Identify this song: Freedom never came like a bird on the wing
Ellen Shepard
years, actually, since summer camp. Haven't been able to locate it in
folk anthologies or songbooks. If anyone could fill in any details on
author, recordings, additional lyrics, etc., I'd be much appreciative.
Here's as much as I remember:
Freedom never came like a bird on the wing
Never came down like rain in spring
Freedom, freedom, what a hard won thing
You've got to work for it, fight for it
Day and night for it
And every generation has got to win it again
Pass it down to your children, mothers
Pass it down to your children, brothers
You've got to work for it, fight for it
Day and night for it
And every generation has got to win it again
j...@genetics.washington.edu
Wonderful song. It is called "Pass It On" and was written by
Millard Lampell and George Kleinsinger. It was in a documentary
film made by the Almagamated Clothing Workers union in
1965. It was sung by Judy Collins and that performance is also on
a record "This Land Is Your Land -- Songs of Social Justice".
(I get this from a Judy Collins web site:
www.richardhess.com/judy/judy001.htm )
I recall the words of the first verse as:
Freedom, freedom is a troublesome thing
Doesn't come down like a bird on the wing
You've for to work for it, fight for it
Day-and-night for it
And every generation's got to do it again.
Truer words were never sung.
--
Joe Felsenstein j...@removethispart.gs.washington.edu
Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington,
Box 357730, Seattle, WA 98195-7730 USA
Ellen Shepard
j...@removethispart.gs.washington.edu
I wrote:]
> Wonderful song. It is called "Pass It On" and was written by
> Millard Lampell and George Kleinsinger. It was in a documentary
> film made by the Almagamated Clothing Workers union in
> 1965.
I neglected to give the name of the 1965 documentary. It is "The
Inheritance". It should be available at a good university library
in the media section. Good documentary on the labor movement in
the U.S., though it does duck some difficult issues, as you might
expect given its sponsorship.
Ellen Shepard
> I neglected to give the name of the 1965 documentary. It is "The
> Inheritance". It should be available at a good university library
> in the media section. Good documentary on the labor movement in
> the U.S., though it does duck some difficult issues, as you might
> expect given its sponsorship.
This is wonderful, thank you. I'll check at universities here.
I wonder if pro-labor, pro-civil rights, etc songs are still popular
at summer camps? In the early 70s, we sang a ton of them. And they
clearly stuck with me!