THERE's BLOOD ON THE COAL!
Remember those whose blackened bodies lie imprisoned forever beneath the earth;
their very LIVES being the price of progress.
My grandfather was born and bred in West Virginia. Mostly, in his early days, he was a machinist at a lumber mill, but when hard times hit, he went into the mines, until that gave out. Then he turned to making moonshine! Don't laugh - he had a wife and a family of seven to provide for. When times get rough, you have to be tough, and you will do what you can to feed and clothe those you helped bring into this world.
Coal mining songs have been around for many years. Like train songs and others, they have made their way from folk-ballads to top hit songs.
Why would anyone want to sing about coal mining?? Perhaps it was those old Welshmen who put just about everything they did into song - perhaps they started the tradition. Who knows? Mining is a part of Welsh, Geordie, and Appalachian folklore - among others.
Many years ago we all heated our homes, cooked our food, and ran our factories and trains by burning coal: smudgy black rocks that came from deep in the bowels of the earth - the elementary remnants of once-mighty prehistoric forests.
Men went to work in the mines in order to provide for their families. They knew the risks, and were willing to take them. After working at the mines for a while, it became a habit.It bacame a part of you.
Harry Belafonte sang, I believe, the best rendition of "Dark as a Dungeon":
Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew;
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few;
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines -
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mines!
Well it's many a man that I've seen in my day,
Who lived just to labor his whole life away;
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine,
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine!
Where it's dark as a dungeon ....
And pray when I'm dead and my ages shall roll,
That my body would blacken and turn into coal;
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home,
Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew;
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few;
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines -
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mines!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEmKGIZlCc
COAL - it may just be old black rocks to some, but to us all, It came quite dear. Some paid a higher price than others - with their wealth, others with their health - and many - TOO many - with their lives,
Remember those whose blackened bodies lie imprisoned forever beneath the earth;
their very LIVES being the price of progress.
My grandfather was born and bred in West Virginia. Mostly, in his early days, he was a machinist at a lumber mill, but when hard times hit, he went into the mines, until that gave out. Then he turned to making moonshine! Don't laugh - he had a wife and a family of seven to provide for. When times get rough, you have to be tough, and you will do what you can to feed and clothe those you helped bring into this world.
Coal mining songs have been around for many years. Like train songs and others, they have made their way from folk-ballads to top hit songs.
Why would anyone want to sing about coal mining?? Perhaps it was those old Welshmen who put just about everything they did into song - perhaps they started the tradition. Who knows? Mining is a part of Welsh, Geordie, and Appalachian folklore - among others.
Many years ago we all heated our homes, cooked our food, and ran our factories and trains by burning coal: smudgy black rocks that came from deep in the bowels of the earth - the elementary remnants of once-mighty prehistoric forests.
Men went to work in the mines in order to provide for their families. They knew the risks, and were willing to take them. After working at the mines for a while, it became a habit.It bacame a part of you.
Harry Belafonte sang, I believe, the best rendition of "Dark as a Dungeon":
"Come all you young fellows so young and so fine;
Seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine!
It'll form as a habit - and seep in your soul -
Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal!
Seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine!
It'll form as a habit - and seep in your soul -
Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal!
Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew;
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few;
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines -
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mines!
Well it's many a man that I've seen in my day,
Who lived just to labor his whole life away;
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine,
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine!
Where it's dark as a dungeon ....
And pray when I'm dead and my ages shall roll,
That my body would blacken and turn into coal;
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home,
and pity the miner a-digging my bones!
Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew;
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few;
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines -
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mines!"
COAL - it may just be old black rocks to some, but to us all, It came quite dear. Some paid a higher price than others - with their wealth, others with their health - and many - TOO many - with their lives,
"There's blood on the coal,
And the miners lie
In roads that never saw sun nor sky;
Roads that never saw sun nor sky!!" - Ballad of Springhill (Springhill Mining Disaster song)
Roads that never saw sun nor sky!!" - Ballad of Springhill (Springhill Mining Disaster song)
Many men died instantly from poison gas, accidents, or cave-ins.
