Talk:If I Had a Hammer

An infobox was requested for the Trini Lopez recording of "If I Had a Hammer" at WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/List_of_notable_songs/7.✅

Would the person who keeps deleting my information stop it. It's not bullshit. It's the truth and if you care to do some research you'll find out it is correct.


 * It isn't my responsibility to "do some research" to confirm the veracity of what are, frankly, some rather wild and obscure claims regarding this folk song written nearly six decades ago. If your claims are in fact correct, you should have no problem CITING YOUR SOURCES and providing links in the article.  Unsourced, your "information" that Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were referencing West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur when they wrote the song is simply too ridiculous a claim to be included.  The reference to Mark Durkan is too trivial to warrant inclusion, and also becomes suspect because of the previous unsourced claim.  The Handy Andy reference is also suspect for the same reason.  Please either provide some verifiable sources for your claims or leave them out of the article.  -Grammaticus Repairo 01:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

If the Handy Andy reference if not true then why has someone other than me included it on the Handy Andy page. There are many song pages which refence people who like the songs when that person has nothing to do with them (they didn't write it, cover it, or know the people who wrote it) so what's wrong with referencing a political leader's liking of a song that has political significance. (it's use in the civil rights movement).


 * Because you added all three of these claims together, and because your first claim (concerning English football teams) is rather bizzare (and unsourced), doubt is also cast upon the veracity of your next two claims (Mark Durkan and Handy Andy). I don't have a problem with the Handy Andy reference per se, as it does not come across as unlikely or obscure in and of itself.  If it is indeed referenced on the Handy Andy page, then it probably ought to stay, though the argument "then why has someone other than me included it on the Handy Andy page?" holds no water since ANYONE can add ANYTHING to Wikipedia--true or not--and it may or may not be promptly corrected by the rest of the wikipedia community.  This is akin to claiming something you read in The National Enquirer is accurate because "they wouldn't print it if it wasn't true".


 * The Mark Durkan reference is another story, however. There is no reference to his liking of this song in his wikipedia entry, nor is there any reference to Spongebob Squarepants.  The wiki community has rejected your attempt to incorporate this claim about Mark Durkan into the Spongebob article as well.  If you want to continue to add largely unbelieveable "facts" to wikipedia articles, feel free.  However, the addition of outrageous unsourced information is widely considered vandalism by the wiki community and will generally be promptly deleted.  So again, I suggest that you provide verifiable sources for your claims if you want them to remain in the article.  -Grammaticus Repairo 17:32, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

This is an isp address linked to a number of networked computers. The person who put up this information seems to be mixingt truth with fact. Handy Andy did do a cover of this song. I don't know if Mark Durkan likes the song but I do know that he did not write spongebob squarepants. The football reference sounds like it is a blatant lie. Maybe the person who added it was trying to make an (unfunny) pun as West Ham are known as the hammers. I have amended the information on the page to what I see as being honest.


 * Sounds reasonable to me. -Grammaticus Repairo 01:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I take that back...I want a cited source for Durkan's favorite song. -Grammaticus Repairo 16:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Interesting the misinformation that is being anonymously inserted about this song. It was actually written by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger in support of Benjamin J. Davis, the black Communist councilman from Harlem, NYC, who was convicted and jailed while in office under the Smith Act:"Davis was reelected twice to his city council seat but, in 1949, he was expelled from the council upon being convicted of conspiring to overthrow the federal government under the Smith Act – a World War II-era charge that rested on Davis' association with the Communist Party. His eviction from the council was required under state law; his former colleagues then passed a resolution celebrating his ouster. He appealed the conviction for two years, without success."


 * This incident has disappeared down the memory hole. When I find the reference I will post it.Mballen (talk) 19:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

i take exception to the categorization of benjamin j davis as "black." i don't see what race has to do with the issue at hand. davis' race doesn't give him an excuse to violate the smith act, nor would it make him more any guilty within the eyes of the law. davis may never actually have violated the act, and the smith act may have been a stupid law that perhaps should not have been passed in the first place. but davis "blackness" really doesn't have anything to do with any of this. people shouldn't be "labeled" according to race unless there is a legitimate reason for such "labeling." i take exception to his being labeled a "communist" as well. he may have been a member of the communist party at one time, but labeling him with the adjective "communist" is simplistic at best and misleading at worst. benjamin davis was a complex, nuanced human being (as we all are). he shouldn't be subject to gratuitous labeling with respect to race or political ideology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.9.233 (talk) 21:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Trini Lopez
I'm a little surprised to see the Trini Lopez version listed in that "Other versions" section where Wikipedia usually lists some Serbian or Mongolian bar band's cover version. The Trini version is the one most people know and was the hit record. I came here to remember his name cause I just flipped across him singing it on a PBS special, and was surprised to find his name buried. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.255.241.210 (talk) 23:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

"if i had a hammer" is a folksong (in the authentic sense of the term)
"if i had a hammer" is a folksong, in the authentic sense of the term. it is a composition that was worked on by many people, over a period of decades. wikipedia shouldn't give the impression that it is a lee hayes/pete seeger original composition. it was probably sung for decades before these two men copyrighted it. in fact, it should not have been copyrighted in the first place. the u s copyright office generally does NOT allow folk tunes and lyrics to be copyrighted. (officially, at least.) they are considered to be "in the public domain." but there have been times when copyright officials haven't been able to distinguish folk tunes from original compositions, or have turned a blind eye to the origins of these works. (apparently, we don't have people like harry smith and alan lomax working in the copyright department.) hayes and seeger implicitly presented "if i had a hammer" to the copyright office as an original piece of work, either intentionally or unwittingly committing a fraud (or coming close to doing so). nobody in the copyright office recognized it as an old folk tune, so hayes and seeger were granted the copyright. (and i guess no one there had gottten any wiser twenty four years later, when the copyright was RENEWED.) taking public domain folk tunes and and copyrighting them for fun and profit was at one time an "accepted" practice (among some people, at least). but we should know better these days. we shouldn't be blind to the actual origin of these tunes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.9.233 (talk) 21:29, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Rich Hall quote
"Folk music died out when people realised that everyone in the world already had a hammer." 141.92.129.41 (talk) 13:24, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on If I Had a Hammer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20050407084710/http://www.arlo.net:80/lyrics/hammer-song.shtml to http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/hammer-song.shtml

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 21:02, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Bob Flanagan
Is it necessary to precise in which context Bob Flanagan used Nimoy's cover? I mean, I think it would be better if it just said that this version was used in one of his (sado-masochistic) performances, without saying what exactly he was doing in that performance...

Cordially,

Sété40 (talk) 02:30, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Missing version by French singer Claude François
French pop-singer sang a version of the song "Si j'avais un marteau", which isn't listed on this page.

See: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org › wiki › S... Si j'avais un marteau

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Had_a_Hammer 2A02:8440:5309:766A:8ED4:20D8:5E8E:9F54 (talk) 11:22, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Rita Pavone version is not mentioned
The first time I ever heard this song was its italian version performed by Rita Pavone when I was a child: Datemi un Martello. I think it was recorded in 1964 and it was a huge success in Brazil. I never knew that it was originally a protest song until now. I wonder why this Italian version is not mentioned in Wikipedia since it seems to be well known and not only in Brazil. 2804:1B3:6D02:CFEE:209E:3FB1:3F54:EECD (talk) 18:34, 10 June 2023 (UTC)