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Mill Was Made of Marble - Joe Glazer

from When We Stand Together by Magpie

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about

We have been singing this song ever since first meeting Joe Glazer when we moved to Washington, DC in 1974. We have often reflected on the irony portrayed in Joe’s utopian vision of the worker’s posthumous paradise. After all, wouldn’t the ideal paradise involve not working in a textile mill at all? But some people believe that our dreams are often our subconscious mind’s attempt to sort out the troubling reality of our daily lives, our waking hours. By that measure, one might easily see why a worker
in such a dangerous and unhealthy place as a textile mill would dream a dream like this.
Joe Glazer, who sang for unions all across the country for more than fifty years, and was known far and wide as “Labor’s Troubadour” was also the first singer to record an entire album of IWW songs, many by Joe Hill, in 1954. He also recorded what is probably the first collection of just the songs of Joe Hill, both albums for Moses Asch and Folkways Records. He probably sang “Solidarity Forever” more than any single singer in history, and he knew its writer, Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin, who can be heard speaking to an audience on Joe’s second collection of songs of the Wobblies.

On a personal note, Joe became like a second father to us when he took us under his wing and invited us to sing backup vocals on many of his records. He also issued our second LP Working My Life Away on his Collector Records label, and then, in a thematic departure, in 1990 released our collection of environmental songs, Living Planet, for the 20th anniversary of the
first Earth Day. When We Stand Together is affectionately dedicated to him and his memory.

lyrics

I dreamed that I had died
And gone to my reward:
A job in heaven’s textile plant On a golden boulevard.

Where the mill was made of marble; The machines were made out of gold; And nobody ever got tired;
And nobody ever grew old.

The mill was built in a garden;
No dust or lint could be found;
And the air was so fresh and so fragrant With flowers and trees all around.
And the mill was made of marble...

It was quiet and peaceful in heaven; There was no clatter or boom;
You could hear the most beautiful music, As you worked at the spindle and loom.

There was no unemployment in heaven; We worked steady all through the year; We always had food for the children; We never were haunted by fear.

When I woke from this dream about heaven,
I wondered if some day there’d be
A mill like that one down below here on earth For workers like you and like me.
Where the mill was made of marble...

credits

from When We Stand Together, released July 23, 2022
words and music by Joe Glazer

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James Connolly Upstate NY IWW Albany, New York

The James Connolly Upstate NY IWW branch is a union for all workers based in NY. Musicians and other workers wishing to organize can find us here upstatenyiww.wordpress.com/contact/

Our benefit album is out May 31st. Support our organizing workers! ... more

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