Long Memory (1996) ( )

Product Summary Label: Red House Records UPC: 00033651008323 Release Date: 4/2/1996 Buy.com Sku: 60031480 Item#: M6F572 Format:  CD Song Listing Disc 1 Song Title Sample 1. Aunt Molly Jackson Defines Folk Songs Once And For All ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 2. I Am A Union Woman ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 3. Aragon Mill ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 4. Carolina Cotton Hill ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 5. De Colores ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 6. Bury Me In My Overalls ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 7. Soapbox Oration ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 8. All Used Up ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 9. Two Bums ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 10. Dump The Bosses Off Your Back ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 11. Charge On Mother Jones, The ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 12. Harry Orchard ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 13. Nevada Jane ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 14. No More Reds ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 15. Wobbbly Doxology ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 16. Untitled ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 17. Untitled ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 18. Untitled ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips 19. Untitled ~ Rosalie Sorrels/U. Utah Phillips   Album Notes and Credits Notes & Personnel Info /U. Utah Phillips. Includes liner notes by Pete Seeger, Rosalie Sorrels and Utah Phillips. The Long Memory is a duo album without a duet; Rosalie Sorrels occupies the first six songs and 17 and a half minutes, while U. Utah Phillips follows with the remaining nine songs (along with four untitled stories and introductions as banded on the CD), for 23 minutes. But though they do not perform together, Sorrels and Phillips share a sensibility and a conception for the album, which is concerned with the history of union organizing dating back to the early years of the 20th century in the U.S. The album begins with a story and song by mineworkers union folksinger Aunt Molly Jackson, and Sorrels continues with songs written by Si Kahn and Malvina Reynolds. Sorrels' contributions, while they refer specifically to the needs and hopes of union workers, stay mostly in a conventional folk song singing style. Phillips, of course, is more of a radical raconteur, as interested in reciting stories in a folksy manner as he is in singing, although the point is always the same: that workers need to organize into a union to fight for their rights against the capitalist bosses. To anyone who considers this message at best historical, both Sorrels and Phillips, in their extensive liner notes, have rebuttals. Phillips rejects the notion that the fight for workers' rights is something from the '60s, if not the '30s, '40s, and '50s, arguing, "These tidy little decade packages are only a media convenience used to trivialize and dismiss important ideas and events." More directly, Sorrels notes that, although "there was a hard struggle and enormous sacrifices were made before there could be any justice or fair pay or safe working conditions for the workers who built this country," still, her state of Idaho is a "right to work" state, "which means," says Sorrels, "you have the right to work for next to nothing with no job protection or benefits." In that sense, little has changed, and the advances achieved by the people celebrated on this record (Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, etc.) remain vulnerable to reversal if workers do not remain vigilant. The Long Memory thus speaks to contemporary listeners not only as a history lesson (and, at that, history largely left out of the history books), but also as a series of cautionary tales. ~ William Ruhlmann Producer: Samantha Wright Engineer: Rob Matson   Compilation Appearances Friends Of Mine Remembering Kate Wolf Nod To Bob-Tribute To Bob Dyla Classic Railroad Songs From Smithsoni Red House 25 Singing Through The Hard Times:utah P Women Blue:passionate Love Songs From   Technical Info Release Date : 03/19/1996 Original Release Date : 1996 Catalog ID : 83 Label : Red House Records Number of Discs : 1 Studio/Live : Studio Mono/Stereo : Stereo SPAR Code : DDD UPC : 00033651008323   Professional Reviews Musician (8/96, p.90) - "...Senior folkies with all the left credentials, Sorrels and Phillips revive the organizing anthems of the Industrial Workers of the World....With the social contract of the Cold War fading into history, these songs take on a revived and immediate relevance, which shines in the enthusiasm that Sorrels and Phillips bring to their singing..."    Product Image