Glory And Fame

"I already recorded this song on my CD, Make It So [1996], and might not have recorded it once again, except that when Anne Feeney heard me sing it around a campfire at the Kerrville Folk Festival, she said she liked it but that it might stand a little editing. I had long thought that myself, and after she made the suggestion, Chrysler helped me cut out half the verses during a long drive one night someplace in the Midwest. My other name for the song is "Labor History 101." I used to call it "Ballad of the Proletariat," but Pete Seeger suggested I change the title, pointing out that "proletariat" is a "long, Latin word" which "might as well be in Swahili, or Chinese." I originally wrote the song in the spring of '93, and it has obviously been a victim of the "folk process."