The Music Of Coal

 

Few professions have ever generated the amount of music about their industry which has been generated by coal and coal mining.  The music of coal has been around in the United States nearly as long as coal mining itself.  Several important musical artists have recorded complete albums of coal mining songs in tribute to the industry and the men and women who do the work of coal.  There have also been numerous anthology albums about coal and coal mining with widely varied artists being involved in those productions.  The music of coal has been recorded by singers from nearly every genre of American music.  But the majority of coal mine music has come within the related fields of country and Bluegrass music both of which can arguably say they are the music both  of the Appalachian Region and of the working class.  There are numerous songs from the greater body of coal mining music which are among the most popular songs in all of American music.  Nearly everyone who has ever lived, worked, or been descended from anyone who lived or worked in the coal industry has their own list of favorite coal mining songs.  So do I!  I will begin this blog post with my own top ten list of coal mining songs which does include a couple of those which nearly everyone in America knows and will also include a few of which many of you readers might have never heard.

I cannot clearly state which is my favorite coal mining song of all time but I will begin this list with the songs which mean the most to me as the son, grandson, nephew, and brother of coal miners.  I never worked in the coal industry but I grew up in Knott County Kentucky about three miles from Wayland, Kentucky, a classic company owned coal mining town in Floyd County Kentucky.  I also grew up only fifteen or so miles from Wheelwright, Kentucky, and only ten miles from McDowell, Kentucky, both of which were also classic company owned coal mining towns.  My father and several other family members worked in the Elkhorn Coal Mine at Wayland, Kentucky, and two of my uncles worked for years at Wheelwright and McDowell.  I grew up in a country store and coal miners were our neighbors, customers, and friends.  My oldest half-brother, Hewie Hicks, died in a coal mining accident.  I knew and was mentored by several people who worked as union organizers in the coal industry including Don West, Hosea Hudson, and Florence and Sam Reece.  I was also mentored by William Howard Cohen, one of the first high profile opponents of strip mining, and by Bill Blizzard, whose father led the UMWA miners at the Battle of Blair Mountain.  In addition to growing up in Eastern Kentucky coal country, I also spent a total of about seven years in Raleigh, Logan, and Mingo counties in West Virginia and also worked as a salesman in Boone, Lincoln, Wayne, Wyoming, and McDowell in the West Virginia coal fields.  I know coal, coal people, and the music of coal.  

My Favorite Coal Songs

1) Which Side Are You On? by Florence Reece.  Almost anyone who has ever been around a union coal mining area or known even one United Mine Workers member has heard this song.  It was written by Florence Reece on the back of a calendar page in a Harlan County coal camp during the seminal organizing effort of the Harlan County Coal mines in the 1920's.  I am very proud to say I heard the story of this song directly from the mouths of Florence Reece and her husband Sam. This is arguably the greatest union organizing song ever written and has been adapted by numerous other unions in addition to the UMWA. 

2) Red Wing Blackbird by Kathy Mattea whose two grandfathers were Italian immigrant coal miners in West Virginia. This song comes from Kathy Mattea's incredible album "Coal" which is one of the three best coal mining albums ever recorded.  The song was written by Billy Ed Wheeler who actually wrote at least two of the best coal mining songs ever recorded.  This song fits squarely into a subgenre of coal mining music which I call "Music of Death and Danger In The Mines".  It is a beautiful piece of writing and masterfully sung by Kathy Mattea.  

3) The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore by Kathy Mattea.  This song also comes from that wonderful album by Mattea but was written by Jean Ritchie, the famous American folk singer and writer who grew up in a coal camp in Perry County Kentucky, and was the first graduate of the social work program at the University of Kentucky although she never used her degree in social work to earn a living.  It falls into a sub-category of coal mining music which I call "The Demise Of The Coal Mines".  It has been recorded by numerous musical artists but, in my opinion, no one does it as well as Kathy Mattea who is the granddaughter of two Italian immigrant coal miners in West Virginia.  

