Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles

Subject: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Giac
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:03 AM

Can't seem to find this as a song category, can anyone help with a source?

I checked the DigiTrad and Forum topics - no dice.

Specifically, I'm looking for the tune to a song from around the turn of the 20th century about a coal mine disaster at Coal Creek, Tennessee, in which 184 miners died in an explosion. The song is credited to J.Y. Davies and is titled "Down In A Coal Mine."

But am interested in any such songs in the "Springhill Disaster" vein (no pun intended).

Thanks in advance.

Giac

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:18 AM

at this site:http://www.stfx.ca/people/jodonnel/Fieldscontents.html

And Now The Fields Are Green:
A Collection of Coal Mining Songs in Canada
Sydney, Nova Scotia: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1992

Chapter 5: Danger -- Tragedy -- Disaster
The Man With A Torch In His Cap
-- The Mines Of Avondale --
Westville Miners
-- The Miner --
Don't Go Below --
The Bumps --
Down In Springhill's Bumpy Mine --
Springhill Mine Disaster (1891)
-- La Complainte De Springhill --
The Springhill Mine Explosion of 1956 --
The Miracle At Springhill --
Rescue From The Springhill Coal Mine --
The Springhill Disaster Of 1958 --
Miracle At Colliery Two --
The Ballad Of Springhill --
Disaster At No. 1-B --
The Caledonia Explosian --
New Waterford's Fatal Day --
No. 12, New Waterford --
The 1938 Disaster --
The No. 26 Mine Disaster --
The Boys Of The Rescue Crew
-- Miner's Lament

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:32 AM

Levy Sheet Music site, box 132 item 107

is a tune from 1872 titled Down in a coal mine, but it doesn't appear to be about a disaster; just the perils of the life.

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:45 AM

box 170, item 110, St. Paul Mine Disaster

Levy site again.

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:55 AM

Dunno what you searched for. "coal", "coal mine" , "miner" all bring up lots of hits, including Down in a Coal Mine.

My current favorite in this vein is "Coal in the Stone"

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: catspaw49
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 12:17 PM

I know you may be looking for the headline disasters, but as someone with too close an association with "king Coal," I'd suggest that the greatest coal disaster is strip mining which affects far more than the miners. On this subject, try Jean Ritchie's "Black Waters."

replaces soapbox in corner

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: selby
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 01:03 PM

There is a good one called The Lofthouse Colliery Disaster written in the early 70's by Sam Richards about the death of seven men at Lofthouse colliery in Yorkshire. Keith

Subject: Lyr Add: THE BLANTYRE EXPLOSION
From: Kara
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 01:48 PM

Here is one from Scotland

Dm C F A m
C G Am Dm
Dm C F A m
C G Am Dm
D A D A
Dm C F Am
Dm C F A m
C G Am Dm

THE BLANTYRE EXPLOSION

By the Clyde's bonny bank as I slowly did wander
Among the pit heaps as the evening drew nigh,
I spied a young woman all dressed in black mourning
A-weeping and wailing with many's a sigh.
I sat down beside her and gently addressed her:
"Would it help you to talk of the cause of your pain?"
Weeping and wailing at last she did answer
"Johnny Murphy," claims she, "is my true lover's name."

Twenty-one years of age, full of youth and good-looking,
To work down the mines of I Blantyre he came.
The wedding was set. All the guests were invited.
That calm summer's evening my Johnny was slain.
The explosion was heard by the women and children.
With sad anxious faces they ran to the mine.
When the news was made heard, all the hills rang with mourning.
One hundred and ten Scottish miners were slain.

Mothers and daughters, sweethearts and lovers,
The Blantyre explosion they will never forget.
All you good people who hear my sad story,
Remember the miners of Blantyre.

Double spacing eliminated. --JoeClone, 21-Aug-02.

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 02:17 PM

See also  The Blantyre Explosion on the DT.  Beside the tune given there, I've also heard it sung to "The Streets of Laredo".

If you search the Forum for disaster, you'll find more than one discussion of the Springhill songs, and other pit disasters.

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Giac
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 09:04 PM

Thanks so much!!

My computer is quite elderly and a bit unpredictable, so I have a lot of problems searching for anything. Many times I can't even access Mudcat - as tonight - and had to ask a friend in another state to forward your replies.

Thanks to you all for the responses. I should have enough suggestions to hold me for a day or two.

Spaw: I had forgotten about the Jean Ritchie tune (creeping senility). In the 1950s, the farm next to ours in Arkansas was strip-mined and it drained our water well.

I found the words to "Down In A Coal Mine" in a vanity press local history collection and suspected that while the tune was credited to an miner, it likely had much earlier origins. The "author" quoted was born in Wales in the 1870s. It is probable that he sang the tune and listeners just assumed he wrote it.

Thank you, MMario, Dick, Keith, and Malcolm Douglas - and thanks a million, Kara, for the lyrics. The Mudcat Cafe is a treasure, but not half-so as its patrons.

Giac

Subject: Lyr Add: HILLCREST MINE (James Keelaghan)
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 09:31 PM

"Lemme Say Ya Don't GO!"

I'd be remiss if I didn't list James Keelaghans "Hilcrest Mine" here... it's a fantastic song dealing with the disaster from 1914, Canadas worst ever... The town of Hillcrest is in the Crowsnest Pass region of Alberta... The thing i like best about it, is that's it's not just a bald-faced recitation of events...

