>I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night,
>Alive as you or me.
>But Joe, I said, you're ten years dead.
>I never died said he.
> Paul Robeson
Nope, it was Earl Robinson, who wrote the song at a left-wing summer camp in the 1930s. Robinson also composed "The House I Live In," which Robeson recorded, and which was also sung by Frank Sinatra, who in the old days was kind of sympathetic to the Popular Front. Later, however, Sinatra sang "The House I Live In" at the centennial of the Statue of Liberty, presided over by Ronald Reagan. Yuck. Of course, the song's lyrics embracing the USA's "all races, all religions," and insisting first of all on "the right to speak my mind out," were very radical for their day, or at least they said things very simply but in a way that seemed radical during the Red Scare.
As for Robeson recordings, though, one of the most powerful is his rendition of "Jerusalem," the hymn-like version of Blake's poem.
I'm not even a red-diaper baby and somehow I know all of this old left folkie shit.
John Lacny