4) Last Train From Poor Valley by Norman Blake. This song is probably one of the least known yet best songs in all of coal mining music.  It is also a classic number in that sub-category which I call "The Demise Of The Coal Mines".  Norman Blake did an incredible job of describing and immortalizing the death of a coal mining valley in this song.  And the song also fits into a general category of music about lost love.  "I saw the last train from Poor Valley takin’ brown haired Becky Richmond bound."

5 Dark As A Dungeon by Merle Travis.  This is just one of the great coal mining songs written by Merle Travis, the classic country music singer and native of Muhlenberg County Kentucky, the heart of the Western Kentucky coal fields.  Travis also recorded my other most favorite album of coal music called "Songs Of The Coal Mines".  This song fits squarely into the sub-category "Music of Death And Danger In The Mines". 

6) You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive by Patty Loveless.  Patty Loveless who sings this song on her incredible album "Mountain Soul" grew up in the coal mining country of Pike County Kentucky and is a key artist from that amazing group of people from the Big Sandy River Valley who have changed the face of American music and popular culture with their work.  The song has now been recorded by a large number of other singers and would be singers but nobody can equal the job Patty Loveless does on it.  It is clearly  one of the songs about "Death And Danger In The Mines". 

7) Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Earnie Ford. This is another of the wonderful coal songs written by Merle Travis and is found on his "Songs Of The Coal Mines" album.  But Tennesse Earnie Ford's version of it is the one most people remember and is also my favorite version.  This song falls into a sub-category of coal mining music which I call "The Hard Life Of The Coal Miner".  The line "you load sixteen tons and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt" personifies the life many coal miners led all across the Appalachian coal fields of the twentieth century.  

8) Black Waters by Kathy Mattea. This song was written by Jean Ritchie, the second of her compositions which I have placed on my list of favorites, and it well deserves to be better known than it is.  This song is not on Mattea's "Coal" album as she says in the narration before the song on this link since she was not aware of it when she was recording that album.  I love Jean Ritchie's writing but I love Kathy Mattea's style a bit better.  If you are into folk music, you might want to listen to Ritchie's version of the song.  These lines from the song place it squarely in the category of "Environmental Protest Music In The Coal Industry" which, in my opinion is the second most important category of coal mining music just behind union organizing music: "Now there's scenes of destruction on every hand And there's only black waters run down through my land Sad scenes of destruction on every hand black waters, black waters, run down through the land."

9) Joe Hill by Joan Baez. Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson wrote this classic union organizing song which actually originated in the Colorado copper mining country.  But it quickly became a favorite of union miners in all types of mining all across the country.  Other than "Which Side Are You On?", this is probably the best union organizing song ever written.  In its own way, it memorializes every man and woman who ever died in an organizing effort whether that effort was in the coal, copper, iron ore, garment, or farming industries.  No one can equal Joan Baez's vocal work on this song.  These lines from "Joe Hill" are one of the strongest statements ever made about the importance of determination and unceasing effort in the union organizing effort: "From San Diego up to Maine, In every mine and mill, Where working-men defend their rights, It's there you'll find Joe Hill."

10) Coal Tattoo by Billy Edd Wheeler.  This is the second Billy Edd Wheeler written song I have put on my favorite list although numerous others have recorded excellent versions of it including Kathy Mattea on that incredible album "Coal".  But I really like Wheeler's version and so will you if you like coal mining songs.  This song fits squarely in that sub-category of coal mining songs called "Music Of Death And Danger In The Mines" and utilizes a very unique approach to the subject matter with a living miner, instead of a dead miner, as the narrator. "Somebody said "That's a strange tattoo You have on the side of your head" I said "That's the blueprint left by the coal A little more and I'd be dead".   

