Doing a little survey here:

[frualeydis]

A recent post about the swedish poet Dan Andersson in ginger_dragon's journal made me remember my astonishment when armillary said he had never heard of Joe Hill (or about Dan andersson). So now I'm doing a little survey:

How many of you have heard of Joe Hill?

song writer, swede living in the US, early 20th century


You can always google on his name. He's a part of an interesting part of american history.

Comments

[therru.livejournal.com]

And that was me, being anonymous...

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

I knew I could trust you ;)


Eva

[therru.livejournal.com]

He was very clever actually; he used popular songs of the day (e.g. several Salvation Army melodies) and set new lyrics to them. That way, everybody knew the melodies already and could sing along.

Dan Andersson was contemporary with him, but is chiefly known as one of our greatest working class poets. He actually went to America the same year as Joe Hill, but returned home again. A lot of his poems have been set to music by others.

He, too, died young. Just the other day, actually, someone told me that he died because a hotel he stayed in had sprayed the room with some poison against bugs, and not aired the room properly afterwards. He was found dead in the morning.

[therru.livejournal.com]

"...så ta mig till den värld där man får göra som man vill..."
:)