It's on his CD Small Rebellions

HILLCREST MINE

Down in the mines of the Crow's Nest Pass
It's the men that die in labour
Sweating coal from the womb of the pit
The smell of life they savour
And in that mine, young man, you'll find
A wealth of broken dreams
As long and as dark and as black and as wide
As the coal from the Hillcrest seam

And they say-a don't go (Say-a don't go)
Down in the Hillcrest Mine say-a don't go
Say-a don't go down in the Hillcrest Mine
'Cause it's one short step you might leave this world behind
Le' me say-a don't go, (say-a don't go) down in the Hillcrest Mine

I've heard it whispered in the light of dawn
That mountain sometimes moves
That bodes ill for the morning shift
'Cause you know what you're gonna lose
Don't go, my son, where the deep coal runs
Turn your back on that mine on the hill
'Cause if the dust and the dark and the gas don't get you
Then the goons and the bosses will

(Chorus)

Well, son, I'm gonna open up
I'm gonna have my say
You'll get no peace from the Hillcrest Mine
'Cept the peace of an early grave
Go out and work for the workers rights
Go fight for the workers needs
Don't stay down here to toil for your buck
You'll be a tool for the owners greed

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: GUEST,mary g
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 10:15 PM

Down in the coal mine...the one that goes down int eh coal mine underneath the ground where a gleam of sunshine etc...is the same tune as Beggarman or Red Haired Boy.

There are some wonderful coal mining songs..Coal Town Road by Allister McGillvery, Blue Tattoo.....now I have forgotten the rest of them...I think Rita McNeal wrote at least one....I have a local one if you want it..(Black Diamond, Washington..)

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Robo
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:10 PM

I've been looking for a long time for the chords to a song called "The Ballad of Sid Hatfield." Sid was lawman on the side of the striking miners and was involved in the infamous Matewan Massacre shootout with Baldwin Felts detectives in Matewan, West Virginia, 80 years ago. (If you've seen John Sayles's outstanding movie "Matewan," that's the basic story.) I have the words -- on my computer at work -- if anyone would like them. Be great if someone could help me out with this. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: GUEST, Another conscience....
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:24 PM

Christy Moore's 'Live in Dublin' album (Tara 1978) has probably the finest rendition of 'Clyde's Bonny Banks' I have ever heard.

Recorded in the front room of Nicky Ryan's house (Clannad's old sound engineer), the song (as does the entire album) features Jimmy Faulkner and Donal Lunny in the last 'REAL' album from the Christy Moore stable (barring perhaps 'Ordinary Man')

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: GUEST,Ken Rocket
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:28 PM

There's a great coal mine dister song on the Johnson Mountain Boys' album "Live at the Schoolhouse" called the "Coal Miner's Child's dream". I have an affection for this song as I'm a long time old time musician & my dad is from Wilkes-Barre Pa. & his mother's(my Grandma) first husband died in the Baltimore Mine Explosion of 1919.

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: GUEST,Ken Rocket
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 11:59 PM

Sorry I spelled Disaster wrong

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 05:05 AM

Although it's not about a specific disaster, Alex Glasgow's "Close the coalhouse door" deals in a generic way with the price of coal in human terms. I saw the show it appears in after spending 3 years in South Wales and with memories of Aberfan still horribly fresh and it still moves me today: "there's blood inside, there's bones inside, there's bairns inside".
RtS

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Lady McMoo
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 05:06 AM

I do two not mentioned here.

The first "Auchengeich" (Buchan) is a Scottish song based on the fire and explosion at Auchengeich Colliery (at office at present and can't remember the exact date).

The second "I coud' hew" (Ed Pickford) is a Durham (I think) or maybe Northumberland on the effects of coal dust exposure after a lifetime in the mine.

Both powerful songs. If anybody is interested I could post the lyrics (if not in the DT, haven't checked yet) when I get back home.

Best regards,

mcmoo

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: IanC
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 05:45 AM

Worth looking at (see above)

Author Plater, Alan, 1935- Title Close the coalhouse door; based on stories by Sid Chaplin; songs by Alex Glasgow Imprint London, Methuen, 1971

IanC

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 01 Apr 00 - 06:01 AM

One I haven't seen mentioned is the Gresford disaster. It is in the DT database.

Jon

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Ely
Date: 01 Apr 00 - 05:31 PM

These are a bit of a tangent, but they're kind of coal-related:

Coal Tattoo (Billy Edd Wheeler)

The L&N Don't Stop Here Any More (Jean Ritchie)

Dark as a Dungeon (Merle Travis--sorry, but it's still got potential)

Paradise (John Prine)

Which Side Are You On? (Florence Reese/traditional)

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Banjoman_CO
Date: 01 Apr 00 - 10:59 PM

Have you tried to locate the song entitled "Red Winged Blackbird". I think it is a great song.

Banjoman

Subject: RE: Help: Coal mine disasters/troubles
From: Stewie
Date: 02 Apr 00 - 05:46 AM

Rounder's reissue of the Library of Congress Korson field recordings in Pennsylvania, 'Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners', includes John J. Quinn's moving performance of 'The Avondale Mine Disaster', a tragedy that claimed the lives of 110 men and boys in 1869 (Rounder CD 1502). Rounder also had a great album 'Come all ye coal miners' which featured songs by Nimrod Workman, Sarah Gunning, George Tucker and Hazel Dickens, but I don't whether it has been reissued on CD.

--Stewie.