Categories Of Coal Mining Music

There are several sub-categories of coal mining music and I will discuss each of them separately and give a few more musical examples of each. Those sub-categories of coal mining music include 1) Union Organizing Songs; 2) Environmental Protest Songs Of Coal; 3) Death And Danger In The Mines; 4) The Hard Life Of The Coal Miner; 5) The Demise Of The Coal Industry; 6) Songs Which Glorify Coal Mining; and, 7) Songs Supporting Strip Mining.  

Union Organizing Songs

Obviously, the most important, but not always the most popular, of these sub-categories of coal mining music is "Union Organizing Music".  Without coal miners and the United Mine Workers Of America, life for the entire American working class would be very different.  The coal miners and the UMWA played a very important part in gaining many of the most important rights of workers in America.  And without unions, it would not be many years before these basic rights would be gone as has been demonstrated in the worst possible manner by the widespread proliferation of Right To Work laws in many states. In addition to the UMA, in the early days of the coal mine organizing efforts, the National Miners Union and the International Workers of the World, aka the Wobblies, were also important to the orgganizing effort.  Among those rights which coal miners and the UMWA have helped win for American workers are the forty hour work week, company paid health insurance, minimum wage, paid vacations and holidays, sick pay, the entire body of work place safety laws and regulations, collective bargaining, the right to strike, and numerous others including major environmental laws and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.  These rights were gained by the joint activities of many unions both within and outside the coal mining industry and numerous unions played a part in the effort including the Industrial Workers of The World (Wobblies), the National Miners Union, the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, and the entire AFL-CIO.  

I have already listed a couple of the best union organizing songs in all of American labor and coal mining history: "Which Side Are You On?" by Florence Reece and "Joe Hill" by Joan Baez.  But there are several other very important union organizing songs which arose from the effort to organize the American coal mines, especially the Appalachian coal fields.  Among my favorites of these songs is "The Harlan County Boys" by Merle Travis which is another of the songs on his wonderful album "Coal" and which immortalizes those early union organizing efforts in Harlan County Kentucky in the early twentieth century.  We can always use one more good Harlan County song and one more good coal mining singer.  So I am adding to this list "Harlan County Blues" by George Davis, The Singing Miner, who was not only an Eastern Kentucky coal miner but also a performer, recording artist, and disc jockey at WSGS, 101.1FM, the best radio station in all of the Appalachian coal fields.  Another of the songs of George Davis belongs on this list, "When Kentucky  Had No Union Men", which is a fine example of union organizing music.  Billy Bragg's song, "There Is Power In A Union", also deserves to be on nearly any list of union organizing music.  Woody Guthrie's "Union Burying Ground" also is a fine example of union organizing music and far less well known than it deserves to be.  From the mines of Nova Scotia, we must also include Greg MacPherson's "Company Store" which commemorates the occasion on which union miners burned a company store to the ground in protest.  The lyrics are powerful, unflinching, and brave: "I haven't worked in 40 days  For 23 I've had no pay  In a week I'll have no place to stay  In an hour they'll have to kill me.  Half the town'll die from the mining of the coal  The other half'll leave when the mine decides to close  The people who are left will starve to death at the hands of the company store."  While this listing of coal mine union organizing songs is incomplete, it is a start for any of you readers who are interested in learning about trade unionism in the coal fields and how coal miner's unions have often led the union organizing movement in America.  

Environmental Protest Songs Of Coal

"Black Waters" performed by Kathy Mattea and written by Jean Ritchie is the only environmental protest song of the coal business I included on my personal top ten.  But there are numerous others I love including "Paradise" by John Prine.  "Paradise" is one of the few coal mining environmental protest songs to become widely popular and few people even stop to realize that it is such a song.  But the lyric lines from the chorus leave no doubt about it: "And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County  Down by the green river where Paradise lay?  Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking  Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."  If the town has been hauled away and it is too late to go back to Muhlenberg County, the song can only fall into one sub-category, coal mining environmental protest songs.  Mike Morningstar's "The Buffalo Creek Disaster" is a fine example of a coal mining environmental protest song about one of the worst manmade disasters in the nation. These lines from the song cover two different aspects of that disaster which killed more than 130 people.  They confront both strip mining and the disastrous flood which was caused by a combination of factors, all rooted in corporate greed including mismanagement, denial of the damage caused by coal mining, and the avoidance of regulatory intervention.   They strip off all the topsoil and uproot all those trees, They killed those folks in Buffalo Creek, and then shrug the blame with ease.  Don't give a damn for life or land, just roll on like they please." If you are interested in written documentation of the Buffalo Creek Disaster and other negative outcomes of the coal industry, I would suggest that you read this book edited by Wess Harris, "Written In Blood". 

