Joe Glazer

Joseph Glazer (June 19, 1918 – September 19, 2006) was an American folk musician who recorded more than thirty albums over the course of his career. He was closely associated with labor unions and often referred to as "labor's troubadour".

Early life and union career Glazer was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1918, and grew up in the Bronx. He was a graduate of Brooklyn College and was a civilian radio instructor for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. as well as an adviser to the United States Information Agency. According to his obituary in The Washington Post in 2006: "Mr. Glazer in 1961 joined the Foreign Service staff of the U.S. Information Agency, then headed by Edward R. Murrow, and was sent to Mexico as labor information officer. He transferred to the State Department in Washington as a labor adviser in 1965." His younger brother was sociologist Nathan Glazer.

Singer and songwriter Some of his more acclaimed songs include "The Mill Was Made of Marble," "Too Old To Work" and "Automaton." He recorded "In Old Moscow" ("My Darling Party Line"), a song which ridiculed the Communist Party USA's Stalinist reversal following the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In 1954 Glazer released two albums of music from the Industrial Workers of the World, including one entirely of songs by Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill, released by Folkways Records.

In 1960 Glazer collaborated with Edith Fowke to publish Songs of Work and Freedom, which included 10 of his original compositions. He went on to dedicate numerous albums to specific trades, including coal mining, newspaper printing, steelwork, textile mills, and woodworking.

In 1970 Glazer founded Collector Records, originally to issue his own recordings, and, later, recordings by other performers. Collector's first release was Glazer's 1971 album Garbage and Other Songs of Our Times backed by jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd and his trio. The title track became one of Glazer's most well-known songs after Pete Seeger performed it on Sesame Street and recorded versions of it both for the children's music and environmentalism markets.

In 1979, Glazer invited 14 other labor musicians to the George Meany Center for Labor Studies in Silver Spring, Maryland, to share musical and written compositions, and to discuss the effective use of music, song, poetry and chants in labor activism. The three-day event became an annual one, becoming known as the Great Labor Arts Exchange (GLAE). Over the next five years, the concept of "labor culture" and how the labor movement and the arts interacted, which Glazer and others promoted, expanded. In 1984, Glazer incorporated the Labor Heritage Foundation as a parent body for GLAE as well as to curate and promote the culture of the American labor movement.

In 2002, Glazer released his autobiography, Labor's Troubadour, published by the University of Illinois Press. Glazer was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Folk Music Association in 2002.

His label, Collector Records, later became part of Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections distributed by the Smithsonian Folkways label.

Personal life and death Glazer married Mildred Krauss in 1942, and they had three children.