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Scatter My Ashes Copyright August 10, 2005 by Gary E. Andrews
All Rights Reserved For The Globe

In his book, "Bob Dylan Chronicles, Volume I", he tells of intending to write a song about union organizer and troubadour Joe Hill. Dylan said he thought he might research it and write a Song about it. I thought I might research Hill's story so I might write an informed Song. But the muse arrived before I got around to research.
She's so fine I always drop what I'm doing and let her in.
Hope Bob doesn't mind. She may have been on the way to his house.
Songs don't have to be about the people they're about anyway; just fictions that get "a" story told, not necessarily "the" story. She gave me the Rhyme Lines for the quote, which Dylan said he would use as a Refrain, a Refrain-Type Chorus to end each Verse.

I played them on my Martin ONY16, then typed it out, writing new Lines as I typed, not my usual guitar-in-hand, ad lib Lyric, usual creative style.

I had an idea a choir could ask, "Anywhere?," after the lead sings "Scatter My Ashes anywhere," and the lead could come back to specify, "Anywhere but Utah!"

I later asked the internet about Joe Hill. I got a lot of 2005 Joe Hills' news.
Then I entered "Scatter My Ashes..."
A website said the quote was from a letter Joe Hillstrom (b. 1877-79? - d. 1915) wrote "to a pal" from jail before they hanged him November 19, 1915. He wrote something like, "After they hang me, get my body and have it cremated. Then scatter my ashes everywhere, anywhere but Utah. I wouldn't wanna be caught dead in Utah."
Joe Hill advised, "Don't mourn! Organize!"

One source says he was born in Sweden, in 1879, named Joel Emmanuel Haaglung. He came to America in 1902. He worked the kinds of jobs that make calloused hands. Men worked twelve-hour days, six and seven days a week, long hours, in dangerous conditions. Hell's afire! In those days they worked children, small baby boys, crawling back in little holes to place explosives, worked 'em twelve-hour days.

Joe Hill came to think of the 'wage' system loggers and miners, textile worker, and immigrants worked under as unreasonable, not a 'living wage', 'adequate' to pay for the 'living' a man did between the time he left work one day, and came back the next.

He saw all the other assets of corporations just sit there, idle, inert, until Human Resources came and supplied the demanded Human Competence to 'make' all those other assets 'work' to Take Profit. Why begrudge those Human beings an adequate share of the Profit they earned the corporation? They're sole-source suppliers of the demanded Human Competence to turn raw materials into finished commodities.

Somewhere he found the Industrial Workers of the World Union, the 'Wobblies'. But how do you 'reach' and organize men who are illiterate in English, who don't speak it, can't read it, can't write it? Hill began setting pointed words to common tunes, words that satirized the situations men were living in, set to melodies people already knew, Hymns, anthems, popular songs. You might just whistle the tune to a feller you wanted to talk to outside, and he knew what that meant, and met ya out there.

The International Workers of the World Union published The Little Red Songbook, pocketsized, so a man could carry it with him.

The consensus seems to be that Hill was framed by Law Enforcement and Judicial authorities in league with mine owners where he was trying to organize a union for safety's sake. They got lead mines there, co-occurring with copper, gold, and silver, all the metals that make men crazy.
In a Union Songbook, March 6, 1913, sold for a few cents to miners, dockworkers, factory hands, there was a Song, "There is power in a Union," credited to one Joe Hill.

In the cold Utah January of 1914, at State Street 800 South, in Salt Lake City, it seems a man named John G. Morrisson and his son Arling Morrisson were killed in the robbery of Morrisson's grocery store. Two men were arrested in the train yards.

But Joe Hill had the importunity to get himself shot that same night and went to a doctor for help. The doctor reported it to authorities. They latched onto him. Joe said a man shot him in a 'dispute' over a woman. But he refused to name the woman or the shooter.

Joe tried to fire his lawyer for pleading him guilty. The judge wouldn't allow it. I can see how that would piss a man off. So Utah is hallowed ground, and it's no fault of anyone alive today that such an injustice took place then; but such injustices continue to be perpetrated and that may be our fault for not knowing Joe's story and preventing it from being repeated.

The prosecution's whole case seems to be the coincidental fact Joe was in that city that night, and got shot. They tried him. They convicted him. They sentenced Joe Hill to death.
Helen Keller heard about the case, and wrote, in Joe's defense. The Swedish Government made formal representations. Labor Organizations from Europe and Latin America sent petitions. Woodrow Wilson reached out to the Governor, more than once, asking to delay the Execution.

All came to nought. On November 18, 1915, Joe Hill sent a message to International Workers of the World Leader Big Bill Haywood.
"Don't waste any time mourning," Joe said. "Organize."

On November 19, 1915, a Firing Squad put Joe Hill to death at Utah State Prison.

In 1925, Alfred Hayes was at an International Workers of the World Union meeting, and it was raining outside, and he wrote a Lyric;
"I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you or me!
Says I, 'But Joe, you're ten years dead!'
I never died, said he. I never died, said he."

One rendition has the line, "The copper bosses killed you Joe!" and Joe replies, "I never died," said he."

In 1936, Earl Robinson set that Lyric to music. Paul Robeson and Joan Baez and Pete Seeger and a thousand others sang and recorded it and told what they knew of Joe Hill. In the late 1930's Billy Bragg recorded it.

"There is power in a Union" was sung on pickett lines during the Great Depression years of the early 20th century, and at Labor Rallies in countries that didn't exist when Joe Hill wrote that Song.

Word on the street is they put little portions of Joe Hills ashes in envelopes and distributed them to Wobblies Locals across the country, and sent them to Labor Organizations in other countries. One state was not on the distribution list; Utah.

There will always be another song to be written. Someone will write it. Why not you? www.garyeandrews.com