Joan Baez, Tom Morello, friends salute musician-activist Joe Hill

Labor movement leader Joe Hill was saluted on the 100th anniversary of his death Tuesday at the Troubadour in West Hollywood with a gathering of musicians that spanned generations and genres for a salute to the tradition of social and political activism in popular music.

Guitarist-singer-songwriter Tom Morello spearheaded the show that featured folk music queen Joan Baez, Van Dyke Parks, Ziggy Marley, Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, Jill Sobule, the MC5’s Wayne Kramer and the Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson, among others.

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“It was one of the most moving nights of music I’ve ever been involved in,” Morello, 51, told The Times on Wednesday. “A bunch of true-blue rebels showing up to celebrate 100 years of protest music proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joe Hill’s spirit is not dead; it lives on in music.”

Hill was the Swedish-born labor activist, songwriter and member of the International Workers of the World labor union that fought against unfair working conditions in the early 20th century. He was executed in 1915 following a controversial murder trial, and his songs created a template for social and political protest music subsequently employed by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and scores of other pop musicians.

Capping Tuesday’s concert, Baez and the assembled musicians sang “Joe Hill,” one of the songs that helped introduce Hill’s name to a new generation when she sang it at Woodstock in 1969.

Parks performed one of Hill’s best-known songs, “The Preacher and the Slave,” in which Hill coined the term “pie in the sky” to describe the notion of deferred rewards often held out by employers to struggling workers.

Others who took part in Tuesday’s show include Winston Marshall and Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons; Griffin Goldsmith of L.A.’s Dawes; Alain Moore and Patrick Riley, a.k.a. the duo Tennis; Boots Riley of Bay Area hip-hop group the Coup; a trio of teen girls calling themselves Poet Puff Girls; and singer-activist David Rovics.

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