Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

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Thanks to rocketman0739 for providing high-quality versions of these songs.
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Lyrics:

Every night I have a dream: I'm talking to a folk singer
He's looking worn and kind of lean; says he hasn't been a winner.

It's nineteen fifty-two or -three and he's singing about the workers
But the Commie scare has shut him down and he's singing in small circles
He said, “Don't get me wrong, I don't mind being out here on the margin
But the crows above the money fields, their number's growing larger...”

Chorus:
And you can see that the rookery has spread, and up in every tree
Are black eyes and a ready set of wings
And they haul down and beat about, they drown out all the protest shouts
It gets louder when they hear somebody sing
They try to drown it out when they hear somebody sing

So I was singing union halls, and they put me on the blacklist
They asked me all about my friends and I told ‘em where to kiss it
Now Guthrie's gone to ride the rails, Seeger's looking worn and pale
They're censoring the radio, and everybody's scared of Joe

(Chorus)

And somewhere in the distance I heard somebody say
One of these mornings we're gonna rise up singing...

Some days we do get hungry, some days we do get bored
The tedium of poverty is the real wrath of the Lord
We break it up with music, we make it up with songs
It doesn't feel like politics, we ain't doing nothing wrong!

(Chorus)

So every night I have a dream: I'm talking to a folk singer
He's looking worn and kind of lean; says he hasn't been a winner...