For several years I've posted Spirit's "Groundhog Day" on this date, so it's time for something different. February 2 also marks the passing of Eric von Schmidt in 2007 -- to commemorate him, here is one of his best-known songs, a true story of a strike by sugarcane cutters in the Caribbean in the 1950s. The power of the song lies in its structure: several characters appear and reappear, and their individual stories show the overall progress of the strike as it begins, falters, and fails. Like Mississippi John Hurt's "Louis Collins," it's a song about violence told in a sweet, sad voice. Johnny Cash does it justice in a recording from the 1980s.
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