Hayseed Like Me, A

DESCRIPTION: "I once was a tool of oppression And as green as a sucker could be, And monopolies bundled together To beat a poor bum like me." The newly energized singer promises to strike back: "The ticket we vote next November Will be made up of hayseeds like me."
AUTHOR: Words: Arthur L. Kellogg?
EARLIEST DATE: 1890 (Farmer's Alliance, October 4, 1890 edition, according to Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore)
KEYWORDS: political poverty hardtimes derivative
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Greenway-AmericanFolksongsOfProtest, p. 60, "A Hayseed Like Me" (1 text)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, pp. 489-490, "The Hayseed" (1 text)
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, p. 67, "The Hayseed" (1 text)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, p. 484, "The Hayseed" (1 text, tune referenced)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 359-360, "Hayseed Like Me" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 117, "The Hayseed" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Nebraska Folklore, Pamphlet Eighteen, "Farmers' Alliance Songs of the 1890's," Federal Writers' Project, 1938, p. 1, "(no title)" (1 short text)
John D. Hicks, _The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party_, 1931, p. 168, "The Hayseed" (1 partial text)
Roud #12497
RECORDINGS:
Pete Seeger, "Hayseed Like Me" (on PeteSeeger13)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Rosin the Beau" (tune) and references there
cf. "Acres of Clams (The Old Settler's Song)" (tune, floating lyrics)
NOTES [136 words]: I've seen versions of "Acres of Clams" which seem to have swallowed this song almost entire. But as it seems to have originated separately, I list it in its own right.
The Folksinger's Wordbook lists this as by Arthur L. Kellogg, and Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore and Hicks's The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party also attributes it to Kellogg (and says that the tune is "Save a Poor Sinner Like Me"; Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest also lists the tune as "Save a Poor Sinner Like Me" but lists no author). Greenway, however, treats it as a traditional song from the populist movement of the nineteenth century. Certainly portions of it have "swapped" in and out of tradition; the amount of Kellogg influence on a particular version may be open to question. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: Grnw060

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