Hola Nola- and hola Labor Day weekend! Lest us not forget why we celebrate this national holiday every first Monday of September: to reflect on the social and economic achievements of the American Labor Movement. And why did the labor movement succeed? The music!

Labor union songs helped to unite this effort and reach the achievements that American workers deserve(d), so while you're all letting loose during Southern Decadence, balance out this party weekend of over-flexed abs (and other body parts) and house beats by flexing your social conscious muscles with some of the most influential protest songs of our nation's history.

Beginning on a commemorative note, and with Southern Decadence still in mind, we begin how our first song begins: 'riding that train, high on Cocaine...'- 'Casey Jones', from the Grateful Dead's 1970 Workingman's Dead (how appropriate), tells the true story of American folk hero John Luther Jones aka Casey, a railroad man turned engineer who was tragically killed on his own passenger train (called the 'New Orleans Special') after crashing into a stalled freight. This disastrous collision is due to Titanic-esque audaciousness, as Jones was speeding along the tracks in order to make up for lost time, and could not stop in time to avoid the mired obstacle blocking his path. Jones was celebrated for being an incredible contributor to the advancement of Railroad Engineering in the late 19th Century, and a dedicated Illinois Central Railroad worker.

Our next mythological 19th Century railroad working class American hero is John Henry, the man who challenged the machine. Story has it that Henry was born a whopping 33 lbs. (talk about a labor day) and soon after began working on the construction of the trans-continental railroad out west. When a steam powered hammer was invented, many  jobs were in danger, so John Henry challenged his boss to work against the machine; if he beat it, he kept his job. The American laborist did beat the machine, but died from overexertion, causing the device to prevail, despite Henry's victory. This story (told in various ways) is a representation of the marginalization of workers during the technological era of the early 20th Century, as many men (especially African Americans, as Henry is said to have been) were the first to be laid off as modern equipment replaced workers as more efficient and less expensive means of production. Literally hundreds of musicians have celebrated this tale with different songs about this legend, and Mississippi Fred McDowell is known for one of the best Blues renditions, luckily captured here on film. In addition to his flawless performance is a rare video cut of Woody Guthrie also performing his own homage to 'John Henry'.

From American Folk Hero to American Folk Activist Hero is Joe Hill, singer (coining the phrase Pie in the Sky), labor movement advocate, and active member of the IWW. In 1915, Hill was accused of murder, and after much protest (including notable individuals like Helen Keller and president Woodrow Wilson) he was executed by a firing squad. Many songs were written for and about this organizing martyr after his death (Stephen King named his own son after the man), including the famous poem turned tune 'Joe Hill', sung here by Joan Baez, and later popularized by the great Paul Robeson (singing 'Ol Man River' in the James Whale's Show Boat.

Speaking of working class heroes, enter John Lennon, whose first post-Beatles album, Plastic Ono Band, featured a track by just that name. 'Working Class Hero' is an anti-capitalist proclamation with controversial lyrics- case in point, the third verse:

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be (2x)

These lyrics perfectly describe the frustrating exclamations of the Smiths on 'You've Got Everything Now', coincidentally our next featured tune of they day. These Brits simplify Lennon's outlook with the frank one-liner 'No I've never had a job because I've never wanted one'. Hola Labor Day BBQs erry day!

Because there can be an entire labor day salute dedicated to this man, being five songs deep with no Pete Seeger in sight is blasphemous, so here is Pete and Arlo Guthrie performing one of Woody's well-acknowledged compositions (and a personal favorite), 'Union Maid'. Pete and Woody were members of the Almanac Singers (the Popular Front music group dedicated primarily to the labor movement), and were together when Woody sat down and wrote this song, in efforts to express pro-union sentiments from a female p.o.v. Seeger also made famous the Les Rice working rights classic 'Banks of Marble', and the 1931 'Which Side Are You On', written by Florence Reese, the wife of a union organizer for the United Mine Workers (pre John Ford's How Green Was My Valleyand Loretta Lynn's biographical film Coal Miner's Daughter.) To seal my Seeger zeal is a clip of the Weavers performing the last verse of the powerful 'Miner's Lifeguard', another ballad directed towards the treachery and braveness that defined the mining industry, with warnings against executive exploitation to 'keep your hand upon the dollar, and your eye upon the scale', because we can't all be throwin' hundreds 'stead of ones, Drizzy (but if I did it, wouldn't be the first time either, heard me).

Working in the mines is hard and all, but it don't hold a headlamp to slaving away at the carwash, at least according to Jim Croce. This Italian-American started his music career playing Baez and Guthrie covers with wife Ingrid 'til he started writing his own tunes, and hit #1 on the Billboard charts in 1972 with 'Bad, Bad Leroy Brown'. Only one year later, and at the ripe age of 30, Croce died in a plane crash after a small jet crashed into a pecan tree, just weeks before the release of his 5th studio album, featuring today's 'Workin' At The Carwash Blues'. The only person to cheer us up after the tragic fate of Croce is Merman Billy Bragg, who epitomizes Labor Day by having actually revised and reworked the Internationale, featured on the 1990 consisting of all revised left wing protest songs, including Phil Ochs' 'Joe Hill', 'Miner's Lifeguard', and Sam Cooke's 'A Change is Gonna Come' (sung here by the Fugees.)

Billy Brag rewriting L'Internationale is intrepid, but, as always, the valiance lies in our Nola reps, in this case being Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, , and Dr. John singing Allen's 'Working in a Coal Mine' alongside Dolly Parton during the Mardi Gras of 1989. If anyone knows what it's like (in the words of Everlast) to work in the mines, it be these folk right here, especially Dr. John, sporting his coal mining beret on stage! If we've learned one thing through this labor movement it's not how to make a baby, but how to whistle while you work.