When a timber cracked and men started cryin' -
Miners were prayin' and hearts beat fast,
And everybody thought that they'd breathed their last,
'cept John...." ---- "Big John" - Songwriter Jimmy Dean
Miners were prayin' and hearts beat fast,
And everybody thought that they'd breathed their last,
'cept John...." ---- "Big John" - Songwriter Jimmy Dean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy7arhKbQkQ
Many other mineworkers died very slowly and painfully from Black Lung, a pulmonary disease caused by a lifetime of inhaling coal dust. Mining was dirty and dangerous work.
It seems strange that it is often in the coal mining areas that poverty is its worst. "Them's what works the hardest, they are the least provided!" In mining towns and villages from Wales and Newcastle to the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia - coal mining was hard, hard work and the pay was such that those who worked there became indebted to Company Stores for more than they could ever earn to repay.
It seems strange that it is often in the coal mining areas that poverty is its worst. "Them's what works the hardest, they are the least provided!" In mining towns and villages from Wales and Newcastle to the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia - coal mining was hard, hard work and the pay was such that those who worked there became indebted to Company Stores for more than they could ever earn to repay.
"Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go -
I owe my soul - to the Company Store."
"SIXTEEN TONS" - "Sixteen Tons" was written by Merle Travis and recorded in 1946/ It is about a real-life coal miner in Muhlenberg County, KY.
(This well-known 1955 version recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford reached number one in the Billboard charts, and my mother even wrote about hearing the song on the radio, in a letter from Washington, D.C. This song was written as a commentary on real mining life. The main line: "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt," apparently came from a letter written by Merle Travis' brother John. The end line is said to have come from their father, also a coal miner, who used to say, "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store.")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnsbIBzhN9U
Families did what they could to make ends meet - and this included sending their young boys down into the pit. I have heard a number of coal mining songs, and they vividly portray the sufferings of those who went down to the pit. But, as lads living in mining areas, "the pit was the place." It was where everything was happening, and it was a rite of passage for a young boy to don his helmet and lamp and report for work at the mine shaft. The boys of the village would actually look forward to school being over so they could go down to the mines to work, and thus prove their manhood.
"Schooldays' Over" was a ballad composed by Ewan MacColl
"COAL TATTOO" - a coal mining folk song written by Kathy Mattea doesn't talk about the mines themselves, but rather what coal mines and mining companies and unions did to poor working people. Of all the mining songs I've heard, "Coal Tattoo" is my favorite.
I first heard it by West Virginian folk singer Billy Edd Wheeler:
"Travelin' down that coal-town road,
Listen to my rubber tires whine!
Goodbye to Buckeye and white Sycamore,
I'm leavin' you behind.
I've been a coal man all my life
Layin' down track in the hole,
Got a back like an iron bar bent by the wind
Blood-licks blue as the coal.
Blood-licks blue as the coal.
Somebody said "That's a strange tattoo
You have on the side of your head."
I said "That's a blueprint, left by the coal,
Just a little more and I'd be dead!
But I love the rumble and I love the dark,
I love the cool of the slate,
But it's goin' down the little road lookin' for a job -
This travelin' and lookin' I hate!
I've stood for the union, walked in the line,
Fought against the company;
Stood for the U. M. W. A.
Now who's gonna stand for me?
I got no house and I got no pay,
Just got a worried soul;
And this blue tattoo on the side of my head,
Left by the number nine coal.
Someday when I'm dead and gone
To Heaven, the land of my dreams,
I won't have to worry on losin' my job
To bad times and big machines.
I won't have to pay my money away
For dues and hospital plans;
I'm gonna pick coal where the blue heavens roll
And sing with the angel band!" .....
Listen to my rubber tires whine!
Goodbye to Buckeye and white Sycamore,
I'm leavin' you behind.
I've been a coal man all my life
Layin' down track in the hole,
Got a back like an iron bar bent by the wind
Blood-licks blue as the coal.
Blood-licks blue as the coal.
Somebody said "That's a strange tattoo
You have on the side of your head."
I said "That's a blueprint, left by the coal,
Just a little more and I'd be dead!
But I love the rumble and I love the dark,
I love the cool of the slate,
But it's goin' down the little road lookin' for a job -
This travelin' and lookin' I hate!
I've stood for the union, walked in the line,
Fought against the company;
Stood for the U. M. W. A.
