Episode 18: Take this Job and Shove It: Music and Working in the 70s
This episode examines how 70s music gave voice to the turbulent labor scene in the 1970s. Not confined to one genre, a wide variety of music and musicians had hit songs about working in the 70s.
SHOW NOTES
00:58 Amy gives a brief history lesson on the chaotic labor scene of the Seventies. Strikes happened in the early Seventies at a level not seen since the 1940s. She plays a short audio clip of news coverage of the postal workers strike in 1970.
04:00 Some of the labor uprisings of the 70s were led by young Baby Boomers who were either used to organizing in the Sixties or were unafraid of standing up to their boss after surviving Vietnam. An example of this is the General Motors strike in Lordstown, Ohio in 1972, which Newsweek called “Industrial Woodstock.”
05:20 Unions have a controversial history. Still, it used to mean something to have a union endorsement if you were running for office. Unions have also been behind some of the benefits that workers may take for granted today, such as paid leave.
06:10 It was no simple task for The Band to follow up Music from the Big Pink, their classic debut album from 1968, but they did it well with The Band. Amy talked about “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down” way back in Episode 3 of this very podcast. In this episode, she explained some of Robbie Robertson’s thoughts about “King Harvest (Has Surely Come),” which he viewed as a character study of a farmer in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. Still, it was very timely in 1969/1970.
07:37 Amy plays a sample of “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).
09:27 Country music is rooted in the task of telling stories about people. Eric Siegel wrote an article in 1992 about how country had turned its back on the working class. He seemed reluctant to admit that Seventies country still acknowledged its working class fans.
10:31 “Take This Job and Shove it” made Johnny Paycheck the voice of the working man, although David Allan Coe wrote this classic from 1977. What made it so popular was the many workers — not the least of whom were those on strike — could relate.
12:17 Amy plays a sample of “Take This Job and Shove It.”
13:55 What to do with Bruce Springsteen in this conversation? He was not working class but he wrote and sang about the working class. Ed Gorman offered the theory that men who grew up working class but weren’t anymore felt some nostalgia about it and found their outlet in Springsteen. Amy points out that the label “working class rock” was attached to Springsteen after the release of Born in the USA in 1984. In 1978, free from his legal tangle with Mike Appel, he released Darkness on the Edge of Town, which covered broader themes of survival.
16:03 Even though Bruce never worked in a factory, his dad did. Bruce wrote “Factory” for his father, which Amy plays add then, bonus: Lucinda Williams’ cover
18:20 The number of factory workers has declined from 25% in the Seventies to about 8% in the early 21st century. The jobs also don’t pay as much as they used to.
19:57 Bob Seger feels like a number. Well, maybe he does not specifically feel that way but the Michigan native knew that a lot of people did and he wrote “Feel Like a Number” about that. This is part of rock’s shift toward making songs about struggling with work and not just about love and sex and relationships.
22:20 Although, Tom Petty and Mike Campbell wrote about work within a songs about relationships with “Here Comes My Girl.”
24:55 The movie “Car Wash” is hilarious, which is to be expected from a movie that had both George Carlin and Richard Pryor in it. The soundtrack is incredible and won a Shout out to “Car Wash.” Also disco was about work, too. The soundtrack was awesome and won a Grammy in 1977. The single, “Car Wash,” should be on all wedding playlists!
27:44 “Saturday Night Fever,” the movie, did not age well. However, the soundtrack did. We can forget that it was a working class movie and that “Stayin’ Alive” is kind of a desperate song. Sensing that a lot of people can’t understand the lyrics to the song because the Bee Gees sing in a register that is hard to register unless you are a cocker spaniel, Amy reads some of the lyrics before playing a sample of the song. It was the second of SIX #1 hits in a row for the Bee Gees.
31:30 Women were routinely disrespected and underpaid in the work place in the Seventies. A group of 10 female office workers in Boston started an organization called 9to5 to do something about that, which they did. This organization has been behind the fight for important workplace protections such as the Family Medical Leave Act which protects your job if you want to, oh, HAVE A CHILD? Karen Nussbaum, one of the the founders of 9to5, is friends with Jane Fonda. Fonda got the idea for movie about women fed up with the crap they had to put up with at work, specifically from their boss, Mr. Hart. The move is also called “9 to 5,” which was Dolly Parton’s acting debut. She also wrote and sang the iconic theme song.
PLAYLIST
King Harvest (Has Surely Come) -- The Band (1969)
Take this Job and Shove It -- Johnny Paycheck (1977)
Factory -- Bruce Springsteen (1978)
Factory — Lucinda Williams (2016)
Feel Like a Number -- Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band (1978)
Here Comes My Girl -- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1979)
Car Wash -- Rose Royce (1976)
Stayin’ Alive -- The Bee Gees (1977)
9 to 5 -- Dolly Parton (1980)
SOURCES
“About 9to5.” 9to5. https://9to5.org/about-9to5/
Baily, Beth and David Farber. America in the 70s. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 2004.
Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York: New Press. 2010
Cowie, Jefferson. “That ‘70s Feeling.” The New York Times. September 10, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06Cowie.html
Friedlander, Paul. Rock and Roll: A Social History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 1996
Gorman, Ed. “He’s Still a Working Class Boy.” The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA). September 6, 194 YouTube
Hance, Bill. “Johnny Paycheck workingman hero.” The Santa Fe New Mexican. November 11, 1977.
Himes, Geoffrey. “Down-to-Earth Rock: Springsteen, Seger, and Petty are Today’s Cutting Edge.” The Baltimore Sun. November 21, 1980.
Ivey, Saundra. “A Sympathetic Chord for Paycheck’s Song.” The Tennessean (Nashville, TN). December 8, 1977.
McAuliffe, Kim. “An Exponent of Heartland Rock.” The San Francisco Examiner. December 12, 1980.
Morley, Robert. “The Death of American Manufacturing.” The Trumpet. February 2006. https://www.thetrumpet.com/2061-the-death-of-american-manufacturing
Murtha, Tara. “‘9 to 5’ Turns 35, and It’s Still Radical Today.” December 18, 2015. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/9-to-5-turns-35-and-its-still-radical-today-50499/
National Women’s Law Center. “The Wage Gap over Time.” May 3, 2012. https://nwlc.org/blog/wage-gap-over-time/
Schwed, Paula. “Take This Job and Shove It Pays Off Big for Paycheck.” Fort Lauderdale News November 18, 1977.
Siegel, Eric. “The New Brand of Country.” The Baltimore Sun. September 27, 1992.
The Postal Record: “Network News Covers the 1970 Postal Strike.” YouTube. Online video. July 25, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T31WdPav3qk
Trausch, Susan. “9-to-5ers Press for Office Rights.” The Boston Globe. April 9, 1974.
Viney, Peter. “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).” The Band. 1997. http://theband.hiof.no/articles/king_harvest_viney.html