"Pittsburgh Town", sometimes titled as "Pittsburgh" or "Pittsburgh is a Great Old Town", is a folk song written by

Woody Guthrie Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired ...

and originally recorded by

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...

. The song was written during a

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

stop on an

Almanac Singers The Almanac Singers was an American New York City-based folk music group, active between 1940 and 1943, founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie. The group specialized in topical songs, mostly songs advocating an anti- ...

' tour; both Seeger and Guthrie were members of the band at this time. The song speaks of the labor and environmental problems that the city was facing in 1941, when the song was written. In the time since, environmental legislation has reduced the pollution problem that plagued Pittsburgh; because of this, the song's mentions of pollution in Pittsburgh have been sometimes been replaced with verses extolling the city.

Creation

There are several stories behind the origin of the song. Several historians trace "Pittsburgh Town" to the

' 1941 national tour. According to the liner notes of Pete Seeger's ''

American Industrial Ballads ''American Industrial Ballads'' is a studio album by American folk singer Pete Seeger. It was released in 1956 by Folkways Records. It was reissued in 1992 by Smithsonian Folkways. Album Seeger sings songs of struggle which emerged from the coal ...

'', originally released in 1956, on July 7, 1941, the group recorded fourteen songs for a small record label in New Jersey. The $250 that they were paid was used to purchase a 1932

Buick Buick () is a division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM). Started by automotive pioneer David Dunbar Buick in 1899, it was among the first American marques of automobiles, and was the company that established General ...

in which they traveled on their subsequent tour. While stopped in

, the group decided to play for steel workers who were in the process of unionizing. They played two nights of concerts in a steel patch, spending the night there in a cockroach-infested hotel. During the second concert, Woody Guthrie impulsively started to improvise lyrics to the tune of the folk song " Crawdad Hole". The song's entire body came out of this

jam session A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp over tunes, drones, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise music without exte ...

Millard Lampell Millard Lampell (born Milton Lampell, January 23, 1919 – October 3, 1997) was an American movie and television screenwriter who first became publicly known as a member of the Almanac Singers in the 1940s. Early life and career Lampell was bor ...

continued improving and created the second verse of the song from that point. The liner notes of Seeger's ''Songs of Struggle and Protest, 1930–50'' tell a different story of the song's creation; they state that Guthrie wrote the song while airborne on a flight into Pittsburgh. While looking out the window at the smoky skies, he quickly jotted down the lyrics.

Lyrics and themes

The song's verses alternate between ones that speak of the environmental problems of Pittsburgh and ones that speak of its labor problems. The first verse refers to Pittsburgh as a "smoky ol' town", and the third complains that the speaker does nothing more than "cough and choke" because of the steel industry's output. The smoke was an ever-present part of life in Pittsburgh at the time of the song's writing; steel mills on the banks of the city's three rivers made the sky glow red and continually released smoke. Modern environmentalist reviewers of the song believe that the pollution-oriented verses show that the song was written to protest the environmental conditions in which workers were forced to live. The second and fourth verses focus on the labor disputes that the city was experiencing at the time. The second verse uses a pun on the name of

Jones and Laughlin Steel The Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation began as the American Iron Company, founded in 1852 by Bernard Lauth and Benjamin Franklin Jones, a few miles (c 4 km) south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. Lauth's interest was bought in ...

to ask what the company stole from its workers ("What did Jones and Laughlin steal?"), while the fourth and final verse ends with the statement that all of the mill workers are "joining up with the CIO."

Recordings and adaptations

The song has been covered by several artists and community groups. Pete Seeger Released a studio version on his 1956 album ''American Industrial Ballads'' and a live version of the song on his 1964 album ''Songs of Struggle and Protest, 1930–50''. Both versions by Seeger feature him singing and playing the banjo without any additional accompaniment. In the live version, the crowd's clapping and singing along can be heard. Folk bands in the Pittsburgh area, such as the NewLanders, have both recorded and performed Seeger's version of the song. Composer

Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ''Ne ...

's Pittsburgh Symphony, written in 1958 for the 200th anniversary of the city's founding, quotes the melody of Pittsburgh Town, named "Pittsburgh Is a Great Old Town" by the composer, in the final movement.

Gunther Schuller Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician. Biography and works Early years Schuller was born in Queens, New York City, ...

described the use of the tune in the symphony in his review as "the ultimate in paucity of imagination and tastelessness." However, Stephen Luttmann felt that Schuller's criticism misses the point of why Hindemith decided to the motif. In 1959, Vivien Richman released an adaptation of the song on her album ''Vivien Richman Sings Folk Songs of West Pennsylvania''; her version of the song includes several additional verses about the landscape and geography of the region. The song has also been covered by students at

Pittsburgh Public Schools Pittsburgh Public Schools is the public school district serving the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (except for two small parts served by the Baldwin-Whitehall School District) and adjacent Mount Oliver. As of the 2021–2022 school year, the ...

, using verses that are less political than the original Guthrie composition and closer to the Richman version than the Seeger version. The change in verses was partly because by the middle of the 1950s, enforcement of the Smoke Control Ordinance of 1941 cleaned up the air. Lyrics about the smokiness of the town were replaced with the line "Pittsburgh Town is a Great Old Town."

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

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External links

{{good article American folk songs History of Pittsburgh Music of Pittsburgh Pete Seeger songs Protest songs Woody Guthrie songs