Talking Union with my Dad: A Father’s Day Tribute

I got my love of narrative and my awareness of social justice very early in life, from my father’s vast repertory of American folk songs.

My dad, Joe Browdy, learned guitar as a teenager in the 1950s, taking his inspiration from the great folk singers of the time, like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Cisco Houston, The Weavers and the New Lost City Ramblers.  He developed his repertoire while working as the music counselor at the camp where he and my mother met, and he continued to sing and play guitar for audiences while he earned his B.A. in history at Oberlin, and his law degree at NYU.

Joe Browdy and Alan Chartock

Joe Browdy and Alan Chartock

Some of my earliest memories are sitting with a group of relaxed, happy people by a crackling bonfire listening to my dad belting out his signature songs, with everyone joining in on the chorus.  Although there were some special children’s songs in his repertoire, he didn’t censor his songbook for me and my brother: we learned about the tragedies and the murders, the drunkenness and the fighting, wars, poverty and injustice, making sense of it as best we could over years of repetition.

Although he got busy with his law practice around the time that I was born, my dad  never stopped singing.  On Friday nights we’d get into the car around 8 p.m. for the two and a half hour ride to our country house in Hillsdale, N.Y., and to keep himself awake my dad would start singing, my mom adding her sweet tones in harmony on the chorus, my brother and I joining in sleepily when we knew the words.  On Saturday nights all through my childhood, our entertainment was to build a fire after dinner—outside in the summer, in the living room in the winter—and sit around it for a few hours, my dad leading us in the familiar songs that took us traveling far and wide in time, space, and experience.

The folk song tradition is a living oral history, passed from one generation to the next.  As soon as we could, my brother and I learned how to play guitar, and the words and tunes of those old songs now live on in us, and in our children who are learning them too.  With folk music, it’s not about the perfection of the sound, or the accuracy of the lyrics: it’s about the interest of the stories being told through music, and the emotion with which they’re conveyed.

My father has the ability to make the songs he loves come alive through the heartfelt nature of his singing and playing—getting slow and quiet for the tragic love songs, letting it rip and roar on the fighting union songs, modulating into a plaintive tone for his signature delivery of “One Meatball,” about a poor man who is sneered at by the waiter because all he can afford to buy is a single meatball for his dinner.  When my dad plays guitar, he’s not just singing some songs, he’s taking us on a journey through the American spirit.

Live at the Linda Norris Auditorium, Albany NY

Live at the Linda Norris Auditorium, Albany NY

Dad’s repertoire includes cowboy songs, songs about the laying of the train tracks across the West, and songs about the building of dams across mighty American rivers. There are feisty union songs from the 1920s and 30s; songs inveighing against the greed of bankers and bosses, and lamenting the hardships faced by miners, factory workers and farm hands. There are stirring political songs, about the founding of the United Nations, or the dream of world peace.

There are work songs from the African American South, about picking cotton or working on a train line, and older songs from the slave times, about dreaming of freedom, and making a break for it.  There are songs—some sad, some funny—about traveling around the country during the Dust Bowl refugee time.

There are many love songs, most of them mournful, bluesy songs about loves lost to drowning, train accidents, or just never heard from again.  But there are also some sweet romantic ballads about lifelong happiness spent by the side of one’s beloved.  The songs never fail to come alive when my dad adds his voice and driving guitar to the mix.

These days, my dad sings for the public most often with the Berkshire Ramblers, led by his old friends Alan and Roselle Chartock, and joined by a varying cast of other folk musicians.  But I still like it best when we sing together around a fire, not for an audience but just for our own amusement and delight.  This Father’s Day, I want to thank my dad for sharing this powerful, inspiring musical legacy with me, and so many others.  May the circle be unbroken!

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When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun


For the union makes us strong.


Solidarity forever, solidarity forever, solidarity forever

For the union makes us strong.

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  1. Thank you for this Father’s Day story. My father was a part time musician too and most of our family’s happy memories are around the music, the dancing and the sing-a-longs. My Dad joined the chorus of the universe in 2005, but his voice still rings in my mind and swells my heart with love….

  2. Molly Quarrier

     /  June 16, 2013

    Thanks so much for the loving tribute to your dad! I majored in American Studies in college and wrote my thesis in American Literature on American Work songs . I loved doing the research for That! I My dad was a small brass mill owner in Ct. At 10 years old, I had a “Joe Hill” personality, and listened endlessly to Pete Seeger, the Weavers etc. When the union organizers came that year, I was fiercely for the Union . It was Like being a “Heinz 57” pup in a Golden Retriever litter….lonely at best. I would love to listen to your dad and the Berkshire Ramblers, being 45 min. from Great Barrington. And thank you for your wise and fierce posts, Jennifer and thank you to your dad! Molly

  3. Anna

     /  June 16, 2013

    My dad played the clarinet. He was a WW 2 veteran, and I do believe there’s a photo of him in the Ken Burn’s WW 2 documentary. A man who looks exactly like my dad is standing in a wooded area, playing the clarinet somewhere in the midst of the European military campaign.

    Dad was 30 when he was drafted into that war. The ship he was on was torpedoed crossing the English Channel into Normandy. A tiny French frigate pulled up beside the sinking ship and a brave French sailor extended his arm across the hulls and yanked my dad aboard, saving his life. He nearly froze to death in the Ardennes at the Battle of the Bulge, and was at the front when the US Army marched across the Rhine River and liberated Germany. After the war, he remained in Europe for over a year as an US Army inspector of German concentration camps.

    He was a 44 year old macrobiologist when I was born. One of the things I miss most about him is being able to ask questions about things that confound or interest me. Though I often didn’t comprehend his explanations — it was a great relief to have someone address my questions and sense of wonder. When I was eight he gave me a good microscope and taught me to make own my slides. I wish every child had the same opportunity to view the natural world under powerful microscopic lens.

    I lost him in 2003. He wanted to live to be 100 but died a few months before his 94th birthday. He was the best of company and not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.

  4. As I read this, I heard your dad’s voice, clear as day, singing those old familiar songs. Not quite as familiar to me as to you, I’m sure, but an unforgettable part of my childhood, too. Thanks for reminding me of it!

  5. How many of us had or have musician fathers! Mine was a cellist, kind and loving. He has been gone since 1994. Lovely tribute, Jennifer.

  1. Will All The Good Fathers Please Stand Up?! | Transition Times

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