Daily Worker
November 10, 1942
THE ALMANACS SING OF BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE
Have you been wondering where the Almanac Singers are these days and what they are doing? The group of young folks who came together from all over the country "because they like to sing and make up songs of, by and for the plain ordinary American working people" have been going back and forth across the country, doing just that.
They sang "Round, Round Hitler's Grave" for the U.S. Government on all four networks in "This Is War." They've sung for the Treasury Dept., the Navy, and for our servicemen overseas by short-wave broadcast. They've sung for longshoremen in Frisco, and for lumbermen and fishermen in Seattle. They've sung for practically every union in New York, for harvester makers and meatpackers in Chicago, brewerymen in Milwaukee - and lots more.
The Oil Workers Organizing Committee asked the Almanacs for a couple of songs for their campaign in Texas - and got them. Their recording of "The Ballad of Harry Bridges" is being worn thin in all the juke boxes on the waterfront in Sydney, Australia, according to a West Coast seaman just in from the Pacific.
A group of them are in Detroit right now: Bess Lomax, Butch Hawes, Charley Polachek and Arthur Stern. So far they've written a special OCD song for the Detroit OCD, which asked them to participate in the induction ceremonies for air raid wardens, and they've sung for Ford, Plymouth, Vickers, Murray and Dodge locals of the UAW-CIO.
In August, they were the official artists of the UAW convention in Chicago. In September, they visited with the United Rubber Workers convention in Akron. October caught up with them at the United Cannery, Agricultural and Packers and Allied Workers of America's (U.C.A.P.A.W.A.) convention in Chicago.
Arthur Stern, who is sort of spokesman for the group, said, "I don't think we're so hot, really. I gripe and beef and complain that there's lots more and harder work ahead for us if we are to gear this nation to a people's war of liberation and a people's peace."
The Detroit group of the Almanac Singers have been accomplishing a great deal toward that end. There's a New York group too, managed by Lee Hays. There will be more about them in a future issue.