Don’t Want Your Millions – Audio
Don’t Want Your Millions (U.S. Release) – Lyrics
- I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister
- Rebel Girl
- Hard Travelin’
- Dying Mine Brakeman
- The Lumberjack’s Prayer
- Pennsylvania Miner
- I Ain’t Got No Home
- Bourgeois Blues
- The Coal Machine / What Will A Coal Miner Do?
- Do Re Mi
- Which Side Are You On?
- New Made Graves Of Centralia
- Death Of Mother Jones
- Dump The Bosses
- Scab’s Lament (a poem read by Studs Terkel)
- Heaven In Milwaukee (also available on Passion Politics Love)
I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister
[ Jim Garland, Stormking Music ]
I don’t want your millions mister
I don’t want your diamond ring
All I want is the right to live mister
Give me my old job back again
I don’t want your Rolls-Royce mister
I don’t want your pleasure yacht
All I want is food for my babies
Give me back my job again
We worked hard to build this country mister
While you lived a life of ease
Now you’ve stolen everything that we built mister
All my people starve and freeze
Think me dumb if you wish mister
Call me black or green, or blue, or red
But there’s one thing that I know mister
All these people should be fed
Rebel Girl
[ Joe Hill / Public Domain ]
There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world as everyone knows
Some are living in beautiful mansions
And wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue-blooded queens and princesses
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl
But the only and thoroughbred lady, is the Rebel Girl
That’s the Rebel Girl, the Rebel Girl
To the working class she’s a precious pearl
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel boy
We’ve had girls before but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World
For it’s great to fight for freedom
With the Rebel Girl.
Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor
And her dress may not be very fine
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she’ll hurl
For the only and thoroughbred lady, is the Rebel Girl
Hard Travelin’
[ Woody Guthrie / Ludlow Music ]
I been doin’ some hard travelin’, I thought you knowed
I been doin’ some hard travelin’, way on down the road
I been doin’ some hard ramblin’, hard drinkin’, hard gamblin’
I been doin’ some hard travelin’ lord.
I been ridin’ them fast rattlers, I thought you knowed
I been ridin’ them flat wheelers, way on down the road
I been ridin’ them dead enders, blind passengers, pickin’ up cinders
I been doin’ some hard travelin’ lord.
I been doin’ some hard rock minin’, I thought you knowed
I been leanin’ on a pressure drill, way on down the road
Hammer flyin’ the air hose suckin’ six feet of mud and I sure been a muckin’
I been doin’ some hard travelin’ lord.
I been doin’ some hard harvestin’, I thought you knowed
North Dakota to Kansas City, way on down the road
Cuttin’ wheat and stackin’ hay, tryin’ to make a dollar a day
I been doin’ some hard travelin’ lord.
I been lyin’ in a hardrock jail, I thought you knowed
I been lyin’ out ninety days, way on down the road
Damn old judge he said to me it’s ninety days for vagrancy
I been doin’ some hard travelin’ lord.
I been movin’ that red iron ore, I thought you knowed
I been shippin’ out Great Lakes sailin, way on down the road
Duluth, Superior, and Ashland too, every port before we’re through
I been doin’ some hard travelin’ lord.
I been walkin’ that Lincoln Highway, I thought you knowed
I been hittin’ that 66, way on down the road
Gotta heavy load and a worried mind, lookin’ for a woman that’s hard to find
I been doin’ some hard travelin’ lord.
Dying Mine Brakeman
[ Orville Jencks / Public Domain ]
See that brave and trembling motorman
Said his age is twenty-one.
See him stepping from his motor
Crying “Lord what have I done?”
“Have I killed my brave young coupler
Is it right that he is dying?
Well, I tried to stop the motor,
But I could not stop in time.”
See the car wheels runnin’ o’er him,
See them bend his weary head;
See his sister standing o’er him
Crying “Brother, are you dead?”
“Yes, sister I am dying
Soon I’ll reach a better shore,
Soon I’ll gain a home in heaven
Where this coupling is no more.”
“Tell my brother in the heading
These few words I’ll send to him;
Never, never venture coupling,
If he does, his life will end.”
“Tell my father, he’s a weighboss,
All he weighs to weigh it fair,
They will have true scales up yonder
At that meeting in the air.”
“Tell my mother I’ve gone to glory,
Not to grieve for me no more,
Just to meet me over yonder
On that bright and golden shore.”
The Lumberjack’s Prayer
[ T-Bone Slim / Public Domain ]
(spoken)
I pray dear Lord for Jesus’ sake
Give us this day a T-Bone steak
Hallowed be thy holy name,
But don’t forget to send the same.
Oh, hear my humble cry, Oh Lord,
And send us down some decent board,
Brown gravy and some German fried,
With sliced tomatoes on the side.
Oh, hear my cry, Almighty Host,
I quite forgot the Quail on Toast,
Let your kindly heart be stirred,
And stuff some oysters in that bird.
Dear Lord, we know your Holy wish,
On Friday we must have a fish,
Our flesh is weak and spirit stale,
You better make that fish a whale.
