference between Red Caps and Pullman Porters. I found an amazing history; Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal, by Eric K. Washington

CUNY-TV’s Tony Guida interviewed Washington in February 2020.

YouTube Video

Shifting gears and going back in time to my preteen years when do-wops were the music we were all listening to, I smile remembering this big hit from The Silhouettes.

Get A Job - The Silhouettes

The lyrics to Get A Job address the themes of unemployment and domestic relationships, with the woman of the house nagging the man to find work, implying that he is both lazy and dishonest. But the song is also light-hearted, exuberant, and very danceable, with infectious vocal hooks, handclaps, a rocking saxophone solo and a general sense of fun.

"When I was in the service in the early 1950s and didn’t come home and go to work my mother said “Get A Job” and basically that’s where the song came from", said Rick Lewis, who wrote it before The Silhouettes were formed.

YouTube Video

Contrast this finger-poppin’ light-hearted do-wop with Heron’s devastating portrait of what happens when a father loses his job, in “Pieces of a Man.”

YouTube Video

Lyrics

Some jobs that are captured in Black Music were not even undertaken by choice; chain gangs and prison labor are a common theme. Nat Adderley’s “Work Song” is one of the most powerful examples.

Cannonball Adderley introduces the song written by his brother in this 1962 clip from Oscar Brown Jr.’s television show, Jazz Scene USA.

YouTube Video

Since the lyrics to “Work Song” were written by Oscar Brown Jr., here’s his version.

YouTube Video

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include Nina Simone’s version.

YouTube Video

Probably the most well known R&B song about chain gangs was written and sung by soul singer Sam Cooke, which Justin Novelli wrote about for SongFacts. 

YouTube Video

Not all Black songs about work are related to tragic circumstances and the heavy history of oppression. Work songs may simply be about the day in, day out hustle to bring money home. The Isley Brothers had a big hit with their 1972 tune “Work to Do,” in which a brother explains to his lady why he can’t be with her as much as he’d like.

YouTube Video

This disco women’s work tune from Donna Summer became a feminist anthem, and has an interesting story behind it. 

YouTube Video

As we continue to battle income inequality, and the fight for living wages for workers, I’m thinkin’ about a tune from soul-funk singer Sharon Jones, of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings: “People Don’t Get What We Deserve.”

Her bio from their website:

Though mostly raised in Brooklyn, Jones spent her childhood summers in Augusta, Georgia, where she was born. She sang gospel in churches her whole life and spent many years leading her choir at the Universal Church of God in Brooklyn. In the 1970’s, she joined a handful of local funk bands, but was unable to crack into the recording industry. Later, she began singing in wedding bands, and worked such jobs as armored car guard for Wells Fargo and corrections officer at Rikers Island prison. In 1996, she sang back-up on a Lee Fields session that Mann was producing, after which he put her front and center, at age 40, for her first-ever recording as a front woman, “Damn It’s Hot.”

Jones and the Dap-Kings recorded their 2001 debut album, Dap Dippin’ With Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, in the Brooklyn basement, followed by a series of increasingly popular albums and 45’s, and constant, ecstatically received touring. Their sixth record, Give the People What They Want, was nominated for Best R&B Album at the 2015 Grammys, and the group’s last album, It’s a Holiday Soul Party, was released in November 2015, almost a year to the day before Jones would pass away at age 60.

YouTube Video

Lyrics

Money don’t follow sweat Money don’t follow brains Money don’t follow deeds of peace (People don’t get what they deserve) x2

There is a man who lives like a saint

He works from daybreak to late in the night He’s never stolen, he’s never been lazy (not a day in his life) To feed his children is always a fight (work work work) I try to do right by all of god’s children I work very hard for all I could afford But I don’t pretend for one single moment That what I get is my just reward

We have to continue the fight to get what we deserve, and defeat the cheaters who perpetuate the unequal system we’ve lived under for centuries.

Let the music be a reminder and inspire us to stay the course. Join me in comments for more.