Earl Robinson
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Earl Hawley Robinson (born July 2, 1910 – died July 20, 1991) was a songwriter and composer from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is probably as well remembered for his left-leaning political views (a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s) as he is for his music, including the songs "Joe Hill", "The Ink is Black, the Page Is White", and the cantata "Ballad for Americans". In addition, he wrote many popular songs and was a composer for Hollywood films.
He studied violin, viola and piano as a child, and studied composition at the University of Washington, receiving a BM and teaching certificate in 1933. In 1934 he moved to New York where he studied with Hanns Eisler and Aaron Copland. He was also involved with the depression-era WPA Federal Theater Workshop, and was actively involved in the anti-fascist movement and was the musical director at the Communist-run Camp Unity in upstate New York. In the 1940s he worked on film scores in Hollywood, but he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Unable to work in Hollywood, he moved back to New York, where he headed the music program at Elisabeth Irwin High School.
Robinson's musical influences included Paul Robeson, Leadbelly, and American folk music. He composed "Ballad for Americans" (lyrics by John La Touche) which became a signature song for Robeson. It was also recorded by Bing Crosby.
Other songs written by Robinson include "The House I Live In" (a 1945 hit recorded by Frank Sinatra), "Joe Hill" (a setting of a poem by Alfred Hayes, which was later recorded by Joan Baez and used in the film of the same name), the on going ballad that accompanied the film A Walk in the Sun that was sung by Kenneth Spencer, a musical poem on the life and death of Abraham Lincoln entitled "Lonesome Train" [1], and "Black and White", with David I. Arkin, the late father of actor Alan Arkin, a celebration of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which was subsequently recorded by Three Dog Night. His late works included a concerto for banjo, as well as a piano concerto entitled The New Human.
He was killed at the age of 81 in a car accident in his hometown of Seattle in 1991.
For several years, Robinson taught music at Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City, directing the orchestra and chorus. His cantata based on the preamble to the constitution of the United Nations was premiered in New York with the Elisabeth Irwin High School Chorus and the Greenwich Village Symphony Orchestra in 1962 or 1963.
The jazz clarinettist Perry Robinson is his son.
[edit] References
- Mari Jo Buhle (et al.) (1998) Encyclopedia of the American Left, Oxford University Press (NY)
- Don Michael Randel (1996) Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, Belknap Press
- Steven E. Gilbert. "Earl Robinson", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 30, 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
- R.S. Denisoff (1973) Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left, Baltimore, Maryland
