Talk:Eleven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat

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All information in this article was incorrect[edit]

1) According to the previous version of this article, this song's name is "Seven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat." This was the title Pete Seeger gave it years later when he rewrote the lyrics to retroactively/dishonestly present it as a protest song of the Great Depression, which leads to the next incorrect claim the previous version of this article made.

2) The song was not written in 1930. It was first recorded in August, 1928:

https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000036512/W146851-Eleven_cent_cottonforty_cent_meat

And evidence suggests that virtually every period rendition of the song was recorded before the stock market crashed:

https://www.45worlds.com/78rpm/78_search.php?sq=cent+cotton+meat&sm=re

Even the one recording (by Joe Adams and James Clark, actually nomes d'arte for Frank Luther and Carson Robison) in the resource linked above that was released in 1930 was actually recorded c. August, 1929.

3) The previous version of the article claimed the song was about the struggles of a cotton farmer during the Great Depression. This of course is not true, since the song was written in 1928; and furthermore, the song is also about the cost of food, housing and other basic necessities being driven up by inflation and making day-to-day life increasingly difficult for average people.

Perhaps a section can be added about Pete Seeger's rewritten version of the song, styled as "Seven Cent Cotton." Seeger was never honest about the way he treated source material, nor was he especially knowledgeable about music in general. Wannabe rockstar (talk) 03:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]