Song of the Day 2/12: The Guess Who, “Share the Land”
Not even Bernie Sanders goes so far as to call for redistribution of land — it took a bunch of Canadian hayseeds from the plains of Manitoba to do that. Burton Cummings, grossly underappreciated as both a singer and a songwriter, wrote this around the time Randy Bachman left the band in 1970. Its communal, back-to-nature message was anachronistic by then, but the tune’s gospel-inspired harmonies and Cummings’ impassioned vamping on the outro made it memorable. It reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, and I understand it’s still popular with the kidz.
Here’s a version with better audio.
Speaking on anachronistic songs, this one was written by Leon Rosselson in 1974, about the Diggers’ Movement of 1649. It includes the lyrics:
The sin of property we do disdain
No man has any right to buy or sell the earth for private gain
By theft and murder they took the land
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command
The song is “The World Turned Upside Down.” Here’s Scottish folksinger Dick Gaughan’s take on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0tPr_GIMd4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWzzvnPOyTM
That song also has a place in American history: It’s the tune played by the British military band as Cornwallis’ defeated army marched out of Yorktown after the surrender.
There was some confusion about the song title. Rosselson later changed the title of his song to “Diggers’ Song,” but by then the song had been recorded by so many other folksingers that the original title of “The World Turned Upside Down” became the one that it was most well known by.
Here’s Rosselson’s original version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLMOotOENE0
“We are free men, though we are poor.”