Accordion Noir radio playlist: 2021-04-14, Zilphia Horton’s 111th Birthday, with author Kim Ruehl

AccNoir 2021-04-14

For the latest episode of CFRO’s weekly hour-long Accordion Noir radio program, Bruce celebrated the birthday of musical activist and organizer Zilphia Horton, not just with Zilphia’s accordion music but with an interview with author Kim Ruehl, whose book A Singing Army – Zilphia Horton and the Highlander Folk School, was just published! If your Apple or Android podcast subscriptions (strongly recommended!) haven’t alerted you to its availability yet, you can listen to it online courtesy of the Internet Archive. Here’s its playlist:

AccNoir-2021-04-14, Zilphia Horton’s 111th Birthday, with author Kim Ruehl

Zilphia Horton: Labor and Civil Rights 🪗 Icon
(April 14, 1910 – April 11, 1956)

• Zilphia Horton 🪗 – ‟We Will Overcome” – Songs recorded at the Highlander Folk School: disc 5 of 23, Instantaneous Disc FD-20361/750 (1940s?) – Tennessee, USA – http://www.highlandercenter.org Wilson Library, University of North Carolina https://library.unc.edu/wilson/ Finding Aid: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20361/ Highlander Research and Education Center’s Audiovisual Materials, 1937-2008 (The “finding aid” page has links to some songs way down at the bottom.)
• Zilphia Horton 🪗 – ‟When the New World is Revealed” – Songs recorded at the Highlander Folk School: disc 5 of 23, Instantaneous Disc FD-20361/750 (1940s?) – Tennessee, USA
• The Almanac Singers – ‟Round and Round Hitler’s Grave ” – Talking Union: Original 1941-1942 Recordings (1942) – New York City, NY, USA – From “Dear Mr. President,” Keynote Album K-111. Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell, Arthur Stern, Agnes ‘Sis’ Cunningham 🪗 , Bess Lomax Hawes, Baldwin ‘Butch’ Hawes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almanac_Singers
• Maria Dunn 🪗 – ‟Can you blame the poor miner?” – We were good people (2004) – Alberta, Canada – http://mariadunn.com
• Emit Valentine 🪗 – ‟Sweet Bye and Bye” – Centerville, Franklin County, North Carolina, USA – Collected by Thomas Carter in 1971 – Southern Folklife Collection – Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  http://www.lib.unc.edu/wilson/ Joe hill parodied this song in his “Preacher and the Slave” (1911), “There’ll be Pie in the Sky, by and by, that’s a lie.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave
• Zilphia Horton 🪗 – ‟We’re Gonna Roll the Union On” – Songs recorded at the Highlander Folk School: disc 5 of 23, Instantaneous Disc FD-20361/750 (1940s?) – Tennessee, USA
• Zilphia Horton 🪗 – ‟We Shall Not Be Moved” – Songs recorded at the Highlander Folk School: disc 7 of 23, Instantaneous Disc FD-20361/752 (1940s?) – Tennessee, USA – I presume the singers refer to Philip Murray, one-time child coal-miner who grew to be president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He died in 1952 so the recording probably predates that? https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/philip-murray
• Rhiannon Giddens (with Francesco Turristi 🪗) – ‟I Shall Not Be Moved” – They’re Calling Me Home (2018) – Nashville, Tennessee, USA / Ireland – https://rhiannongiddens.bandcamp.com http://www.rhiannongiddens.com

Zilphia Horton Links:

Highlander Center, New Market, Tennessee
http://www.highlandercenter.org

A Singing Army author: Kim Ruehl

Kim Ruehl’s Zilphia Horton “Singing Army” playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Gm1rekX3fQJgJBXlXuoch?si=5fj0Nnu9QPayQ8vL3bKr8g

Link to Kim’s Zilphia Horton crowdfunder from ten years ago, with its swell video teaser where Bruce first heard of Zilphia:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1639044940/kim-ruehl-is-writing-a-book-about-zilphia-horton?ref=search

https://v.kickstarter.com/1618633567_256a29990a10926820fa08e8bc8b897725f1e704/projects/14294/video-15228-h264_high.mp4

Historical Zilphia Horton Highlander recordings:

Southern Folklife Collection
Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
https://library.unc.edu/wilson/

Highlander Research and Education Center’s Audiovisual Materials, 1937-2008
Finding Aid: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20361 (This has song links way down at the bottom.)

Special thanks to Kim: I’d never heard these recordings of Zilphia leading songs with her accordion.
🪗 🪧 🥲

Where to Order A Singing Army: Zilphia Horton and the Highlander Folk School

Start perhaps at Bookshop.org in the US, and Wordery.com internationally

I’ve collected a long list of other (mostly not Amazon) book ordering links for my own book. All would be good places to order Kim’s.
https://accordionuprising.wordpress.com/2019/12/05/accordion-revolution-buying-the-book/

And if you like a book, ask your local library to acquire a copy! Here’s instructions, again for my book, but applicable to any: https://accordionuprising.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/requesting-accordion-revolution-at-your-library/

And finally:

Thanks for reading us here (and hopefully listening to us, there), but if you find you want more, you can always keep up with us on Twitter (@AccordionNoir and @AccordionBruce), Instagram (@AccordionNoirFest), and Facebook at Accordion Noir fans, the Accordion Noir Festival, and the Vancouver Squeezebox Circle. Cheers & squeeze on!