Oh, hear me lord, remove those “dogs”
These sausages of powder’d logs
Your bull beef hash and bearded Snouts,
Take them to hell or thereabouts.
With Alum bread and Pressed-Beef butts,
Dear Lord you damn near ruin’d my guts,
Your white-wash milk and Oleorine,
I wish to Christ I’d never seen.
Oh, hear me Lord, I am praying still,
But if you won’t, our union will,
Put porkchops on the bill of fare,
And starve no workers any where.
Pennsylvania Miner
[ Phillips Thompson / Public Domain]
Come listen fellow workingmen, my story I’ll relate
How workers in the coal mines fare in Pennsylvania state;
Come hear a sad survivor, from beside his children’s graves,
And learn how free Americans are treated now as slaves.
Chorus:
They robbed us of our pay
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore our lives away.
For years we toiled patiently, they cut our wages down
We struck, they sent the Pinkertons to drive us from that town;
We held a meeting near the mine, some hasty words were said,
A volley from the Pinkertons laid a half-a-dozen dead.
I had a little family, the youngest scarce could creep;
Next night the hireling ruffian band aroused us from our sleep;
They battered in our cabin door, we pleaded all in vain
They turned my wife and children out to perish in the rain.
They died of cold and famine, beneath the open sky
While pitying neighbors stood around, but all as poor as I;
You never saw such misery, God grant you never may,
The sight is branded on my soul until my dying day.
Half-crazed I wandered round the spot, beyond the edge of town
I met a dastard Pinkerton and struck that villain down,
My brain was frenzied with the thought of children, friends, and wife
I set my heel upon his throat and trampled out his life.
And now I roam an outlawed man, no house or friends have I,
For if the law can track me down I shall be doomed to die,
But very little should I care of what becomes of me,
If all the land would rise and swear such things no more shall be.
I Ain’t Got No Home
[ Woody Guthrie / Ludlow Music ]
I ain’t got no home, I’m just ramblin’ around
Hard workin’ man, I go from town to town
The police make it hard wherever I may go,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore
My brothers and my sisters came walkin’ down that road
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod
Rich man took my house and chased me from my door
I ain’t got no home in this world anymore
I was farmin’ on the shares and always I was poor
My crops I laid into the banker’s store
My wife took down and died upon our cabin floor
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore
Now I’m just a rambler to see what I can see
This wide wicked world is a funny place to be
The gamblin’ man is rich and the workin’ man is poor
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore
Bourgeois Blues
[ Huddie Ledbetter / Folkways Music ]
Tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don’t try to buy no home in Washington, DC
Refrain:
It’s such a bourgeois town…it’s a bourgeois town
Got the bourgeois blues, gonna spread the news all around.
Me and my wife ran all over town
Everywhere we’d go , they’d turn us down
It’s such a bourgeois town…
Me and Martha we was standin’ downstairs
Heard the white man say: “I don’t want no nigger down there”
It’s such a bourgeois town…
White folks in Washington, they know how
To throw a colored man a nickel just to see him bow
It’s such a bourgeois town…
The D.A.R. wouldn’t let Marian Anderson in
But Mrs. Roosevelt was her best friend
It’s such a bourgeois town…
Home of the brave, land of the free
I don’t want to be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
It’s such a bourgeois town…
The Coal Machine / What Will A Coal Miner Do?
[ Public Domain]
Tell me, what will a coal miner do?
Tell me, what will a coal miner do?
When he goes down in the mine,
Joy loaders he will find.
Tell me, what will a coal miner do?
Miners’ poor pocketbooks are growing lean,
Miners’ poor pocketbooks are growing lean,
They can’t make a dollar at all,
Here is where we place the fault;
Place it all on that coal-loading machine
Now boys, I think I have a scheme,
And I’m sure that it’s neither rude nor mean.
We will pick our bone and refuse,
Then we’ll know our coal is clean,
Then we’ll outdo that coal-loading machine.
Do Re Mi
[ Woody Guthrie / Ludlow Music ]
Lots of folks back east they say
Are leavin’ here every day
Hittin’ that old dusty road
To the California line
Across the desert sands they roll
Gettin’ out of the old dust bowl
Think they’re goin’ to the sugar bowl
But this is what they find
The police at the port of entry say
You’re number 14,000 for today
Chorus:
If you ain’t got the do re mi
If you ain’t got the do re mi
You better go back to beautiful Texas
Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee
California is a garden of Eden
A paradise to live in or see
But believe it or not
You won’t find it so hot
If you ain’t got the do re mi
If you wanna buy a home or farm
That can’t do nobody harm
Or take your vacation by the mountains or the sea
Don’t swap your old cow for a car
Better stay right where you are
You’d better take this little tip from me
Cause I look through the want ads every day
But the headlines on the papers always say
Chorus
Which Side Are You On?
[ Florence Reece / Stormking Music ]
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good old union
Come in here to dwell
Refrain:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