THIS IS A BLOG POST IN PROGRESS! IF YOU LIKE THIS INCOMPLETE VERSION, PLEASE COME BACK IN A FEW DAYS AND I WILL TRY TO HAVE IT COMPLETED. IT IS A LARGE SUBJECT AND JUST KEEPS GETTING LARGER EVERY DAY WITH NEW SONGS APPEARING FROM THE COALFIELDS ALL THE TIME!

Why Is This Blog Going Wild With Page Views, Almost 60,000 In A Month?

I have no idea how or why it has been happening, but my blog, "My Appalachian Life", has gone wild with page views over the last couple of months. Before this streak started, I have never had more than about 35,000 page views in a month, and that only twice. For several years, the blog had averaged about 3,000 page views a month despite the fact that I was posting on it regularly, and often shared blog posts on several Appalachian based groups. This month the page views are approaching 60,000. One of my favorite and most personal posts, "My Appalachian DNA", has had almost 1,000 page views this month. Could it be because Blog Spot has linked it to the feature where you click to be taken to a random blog? Does that feature even require that a blog be linked? Could some other person with a large social media following have shared this blog on some of their postings? Or is it just a random, unexplainable fluke? If you have any idea why this has suddenly started happening, I'd love to hear it. https://myappalachianlife.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-appalachian-dna.html

"Preserving Our Roots: My Journey To Save Seeds And Stories" by John Coykendall with Christina Melton, Photographs By Sarand Hackenberg

"Preserving Our Roots: My Journey To Save Seeds And Stories" by John Coykendall with Christina Melton, Photographs By Sarah Hackenberg, (2019, Louisiana State UUniveristy Press) is an instantly eyecatching book. I had heard of the author and his book shortly after it was released during a conversation with my good friend Bill Best who is also an expert on the preservation and propagation of heritage crops. I finally saw and purchased John Coykendall's book directly from the author at the April 4, 2026, Pike County Seed Swap in Pikeville, Kentucky. My wife Candice and I have traveled to the seed swap primarily to visit with Bill Best. But the entire event and the people we met made the day much more than a meeting with an old friend. When I first saw the book, several copies were laid out on a folding table in front of John Coykendall whose table was set up just a few feet from that of Bill Best. Bill introduced me to John and we spoke for a few minutes early in the morning, but that conversation was quite brief. The crowd was in the process of growing as people streamed in the doors of the Pike Central High School gymnasium where it was held. I wandered around the tables, met a few people, bought some honey, a bag of stone ground meal, and talked to anyone who had a minute or two free for conversation. At the official start time of the event, a low key memorial was held for my recently deceased good friend Frank Barnett who had died on Narch 18, 2026, as the culmination of a series of cascading health problems which had begun with a cardiac valve replacement surgery. Like Bill Best and John Coykendall, Frank was a giant among the seed savers of Appalachia. As the day wore on and traffic slowed, I returned to John Coykendall's table, had a few enlightening minutes of conversation with him and bought the book. John Coykendall is still employed as a heritage gardener at Blackberry Farm resort in Tennessee near where he has spent most of his life. The vegetables he grows are an integral part of the menu at Blackberry Farm, a resort in Walland, Tennessee. But this book is focused almost entirely on another aspect of John's life, his annual trips and lifelong friendships in Washington Parish Louisiana where he travels and stays for lenghty periods in the off season at his job. The book is divided into sections based on the four seasons, and each section is composed of well written, highly informative stories of life in a very remote and somewhat traditional area of Louisiana. Each section describes the farming lifestyle of the parish during that season, provides several short stories of John's encounters with his many friends there, and is illustrated with stunning photographs of gardening, crops, prepared foods, and the people of the parish. It is also illustrated with closeup photographs of many of the pages of the lifelong journals which he has kept complete with his hand drawn illustrations of what he has seen and learned in the parish. Each October, he travels to the parish for at least a full week to volunteer in the Washington Parish Free Fair, one of the few free local or regional fairs in the entire country. During those visits, he serves as a cook in the fair kitchen each day, visits with his many friends, meets new ones, and feeds them all with foods produced from heritage food crops. John is professional trained artist and a former art instructor for quite a few years. Everywhere he goes, he takes his journal and takes notes, draws finely detailed illustrations of people and processes they have discussed during their encounters. The book is an amazing piece of work in todays world where publishing has generally taken the low road to avoid extra work and expense. It is an artistic masterpiece in every possible definition of the word. If you are a person who loves gardening, good food, traditional lifestyles, and stories of life in the southern USA, this is the book for you.

