Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Songs of Renown: Billy Bragg interprets Woody Guthrie's 'I Aint Got No Home'


"I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore
Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore."
 Woody Guthrie

No one does Woody Guthrie's songs of capitalist plundering and immiseration better than Billy Bragg.

On his most recent album, Tooth and Nail, Billy Bragg does a magnificent cover version of Woody Guthrie's Great Depression era song 'I Aint Got No Home', one of the great political folk songs.

Woody Guthrie composed 'I Ain't Got No Home'  in 1940 and recorded the song in the same year. It first appeared on Woody Guthrie Dust Bowl Ballads Volume 2.

The tune is based on a  traditional hymn titled 'I Can't Feel Home in this World Anymore' that was made famous by the Carter Family.

The song could have been written in the last 8 years. It is all there- people losing their homes to the bankers, people dying for lack of proper health care, the rich making millions by gambling on the stock market while ordinary people's wages go backwards.

The song has a contemporary resonance with its musings about "Now I worry all the time like I never did before/ Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore", how the “rich man took my home and drove me from my door” and mention of “the banker’s store”.
Earlier versions of Guthrie's song concluded by stating that the hardship expressed in the song is happening to "a hundred thousand others and a hundred thousand more," all of whom were victimized by the more fortunate elite.  Once again, a reflection of what has happened since the 2008 economic crash.
Bragg, like Woody Guthrie, is a singer songwriter who made his name with socio-political songs and his involvement in social movements and political campaigns. Bragg is known as a combative British socialist who doggedly opposed the British Conservative Party and its leader Margaret Thatcher throughout the ’80s and ’90s.

This version of Woody Guthrie's song appears on Billy Blagg's 2013 album Tooth and Nail, which was produced by American singer songwriter Joe Henry whose work has appeared on this blog before.


Woody Guthrie's version of the song is here



The song has also been covered by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen's version (with slightly different lyrics) is here.



I Aint Got No Home
By Woody Guthrie

I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
And 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 are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker's store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore
Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
.
© Copyright 1961  and 1963  by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.; TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc.

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