I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night … [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

November 10, 2015
I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night …

by Lily Murphy



This years marks the centenary of the execution of trade union activist Joe Hill in Utah on November 19th 1915. For many people today he is perhaps best known as the subject of the folk ballad written by Alfred Hayes in 1936.

Hayes was born in London in 1911 but emigrated to the United States with his family as a three year old and grew up in New York City. After graduating from New York’s City College he worked for a number of newspapers in the city.

In 1928 Hayes joined the Young Communist League and rose within the left wing fold as a poet of the working class with his most celebrated piece being Joe Hill.

Hayes wrote it as a poem in upstate New York at a left wing retreat called Camp Unity during the Summer of 1936. Hayes met Earl Robinson there and upon hearing Hayes recite his poem Robinson instantly put the words to music as part of a campfire session celebrating the trade union icon. By that September the song had been published in The Daily Worker and became a popular song with members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting Franco’s fascists in Spain.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/10/i-dreamed-i-saw-joe-hill-last-night/