Appalachian Seed Savers Swap, Pikeville, KY, April 4, 2026

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"Atlanta Review: Poland Spring/Summer 2023"

There is never a bad time to read good to great literature, and I often read literature much older than this poetry journal from 2023. Every year, the "Atlanta Review" publishes two issues. One of those issues will have about half of the writing from a selected foreign country. In this volume, the "Spring/Summer 2023" volume, the selected country was Poland. I am somewhat fascinated by Poland for a variety of reasons. I know oone or two Polish immigrants in the US. I have also read and written a small amount about the Polish Resistance during World War II. Poland suffered greatly during the war and resisted nobly throughout the war. This volume of the "Atlanta Review" is well worth reading whether or not you have an extensive interest in Poland or not. Of the 128 pages in the book, a little more than half are dedicated to the work of a large group of Polish poets, both historical and current. While I was not greatly impressed by a few of the poems, much of the writing is well above average. The book also has brief biographies of all the poets in the book, and those of the Polish poets are well worth reading to maximize the readers understanding of these people and their work. There are roughly 20 Polish poets who have work in the book. A few have only one poem while several of these writers have multiple poems in the book. Read them all when you locate a copy of the book. They are well worth the time to read them. All have been translated into English. Maria Konopnicka and Boleslaw Lesmian are two of the more notable historical Polish poets whose work appears here. The book is well worth investing the time and effort to locate a copy, and since it is only three years old, it won't require much of a search of used book websites to locate a used copy. Or, if you are not the type of reader who still prefers to hold a paper book in your hand, you can download the entire volume at this link on the journal's website. Enjoy!

