From New York, this is Democracy Now.

To introduce myself, I belong to a special tribe of what used to be called troubadours.

Sometimes they were called minstrels.

Now we're called songwriters.

We worked for in our songs a sort of a better world, a rainbow world.

Now my generation unfortunately never succeeded in creating that rainbow world, so we can't hand it down

to you.

But we could hand down our songs, which still hang on to hope and laughter.

Today we pay tribute to the blacklisted lyricist Yip Harbour, the man who put the

rainbow in the Wizard of Oz, a Democracy Now special. All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warr Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

Today we pay tribute to Yip Harburg.

His name may not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world.

Like jazz singer Abby Lincoln.

Big Crosby singing. I can get back-plated. Ben Cosby sang it

hiking your bed plate it

and here Parper's rolling

I built a railroad

made it run Made it race against time

Once I built a railroad

Now it's done

Brother can you spare a dime?

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