Lee Hays

Lee Hays (March 14, 1914 - August 26, 1981), was an American folk-singer and songwriter, best known for singing bass with The Weavers. Throughout his life, he was concerned with overcoming racism, inequality, and violence in society.

Childhood

Hays was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to William Benjamin Hays and Ellen Reinhardt Hays. William was a Methodist preacher who moved from parish to parish, so Lee lived in several towns in Arkansas and Georgia during his childhood and learned to sing sacred harp music in his father's church. When he was five, he witnessed public lynchings of African-Americans.

College

He studied at Commonwealth College, in Arkansas, during the Great Depression. At the same time, he preached in local churches and wrote stories, plays, and songs. Eli Jaffe, a playwright and fellow student, said that Hays "was deeply religious and extremely creative and imaginative and firmly believed in the Brotherhood of Man."

Trade unionism

Orval [Faubus] was a grass-roots populist in his early days, and worked at the Highlander school. He was in charge of the sanitary facilities, and he kept it beautiful; he even put curtains up in the windows of the two-holer we had. But what he was best at was shoveling it out, a function which had to be performed periodically. He really put his back into it. Now he's in the Arkansas State House, performing the same function.

Lee Hays to Steve Courtney

During the 1930s he left college and became a union activist, teaching at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. He also lived in New York City during this period, and met and played alongside musicians like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), Cisco Houston, Burl Ives, and Josh White.

In 1940 and 1941, Hays performed with Pete Seeger's Almanac Singers. Many of the songs they played at union halls and strike meetings around the United States were written by Lee, including "Plow the Fourth Boy Under" and "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan". He often adapted Christian hymns and spirituals to serve as union songs.

The Weavers and the McCarthy era

If it wasn't for the honor, I'd just as soon not have been blacklisted.

Lee Hays

In 1948, Hays formed the Weavers with Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman. Hays wrote, co-wrote, or arranged some of their hits, including "Kisses Sweeter than Wine," and "If I Had a Hammer." Because of his involvement with left-wing groups during the 1930s and 1940s, he came under suspicion of Communist sympathies during the McCarthy era.

Hays was present at the Paul Robeson performance in Peekskill, NY, that sparked the Peekskill Riots on September 4, 1949. He escaped in a car with Guthrie and Seeger after a mob claiming to be anti-communist "patriots" stormed the theatre, attacking the audience and performers.

In 1950, Lee Hays was named, along with the rest of the Weavers, in the anti-communist tract Red Channels and was placed on the industry blacklist. He was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to answer questions about Communism, which he refused to do, pleading the Fifth Amendment. The Weavers, unable to perform on television, radio, or in most music halls, broke up in 1952. Another entertainer, Lee Hayes, may also have been banned from entertaining because of the similarity of his name. "Hayes couldn't get a job the whole time I was blacklisted," Hays claimed.

Later life

If [Benedict] Arnold was successful, we would have had a set of horse-faced rulers, but that might be preferable to what we have now.

Lee Hays, at the Hudson River Revival in Croton Point Park, June 1981

In 1958 Hays began recording children's albums with a group which included Alan Arkin and others as The Baby Sitters.

He appeared with his old friend Woody's son, Arlo Guthrie, in the film Alice's Restaurant (1969), in which he played himself as a preacher at a 1960 evangelical meeting.

In 1967, he moved to Memory Lane, off Mount Airy Road in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. There he devoted himself to tending his organic vegetable garden, cooking, writing, and socializing.

He was overweight and suffered from diabetes, and as he got older his health deteriorated. Eventually, both his legs had to be amputated. Younger friends, among them Lawrence Lazare and Jimmy Callo, helped take care of him.

Hays took part in several Weavers reunions, the last of which was in November 1980 at New York City's Carnegie Hall. His last public performance was with the Weavers on June 1981, at the Hudson River Revival in Croton Point Park. The documentary film The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time! was released in 1982.

He died on August 26, 1981 from diabetic cardiovascular disease at home in Croton. He was cremated and his ashes were mixed with his compost pile.

References

• Coogan, Harold. "Lee Elhardt Hays (1914–1981)", Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.

• Courtney, Steve. "So long to Lee Hays" (obituary), North County News, September 2-8, 1981. p.7

• Stambler, Irwin, and Grelun Landon, eds. The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country and Western Music. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.

• Willens, Doris. The Lonesome Traveler: A Biography of Lee Hays. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.

• The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time! Warner Brothers, 1982.
• Lee Hays at the Internet Movie Database.