Earl Robinson and Tony Kraber

From time to time I've presented some of the early folksingers who first came to prominence in the 1940s - the Weavers, Josh White, Woody Guthrie and others. Today we have a record by two singers who are lesser known but nonetheless important in their own right. They are Earl Robinson - the better known of the two - and Tony Kraber. (Although Kraber's name does not appear on the cover of this early Mercury LP, half the record is devoted to him.)

This album is a reissue of 78 sets that Robinson and Kraber made for Keynote records circa 1941-43, when that label was primarily an outlet for politically committed leftist music - issuing music from the Spanish Republican Army Chorus and the Red Army Choir, among others. Keynote also published the superb Almanac Singers, which you can hear via my friend Larry's blog, Vinyl Fatigue. The Almanac Singers' set, Talking Union (which is urgently recommended), was dedicated to the memory of union organizer Joe Hill, who was executed for murder in 1915 on what many people considered to be scant evidence. And that brings us back to Earl Robinson, who wrote the music for the famous labor song Joe Hill, most familiar today in the Joan Baez recording.

Earl Robinson

Although Joe Hill is not on this LP, it does contain Robinson's greatest hit, The House I Live In, in its first recording. This was a few years before Frank Sinatra took it up, made it a hit and appeared in an Academy Award-winning short film based on it. Robinson wrote the music for the song; the lyrics were by Abel Meeropol, who wrote under the pen name Lewis Allan. Meeropol also is known for writing the words and music to Strange Fruit.

The screenplay for the film of The House I Live In was written by Albert Maltz. He, like Robinson and Meeropol (and Tony Kraber, for that matter), was later blacklisted. All had been members of the Communist Party.

Robinson was an excellent composer and singer. His version of The House I Live In is certainly in a different style from Sinatra's, but they are equally earnest. This album also contains what would become some of the best known traditional songs, such as Drill Ye Tarriers, with an ironic labor message that was perfectly suited to Robinson's repertoire.

Robinson's other well-known composition (not included here) was Ballad for Americans, which had words by lyricist John Latouche at the beginning of his career.

Cover of Keynote 78 set

Tony Kraber was not as well known as Robinson, but he did have a notable career as actor, singer and director in New York. He was a founding member of the Group Theater and made other folk albums besides this one, which almost certainly was his first. He was an enthusiastic and convincing singer, again dealing primarily with material that has become familiar, such as The Old Chisholm Trail and the Boll Weevil Song (which he likely picked up from Leadbelly's version).

As mentioned, Kraber was blacklisted after being denounced as a Communist. He was one of the people infamously named by Elia Kazan before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The download includes cover scans from Kraber's Keynote album, which I recently acquired. The liner notes include the singer's commentary on each of the songs.