Title - 'Joe Hill's Last Will'
Artist - John McCutcheon
2015 is the 100th anniversary of the death of Joe Hill. Hill was an infamous labor activist/singer-songwriter, who inspired workers throughout the U.S. and Canada to strike and unionize through the power of his music. A Swedish-American immigrant, Joe Hill was a champion of immigrant and labor rights, and his words lived long after his unjust imprisonment and eventual execution in 1915.
Having set up a Kickstarter campaign to remember this anniversary, Grammy-nominated folksinger John McCutcheon, hoped to garner some interest from his fans, and those that knew and loved Joe Hill. Ending on October 19th, 2014, it exceeded all expectations and successfully raised $35,045 - with just 389 backers! Ergo, John McCutcheon recorded the first album of Hill's songs in decades, Joe Hill's Last Will.
Here on this radiant, earthy new set of recordings from McCutcheon, along with writer Si Kahn, they bring the life of this legendary voice to the stage in a "one-man" show. Featuring pieces of all of Hill's songs it is based on his letters, newspaper accounts, oral histories, and given some of the lyrics, a good bit of creative imagining; one can only assume.
Inclusive of tracks such as 'Casey Jones,' 'The Tramp,' 'The Preacher & The Slave,' 'The Wooden Shoe/Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay,' 'Stung Right,' and both 'Where The Fraser River Flows' and the uniform that he wore so proudly, 'There Is Power In A Union,' Joe Hill's Last Will is the personification of the ultimate utilitarian songwriter.
www.folkmusic.com