Joe Glazer

Glazer died on September 29, 2006 at the age of 88 due to the progression of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. His label, Collector Records, is now part of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections distributed by the Smithsonian Folkways label.

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.

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 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 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.

Born in New York City, Glazer was a graduate of Brooklyn College. He eventually moved to Akron, Ohio, where he performed for the United Rubber Workers throughout his career and also served as education director from 1950 to 1962. Glazer was also a member of the Textile Workers Union of America 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 is sociologist Nathan Glazer.

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.

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