I so enjoyed the comments and great music that c99 folks posted on last weekend's Bread and Roses article. This weekend, let's have some fun with religion parody songs. It's been a helluva week and we could use a bit of a giggle. First off, Phil Ochs' classic definition of protest music. See below.

All right then, that covers the academic portion of this article. I've posted some religion parodies I love below. Please feel free to add your favourites.

(BTW, is there any way to collect into a site archive all of the music that folks post here on c99? Sorry, JtC for asking :=)

First off is my all-time greatest, Joe Hill's famous song "The Preacher And The Slave" (also known as "Pie In The Sky.") You would have read more about Joe Hill in JaeRae's HellRaisers Journal.

More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill

I don't suppose that any of Joe's performances of the song was ever recorded before the copper mine bastards killed him. The version I know is by Utah Phillips. Utah always introduced songs by telling the audience stories about it. I hope you enjoy his story of how Joe wrote and performed the song and then audience participation in Utah's performance. Utah calls Joe Hill's status before he was killed by the State by it's real name: Joe Hill was a political prisoner who was executed for writing rebel songs. And that's no lie.

Like everyone else, the IWW songwriters often took tunes from popular hymns. Joe Hill used the Salvation Army (which the Wobblies called the "Starvation Army") hymn "In The Sweet Bye And Bye" to parody oppressive religion and the snake-oil methods the Starvation Army use (to this day) to rope in poor people.

The song comes from "Utah Phillips covers Joe Hill" - Live at the Rose Wagner Theater, Salt Lake City, Utah, February 2005.

Source: https://youtu.be/PJ236CwhlPw

There are lots of great stuff on Joe Hill, the IWW, and Utah Phillips on this Youtube mix -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXGuHCsjXro&list=RDPJ236CwhlPw&index=3
Utah interviews Harry McClintock in his old age who tells the story of the song and sings it very tenderly.
The awesome voice of the great Paul Robeson in singing "Joe Hill" will send chills down your spine.

The Youtube blurb has a link to a tribute album by Duncan Phillips to his dad, Utah, that's worth following:
http://www.thelongmemory.org/

One of our problems as progressives is that we don't know our own history. Our future success depends in large part on recovering what Utah Phillips called "The Long Memory." We need to relearn that we stand in along line of heroes and part of our future job is to make them proud. (Protest music sure helps with this.) I so recommend that c99 folks read the Hellraisers Journal ever week. JaeRae is one of our few links to the long memory. We need to know who our spiritual ancestors are and the HJ tells us their stories with photos, clips, links, and raw source material from back in the day. Learning our history is the only way we progressives can find our place in today and tomorrow's battles.

Here are the lyrics, taken from a "Wobblies" (IWW) tribute page on a folk archive website:

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:

CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

The starvation army they play,
They sing and they clap and they pray
'Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:

Holy Rollers and jumpers come out,
They holler, they jump and they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all diseases today.
If you fight hard for children and wife --
Try to get something good in this life --
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

FINAL CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.

https://youtu.be/PJ236CwhlPw

You could find the music for this song in Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer, Songs of Work and Protest, New York, NY, 1973, p. 157. It's a book worth having if you like rebel songs.

Here's another favourite. It's Pete Seeger's "Old Time Religion, taken from a concert he did with Arlo Guthrie, which became an album called "Precious Friends." It's hilarious. Pete Seeger took the old hymn tune called "Old Time Religion" and, like Utah Phillips said in the clip above, "put words to it that makes more sense" :=)

https://youtu.be/YBtSFhbxBTg

Here are the lyrics:

Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
It's good enough for me.

We will pray with Aphrodite,
We will pray with Aphrodite,
She wears that see-through nightie,
And it's good enough for me.

We will pray with Zarathustra,
We'll pray just like we use ta,
I'm a Zarathustra booster,
And it's good enough for me.

We will pray with those Egyptians,
Build pyramids to put our crypts in,
Cover subways with inscriptions,
And it's good enough for me.

We will pray with those old druids,
They drink fermented fluids,
Waltzing naked though the woo-ids,
And it's good enough for me.

We do dances to bring water,
Prepare animals for slaughter,
Sacrifice our sons and daughters,
And it's good enough for me.

I'll arise at early morning,
When my Lord gives me the warning,
That the solar age is dawning,
And it's good enough for me

I found the the music for Old Time Religion in a GuitarPro version at the Ultimate Guitar site, which is a wondrous resource:
Mine is by Charlie Haden. The website link is https://www.ultimate-guitar.com

Here's a link to Youtube for the full 2013 concert by the two at Carnegie Hall:

I have always loved Kris Kristofferson's music. One cool dude, eh. He wrote "Jesus Was A Capricorn" in 1972, I think.

Here is the song from his same-titled album. There he is with Rita Coolidge back in the day.

Here are the lyrics:

Jesus was a Capricorn
He ate organic food
He believed in love and peace
And never wore no shoes

Long hair, beard and sandals
And a funky bunch of friends
Reckon may just nail Him up
If He come down again

'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Prove they can be better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty, decent folks can frown on
You can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me

Get back, John

Eggheads cursin', rednecks cussin'
Hippies for their hair
Others laugh at straights who laugh at
Freaks who laugh at square

Some folks hate the Whites
Who hate the Blacks who hate the Klan
Most of us hate anything that
We don't understand

'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Prove they can be better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty, decent folks can frown on
But you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me

Help yourself brother
Help yourself reverend
Help yourself brother

Heh, heh, heh, the 70s :=)

I have the music from an old songbook called "Kristofferson: Sunlight and Shadows" (Chappel & Co: NY)
Here's the old sliver-tongued devil hisself.

Let's end with a bit of a laugh at the nutbars who work so hard to make life miserable. Remember last year's kerfuffle about the red Starbucks cups? Here's a parody song, based on Toby Keith's "Red Solo Cup."

All right - 'nuff said. I look forward to your comments, memories, favourite parody songs (about anything :=), or whatever springs to mind.

Peace be with us, if we sing for it with peaceful hearts,
(The usual disclaimer: if I was any good at it, I wouldn't have to say it.)
gerrit