The Fullertons
  • Home
  • The Last Hully Gully (the Fullertons' farewell show)
  • The old band
    • The sound
    • Videos (seeing's believing)
    • Gigs (live show recordings)
    • Recording sessions (canned music)
  • Friends of the Fullertons
    • Catfish Brown
    • The Lone Grangers
    • Yazoo's Blues
    • Slim's Got the Blues
    • Piggery Road
    • Oberon O'Blivio and the Outcasts of Samarra
    • Dreadnot
  • Song samplers (by style and topic)
    • Keep on pluckin'! (folk guitar)
    • Plugged! (electric noodling)
    • Nothin' but the blues (blues)
    • Solidarity forever (songs of struggle)
    • The Magic Theater (the deep unreal and other surreal estate)
    • Jazzercized (R&B)
    • Yee-haw! (C&W)
    • Desperados (losers, weepers, midnight creepers)
    • Holy rollers (sacred and profane)
    • Love, lust, and heartbreak (saccharine and schmatz)
    • Speechless (instrumentals)
    • Higher callings (toasts for the toasted)
    • Mandomonium (six strings good, eight strings better)
    • Del does dobro
    • You gotta have harp!
    • Keyed up (ebonies and ivories)
  • Cocktail confidential (recipes)
  • Booking info
  • More choice stuff
    • Help wanted
    • 1967 Naropa speech
    • First Church of Latter Day Cowboys
    • Twangri-la Records
    • The Cowpokes' Clubhouse
  • Press kit
  • Contact
  • Virtual albums, liner notes, lyrics
    • Americanarama
    • Blame It On Memphis
    • Cowgirl's Lullaby
    • Division Street
    • Doublewide!
    • Mercury
    • Tales of the Enchanted Mesa
    • Tunnel Vision
    • Ugly Roomer

Solidarity forever

Picture
Red diaper babies Cat, Lionel, and Leon Fullerton all fell close to the tree, spending a lot of their adult lives among unions, civil rights groups, peaceniks, and other desirabless. Leon, in particular, made himself useful, both musically and with anything else that needed doing. 

He was a chronicler. The stories he sang were sometimes uplifting, sometimes grim. Those songs were never about himself. As he explained to Brownie McGee, who had given young Fullerton a few pointers on blues picking: "I'd rather sing about interesting people."

Here, culled from other pages on this website, are demos of some of his songs of struggle, recorded in reliably (or at least predictably) haphazard fashion by his nephews Ray and Del and son Jasper, a.k.a. the Outcasts.

__________________________________________________
The songs:


> See "The Molly Maguires" lyrics and notes at Americanarama.

> See "Just Like Tom Joad's Blues" lyrics and notes at Division Street.

> See "The Lawrence Factory" lyrics and notes at Division Street.

> See "Ludlow" lyrics and notes at Americanarama.

> See "Heat Lightning" lyrics and notes at ​Blame It On Memphis.

> See "Called In Well" lyrics and notes at Doublewide!

> See "Dakota" lyrics and notes at Division Street.

> See "The Shreveport Shuffle" lyrics and notes at Americanarama.

> See "Division Street" lyrics and notes at Division Street.
_________________________________
There once was a union maid, 
she never was afraid
of goons and ginks and company finks

and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall 

when a meeting it was called,
and when the Legion boys come 'round

she always stood her ground.


Woody Guthrie
Picture