Ain't You Got A Right by [LABOR MOVEMENT SONGBOOKS] CARAWAN, Guy (et al) - 1967

Knoxville: Highlander Research & Education Center, 1967. First Edition. Pamphlet. Significant and apparently unrecorded collection of southern and Appalachian labor songs, collected by the great folk revivalist and civil rights activist Guy Carawan (1927-2015). Carawan was the long-serving Musical Director of the Highlander Research and Education Center (also known as the Highlander Folk School). In that capacity, in 1960, he introduced the song "We Shall Overcome" to a group of North Carolina students who would form The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Carawan is thus credited with having introduced the Civil Rights movement to its iconic anthem. He would go on to prominence as both a musician and musicologist, and a hugely influential proponent of music as a means to organization and solidarity. The current collection attempts to do for Appalachian workers' movements what "We Shall Overcome" did for the civil rights movement; it is dedicated, according to Carawan's foreword, to "helping build a singing spirit to a poor people's movement in Appalachia...just as it took time for a sizeable body of appropriate songs to evolve in the civil righs movement, it will take time to find the right songs to get people singing and moving in Appalachia..." Songs include Carawan's own "Ain't You Got A Right To The Tree of Life;" such popular ballads as "Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon;" and southern labor anthems such as "There Is Mean Things Happening In This Land," "Which Side Are You On?," and "I Hate the Company Bosses." Rare; not separately catalogued in OCLC and never previously seen by us. Not in Cohen (Work and Sing, 2010). Quarto (28cm). Side-stapled, mimeographed sheets; 18 unnumbered leaves, printed recto-only. Two tiny spots of discoloration to front wrapper, else Near Fine.