Press Associates, Inc. (PAI) -- 9/25/2006

 

JOE GLAZER, ‘LABOR’S TROUBADOUR,’ DIES AT 88

 

            CHEVY CHASE, Md. (PAI)--“When you’re too old to work, too old to work, too old to work and you’re too young to di-ie, who will take of you?  How’ll you get by?  When you’re too old to work and you’re too young to die.”

-- “Too Old To  Work” by Joe Glazer

 

            That ballad, one of many by Joe Glazer, “Labor’s Troubadour,” was written to celebrate unionists’ long campaign for guaranteed pensions.  And it is one of the many pro-union, pro-worker songs Glazer left as a legacy to working men and women when he died Sept. 19 of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 88 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md.

 

            “Nobody has sung at more picket lines and more union rallies than Joe.  And  nobody has ever sung Solidarity Forever more often,” says fellow labor folksinger and writer Joe Uehlein.  Glazer always got the same great determined look on his face when he sang labor’s anthem, adds Uehlein, who first met Glazer in 1959, when Glazer was celebrating with Steel Workers in Cleveland at the end of their record strike.

 

            The cause Glazer celebrated in Too Old To Work was typical of his songs:  Workers and their fight for justice on the job.  In another example, Glazer’s The Mill Was Made Of Marble has circled the world, Uehlein said.  It describes textile workers’ dreams for a cleaner, safer mill.   Glazer had been an organizer and educator for the Textile Workers and the Rubber Workers.  He was up to date, too: his song The Answering Machine satirizes automation.

 

            Glazer was one of several great folk songwriters and performers, such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, whose songs became labor mainstays.  Glazer helped found the Labor Heritage Foundation, whose yearly Great Labor Arts Exchange is a festival of performances and workshops devoted to organizing and motivating workers to unionize. 

 

Peter Jones of the foundation recalled that Glazer, then age 60, started the festival “by putting out the call for it and calling up all the labor singers he could find” to participate.  Increasing rank-and-file participation was a favorite Glazer cause, Uehlein adds: “To get working people who had artistic skill” and encourage and motivate them.

 

            Glazer’s folk songs celebrated workers and their struggles, and were always accompanied by his big guitar, baritone voice and infectious grin.  Though most of his songs were worker-oriented, others touched on other progressive ideas.  

 

One hilarious song, Garbage, made pungent points against pollution: “Whatcha gonna do when there’s nothing left to eat, and nothing left to talk about, and nothing left to breathe?...But garbage.”  And in the mid-60s, Glazer celebrated religious toleration by setting an Irish tune to his words about Dublin’s new Lord Mayor--who was Jewish.

 

            Glazer would often and easily adapt melodies from other songs and change them to fit labor’s struggles.  He changed “Jesus is my captain, we shall not be moved” to “We’re fighting for a contract…we shall not be moved.”  In a memoir, he recalls singing it while leading hundreds of strikers around a Pepperell textile mill.

 

            Glazer was in demand for songs right until the end of his life, Uehlein said.  Throughout his years, he sang for huge audiences--as at the arts exchange and for the Steel Workers--and small groups, on picket lines and in union halls, and always with an wide smile and enthusiasm that motivated others.

 

            Glazer is survived by his wife Mildred--who often accompanied him on the road and occasionally prompted him when he blanked out on a line--three children, four grandchildren, and his songs.  “We’ll have a tribute to Joe and raise money through the (Labor Heritage) Foundation for a Joe Glazer songwriting contest,” to encourage younger unionists to continue in labor folksong writing and performing, Uehlein says.

 

 


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