The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (79): I never died, said he
mainThe inimitable Paul Robeson.
Comments
MOST READ TODAY:
-
Orchestras
Berlin Phil oboe’s US class arouses disquiet
A social media activist has circulated a video…
-
Opera
Trouble in Venice as tenor spurns white-face Otello
Francesco Meli is due to sing Verdi’s Otello…
-
Opera
Biz news: Russian mezzo jumps
Maria Mot’s boutique London-based management has signed the…
-
Orchestras
NY Times chief joins the Mäkelä sceptics
Zachary Woolfe, chief music critic of the New…
Joe Hill is a hero to many. This is my favourite Paul Robeson song.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html
And, to many who have investigated his case, such as novelist Wallace Stegner and US Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990’s, he remains not so much as hero, as a justly convicted murderer.
Beautiful singing and very moving, especially Going Home. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Norman.
And ardent supporter of Joe Stalin….
I don’t understand the ‘down’ votes. It is a fact Robeson had Soviet sympathies and ties and was a de facto propaganda arm of the party.
Common knowledge. Maybe people nowadays recognize that Communism was never the threat that we made it out to be (not the same as saying it was no threat at all), and that Robeson’s criticisms of the US were valid and still are. It’s also common knowledge that the HUAC was a joke.
“Maybe people nowadays recognize that Communism was never the threat that we made it out to be”
Completely agree – 120,000,000 corpses and counting aren’t really that bad, are they – maybe you should talk to people from eastern Europe who had to live under this fascist system…
Perhaps I should have said “the threat TO THE US that we (the US) made it out to be.”
“Joe Hill” was one of the songs I learned from listening to recordings of him as a child. Also “Old Man River” and others. I didn’t know from protest songs; my parents just put the music on and let us enjoy it.
His “Shenandoah” is wonderful too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwftH7ur6mA
(The monologue from Boris Godunov kind of went over my head at age 8, sorry; but at least it taught me that he wasn’t just a singer of “pretty” songs.)
I had no idea, at that time, that he was anything more than just (just – ha) a wonderful singer. This testimony recording is mighty impressive.
Sincere thanks for that!
Magnificent voice, somehow comforting, reassuring.
I remember – Old Man River, Shenandoah, Summertime, Let my people go etc. all being played at home when I was growing up.
How many people know that Paul Robeson, in addition to being an All-American football player at Rutgers University, was also the valedictorian of its Class of 1919? Or that after graduation there, he earned a law degree from Columbia Law School?
https://robeson100.rutgers.edu/about-paul-robeson
And how many people know how supportive he was to the miners of south east Wales who walked all the way to Westminster to try and get help? He heard them singing in Trafalgar Square and immediately did his best to help, he is remembered with love and respect here.
No one has yet mentioned the superb spoken-voice Othello he recorded.
Great voice, great actor, great musician, great man.
my gratitude for posting the huac testimony