'A Walk in the Sun' and Earl Robinson

Several years ago, I posted an LP split between leftist balladeers Earl Robinson and Tony Kraber. That Mercury album reissued 78s made for the Keynote label earlier in the 1940s.

Robinson

Today we return to Robinson's 40s output in the form of one of the most unusual soundtrack albums ever released. It collates the songs that Robinson composed for Lewis Milestone's harrowing 1945 war film, A Walk in the Sun, which follows a platoon of U.S. soldiers during and after the 1943 invasion of Italy at Salerno. The words by Millard Lampell comment on the action.

Robinson became known for composing "Joe Hill," "The House I Live In," and "Ballad for Americans." Background on him can be found on my earlier post. Lampell was a founding member of the Almanac Singers with Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, an important group that later included Woody Guthrie and recorded for Keynote. Lampell, who had become a screenwriter, was blacklisted in the 1950s, as was Robinson.

The Almanac Singers: Guthrie, Hays, Lampell, Seeger

Strictly speaking, this 78 album on the Asch label is not from the soundtrack; instead it is "songs from the film," with Robinson providing the vocals in place of Kenneth Spencer, who was heard in the film.

The Asch album contains five songs from A Walk in the Sun, with the excellent "Song of the Free Men" the fill-up on the sixth side. The sound is very good.

I have newly remastered the Robinson-Kraber LP I posted earlier. The download now includes cover scans from Kraber's Keynote album, which I recently acquired. The liner notes contain the singer's commentary on each of the songs.

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.