"On The Road: The Original Scroll" by Jack Kerouac, and Howard Cunnell, Editor

Although I have been an avid reader of the works of Jack Kerouac for many years, I had not been aware of the republication of his classic novel, "On The Road", in its original form as it was written on a long, continuous scroll of paper until I strayed into it in a Goodwill store recently. It had actually been published in this form in 2007 by Penguin Classics. Howard Cunnell served as the editor and wrote a rather pedantic introduction of 52 pages which begins the book. Howard Cunnell is an English writer, novelist, and literary critic who can be said to be a leading expert on Jack Kerouac and his work. But it is my considered opinion that he could have done a far better job of making his introduction more cogent and readable. A better discussion of Cunnell's work on Kerouac can be found at this link on the "Green Lantern Blog". The book also has three other essays of varying lengths which were written by Penny Vlagopoulos, George Mouratidis, and Joshua Kupetz. I am particluarly impressed by Ms. Vlagopoulous's essay which is much better organized and readable than Cunnell's. It also uses more discussion of the works of other writers to elucidate her points about the work of Kerouac. The multiple introductions cover the first 86 pages of the book. Dr. Penny Vlagopoulos is an associate professor of English at SaintLawrence University who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Dr. George Mouratidis is a professor at the University of Melbourne. Joshua Kupetz is a professor of English at the University of Michigan. All four of the academics involved in the preparation of this book can be said to be experts on the Beat writers. But I believe the effort would have been better served if one of them other than Howard Cunnell had served as the lead editor for the project. The original scroll version of "On The Road" had approximately 80,000 words deleted from it in the original published version from the original 1957 Viking edition. It would have been a cumbersome book to read, and even more difficult to turn into a best seller and eventual classic book in that original form. But for the devotee of Kerouac's work, it is a fascinating read. I was first exposed to the work of Jack Kerouac by my former professor, mentor, and friend, the late Robert "Bob" Snyder when he served as the creator and director of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia, when I was a student there. Jack Kerouac never crosses my mind without being accompanied by Bob Snyder who also introduced me to the works of Mildred Haun and Francois Villon. That was an incredible threesome of writers to have learned of from one ever questing and questioining mind such as Bob Snyder had. I truly wish that Bob could have lived to read the original scroll which is reproduced in this book in an allegedly verbatim form. He would have loved it. It is well worth reading even if you are not a particularly devote fan of Kerouac and his work. The book contains a sizeable amount of sexual writing which was just a bit too racy for the average reader in the late 1950's. None of that deleted sexual writing is too racy to be in virtually any living writer's work today. Some personal references and usages of the actual names of a few of Kerouac's friends were also deleted from the 1957 version of the book in order to protect both the publisher, Viking, and Kerouac from possible legal entanglements. The book is a good means for the experienced reader of Kerouac to flesh out their knowledge base about the numerous beatniks who were his friends in both fiction and real life. For the average reader who has no experience with Kerouac's works, I would venture to say that this book is not the place to start your journey with Jack. Instead, you might read books such as "Visions Of Gerard" or "The Subterraneans" before venturing into this lenghthy portrait of the beatniks before they were known by that name.

Requiem For A Friend: Frank Barnett, Appalachian Heritage Bean Expert

Frank Barnett and I met about the spring of 2019 after our mutual friend, Bill Best, and I both published memoir pieces in a book called "True Christmas Stories From The Heart Of Appalachia" from the Jesse Stuart Foundation. We became close friends almost immediately based on a common set of interests and having grown up about 25 miles apart in Eastern Kentucky. I had been born and raised in Knott County, and Frank had been born and raised in Floyd County. Below is the official obituary which appeared on the website of the Littleton-Rue Funeral Home in Springfield, Ohio. Frank as been buried in Yellow Springs, Ohio. A more complete personal remembrance of Frank will be added to this post in a day or so due to my complex schedule. Frank Barnett, 78, of Georgetown, Kentucky, passed away at the University of Kentucky Hospital, Lexington on Wednesday afternoon, March 18, 2026. He was born in Martin, Kentucky on August 4, 1947, the son of the late James and Virginia (Ousley) Barnett. Frank was a proud graduate of Morehead State University and retired as a computer systems analyst. His true passion was found, after retirement, in preserving Appalachian heirloom seeds and stories. He was a lifelong learner, who enjoyed history, science, mathematics, gardening, and writing. He is survived by his daughter, Melinda Barnett-Reardon; sister, Mary Marguerite (Michael) Price; former son-in-law, Daniel Reardon; grandchildren, Abigail, Ella and Oliver Reardon; niece and nephew, Angela Nicklaus and Fred Nicklaus; and great nieces and nephew, Chelsea Gilmore, Celena Gilmore and Liam Gilmore. Frank’s funeral service will be held at 12:00 p.m. Friday, March 27, 2026 in the LITTLETON & RUE FUNERAL HOME. The family will receive friends beginning at 11:00 a.m. until the time of service. Burial will be in Glen Forest Cemetery, Yellow Springs.