The Black Hoboes Playlist

This playlist features the 25 original recordings featured in What’s the Use of Walking if There’s a Freight Train Going Your Way?: Black Hoboes & Their Songs by Paul Garon and Gene Tomko. Originally a CD with these songs were included as a complement to the book, originally published in 2006 and available from AK Press.

Now, the songs are available here, and Paul Garon added six songs to the playlist in honor of our recent release of Acceptable Men by Noel Ignatiev, also available from AK Press.

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Check out What's the Use of Walking if There's a Freight Train Going Your Way?: Black Hoboes and Their Songs, it’s full of the lyrics, art, and photographs of people and their times.

“The music and poetry of black workers in motion - hoboing, hitchhiking, timbering, mining, railroading, loving, leaving, fighting back and searching for a new job, a new life and even a new world are brilliantly recorded and explained in this arresting collection.” -David Roediger

“Paul Garon has produced yet another masterpiece of cultural history. The stories and songs he gathers together in this remarkable book disrupt common notions of what we mean by 'freedom' when it comes to black folk. Hoboes represented a significant segment of the black working class, and their constant movements were both evidence of constraints and acts of freedom. And as he so eloquently demonstrates, the men and women who took to the road and their bards have much to teach us about America’s ‘bottom rail.’” -Robin D G Kelley