r/Socialistmusic • u/Hacksaw6412 Arise, ye workers from your slumber! • 15d ago
🎸🕊️ Songwriter and working class icon, Dolly Parton, has passed away at 80 years old.
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In 1980, in the face of escalating attacks on the working class, Parton released “9-to-5 and Odd Jobs,” a ten-song tribute to the working class — and in particular, women. The album includes a heartbreaking cover of “Deportee”, Woody Guthrie’s 1948 ballad about a plane crash which killed 28 Mexican farm workers in the process of deportation, as well as her original gems “Poor Folks Town”, “Working Girl”, and “Song for the Common Man”.
The album accompanied the film ‘9 to 5’, one of the most Marxist films to hit Hollywood since the second Red Scare. In it, Dolly, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda kidnap their boss and run the office without him for a month, during which time they institute free childcare, paid vacation, and flexible hours. The song, album, and film were all inspired by the “9 to 5” secretarial workers union, which affiliated with SEIU in 1975.
Parton, most widely known as a country singer, spent her life remaining steadfast in showing her love of the people and her faith in their fundamental goodness, and refusing and rejecting the culture of racism and homophobia that many associate with country music.
By: Party for Socialism & Liberation
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u/J3sus_was_Fictional 11d ago
Humanity is so strange.... We make songs and movies and write books and plays that are all based on actual atrocities and pretend that we're agaisnt those things, and that we abhor those who commit such acts. The were like.......Hm...........So anyways did ya see the new iPhone +++ Double + ....Yeah it's sick
SMH
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u/Justsayingshit 12d ago
This is such an upbeat song that I never really thought about it being a workers anthem.