The Popular Wobbly

"The Popular Wobbly"
Song
Published 1920
Composer Fred Fisher
Lyricist T-Bone Slim
Language English
Recorded by Pete Seeger
Utah Phillips

"The Popular Wobbly" is a labor song written by the Finnish-American songwriter T-Bone Slim. It is a parody of the 1917 hit "They Go Wild Simply Wild Over Me" by Joseph McCarthy and Fred Fisher.[1][2]

"The Popular Wobbly" first appeared in the 1920 edition of the Little Red Songbook published by the Industrial Workers of the World.[1] Its title referred to the "Wobbly" nickname that was often given to IWW members.[3]

The song was revived during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Candie Carawan wrote new lyrics that told about her 1960 arrest while taking part in desegregation sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee.[4] The Guy and Candie Carawan version is known as They Go Wild Over Me.[5] An adaptation of "The Popular Wobbly" was also included in a 1931 songbook published by radio personality Ernest Iverson.[6]

Pete Seeger,[7] Utah Phillips[1] and Joe Glazer[8] are among the well-known singers who have performed the song.

References

They Go Wild Simply Wild Over Me 1917
  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Popular Wobbly (T-Bone Slim) folkarchive.de. Retrieved October 28, 2013.
  2. They Go Wild Simply Wild Over Me by Joseph McCarthy and Fred Fisher, (New York, NY: McCarthy and Fisher, 1917).
  3. Songs of the Wobblies (Detroit: Labor Arts, 1954).
  4. Sing For Freedom by Guy and Candie Carawan, (Bethlehem, PA: Sing Out Corp.,1990).
  5. They Go Wild Over Me (Candie Anderson-Caravan) folkarchive.de. Retrieved October 28, 2013.
  6. Two Hundred Old Time Favorite Songs (Omaha: Ernest N. Iverson, 1931).
  7. The Popular Wobbly si.edu. Retrieved October 28, 2013.
  8. Songs of the Wobblies Internet Archive. Retrieved 10 January 2015.

External links

Streaming audio

Books

Lyrics

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, March 24, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.