Scissor Bill (Joe Hill)

Here’s Bucky Halker doing a Joe Hill (1879-1915) tune “Scissor Bill“ that will appear on Halker’s forthcoming CD tribute to Joe Hill due out in mid-2015. (This is a rough mix.) Halker performs the vocals and acoustic guitars here and is joined here by Brother John Kattke on piano and John Abbey on upright bass. Funding for the recording was provided through a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. This is one of Hill’s lesser known and rarely recorded songs and one that Hill took the tune for from the popular “Steamboat Bill,“ a song more in a vaudeville jazz vein than folk music usually associated with labor music. A “scissorbill“ is a term that Hill and his fellow workers in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) used to describe workers who behaved like a goofy bird, acting stupidly like a scissorbill. Hill and many labor activists had no time for workers who blamed their problems on immigrants or believed that by acting on their own they could count on capitalists for a fair break. Capitalists were about maximizing profits not giving a fair wage or providing decent working conditions and benefits. Only through direct action in unions could workers achieve a more democratic workplace and society. The images in this Youtube piece are primarily from the Great Depression and were taken by photographers working for the Farm Security Administration to document conditions in the United States. Others are of Joe Hill and various Wobbly/IWW graphics. The lyrics which Halker sings have been slightly altered from the original for fear that some idiot literalists will misunderstand them, the same people who might have thought Springsteen’s “Born In The USA“ was a patriotic anthem. Hill mocked nativism, Anglocentric thinking, and racism in the piece, but some people just wouldn’t get it. So look up the originals on line if you’re the curious type!