Now who's gonna stand for me?
I got no house and I got no pay,
Just got a worried soul;
And this blue tattoo on the side of my head,
Left by the number nine coal.
Someday when I'm dead and gone
To Heaven, the land of my dreams,
I won't have to worry on losin' my job
To bad times and big machines.
I won't have to pay my money away
For dues and hospital plans;
I'm gonna pick coal where the blue heavens roll
And sing with the angel band!" .....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoGELNyS9mc
Miners - sons of sons of sons of colliers sons - all swore they'd never send their sons down into the pit, but before it was all over, send them down they most assuredly did - to a place where you age before your time. But with progress came newer, safer mining practices. Unsafe mines were eventually shut down and dusty coal towns could now sleep easy - and not fear the rumble in the earth and the scream of the whistle. But there were also fewer jobs to be had, now that the mines closed down. It was the end of an era. It was the end of seeing streams of black-faced miners emerge from deep underground, their families once again being thankful for their safe return. It was the end of the sadness - and the beginning of harsher poverty. It was the beginning of the out-migration from West Virginia.
*"How green was my Valley then, and the Valley of them that have gone." - Richard Llewellyn
WORKING MAN - written by Rita McNeil & performed by Welshman David Alexander.
"It's a working man l am
And I've been down underground;
And I swear to God if ever see the sun ---
Or for any length of time,
I can hold it in my mind,
I never again will go down underground!
At the age of sixteen years,
Oh he quarrels with his peers,
Who vowed they'd never see another one
In the dark recess of the mines,
Where you age before your time
And the coal dust lies heavy on your lungs!
At the age of sixty-five,
I pray to God I'm still alive,
And the wheels above the mines no longer whine;
And they finally close the hole,
Where we clawed for the coal,
And NEVER AGAIN will we go underground!
It's a working man l am,
And I've been down underground;
And I swear to God if ever see the sun ---
Or for any length of time,
I can hold it in my mind,, 2018
I NEVER AGAIN will go down underground!
Miners - sons of sons of sons of colliers sons - all swore they'd never send their sons down into the pit, but before it was all over, send them down they most assuredly did - to a place where you age before your time. But with progress came newer, safer mining practices. Unsafe mines were eventually shut down and dusty coal towns could now sleep easy - and not fear the rumble in the earth and the scream of the whistle. But there were also fewer jobs to be had, now that the mines closed down. It was the end of an era. It was the end of seeing streams of black-faced miners emerge from deep underground, their families once again being thankful for their safe return. It was the end of the sadness - and the beginning of harsher poverty. It was the beginning of the out-migration from West Virginia.
*"How green was my Valley then, and the Valley of them that have gone." - Richard Llewellyn
WORKING MAN - written by Rita McNeil & performed by Welshman David Alexander.
"It's a working man l am
And I've been down underground;
And I swear to God if ever see the sun ---
Or for any length of time,
I can hold it in my mind,
I never again will go down underground!
At the age of sixteen years,
Oh he quarrels with his peers,
Who vowed they'd never see another one
In the dark recess of the mines,
Where you age before your time
And the coal dust lies heavy on your lungs!
At the age of sixty-five,
I pray to God I'm still alive,
And the wheels above the mines no longer whine;
And they finally close the hole,
Where we clawed for the coal,
And NEVER AGAIN will we go underground!
It's a working man l am,
And I've been down underground;
And I swear to God if ever see the sun ---
Or for any length of time,
I can hold it in my mind,, 2018
I NEVER AGAIN will go down underground!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5QeTGcCeug
NOTES:
The UK, of course, has given birth to a a great selection of mining songs and mine folklore. Like Paul Bunyan of North American timber fame, they had their "Big Hewer" legend. He was a figure like "Big John' except that he was more a myth than a man - though many miners knew or claimed to have seen him in the flesh. His legend was put into song by famed songwriters Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger:
...
In the area where my family came from were coal mines. There is even a coal mine museum in Beckley:https://beckley.org/general-information-coal-mine/
*A great book on this subject is "How Green Was My Valley" written in 1939 by Richard Llewellyn.
KENNETH E. HALL DECEMBER 20, 2013 REVISED JULY 29, 2018 HOUSTON
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