THROWBACK THURSDAY: Remembering Coal Songs

The issue of coal has been in the news a lot lately. On Wednesday an Iowa utility agreed to stop burning coal five of its Iowa plants. The pants will either shut down or switch from coal to natural gas. This is due to a legal settlement with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The government says this will make 200 coal-burning plants that have shut down in the past five years.

Locally, in my day job I've been covering the controversy over the coal-burning San Juan Generating Station near Farmington. (My latest article is HERE.)

Getting away from coal would mean less pollution, less black-lung disease and a lot fewer mining disasters.

But what about the music?

Coal-mining songs are a staple of American folk and country music for decades. Coal might be dirty and awful. But come on, can you truthfully imagine a song as powerful as "Dark as a Dungeon" or even "Big Bad John" coming out of a solar plant?

Back in 2008, I reviewed country singer Kathy Mattea's excellent album Coal, which featured several classic coal-mining songs, including some written by folksingers Jean Ritchie and Hazel Dickens.

At the end of the column I listed my Top 10 favorite coal-mining songs. I figured this Throwback Thursday is a good time to revisit those songs:

For my money, "Dark as a Dungeon" written by Merle Travis is the greatest song about coal ever written. It doesn't deal with a mining disaster or black lung or labor strife. It's about the psychic effects of spending day in and day out in a "dark dreary mine." This version is performed by Travis with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their landmark May The Circle Be Unbroken album.

  

"Dream of a Miner's Child" is a terrifying little number about a coal miner who's about to leave the house to go to work when his little girl stops him and tells him about her vivid nightmare: "I dreamed that the mines were all flamin' with fire /And the workers all fought for their lives ... "



In "16 Tons," (which also was written by Merle Travis) Tennessee Ernie Ford makes coal mining seem rather cool. It doesn’t pay well, but it apparently it gives you license to kill those who refuse to step aside when they see you comin’.



New Orleans soul man Lee Dorsey also made coal mining seem pretty cool with his 1966 hit
"Workin' in a Coal Mine."



And in the '70s, Loretta Lynn took great pride in being a "Coal Miner's Daughter."



In "Paradise," written in the early '70s, native Kentuckian John Prine sang of the environmental and psychic damage caused by "Mr. Peabody's coal mine."


Jimmy Dean immortalized a coal miner called "Big Bad John" in this early '60s hit -- before Jimmy started working at the sausage mine.



"Last Train to Poor Valley" by Norman Blake is about what happens to the workers when the mines all shut down.



'Quecreek" by Buddy Miller is the most recent song on this list. Buddy's wife Julie Miller (who sings with Buddy in the video below) wrote it in 2002 after nine Pennsylvania coal miners who had been trapped in a collapsed mine for three days were rescued. It's one of the few mining disaster songs with a happy ending,



The main message of  “Timothy” by The Buoys is that just because you’re in a mining disaster, that doesn’t mean you have to start skipping meals.

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Little Marcy Seeks Youthful Prey

Her songs and stories were upbeat, joyful, positive, full of devout Christian love -- heavy on the Golden Rule, light on the Hellfire -- good-spirited entertainment for children.
But something about Little Marcy just gave me the willies.

For one thing, she wasn't even a real little girl. She was some kind of ventriloquist dummy -- devil doll, they used to call them -- operated by a frustrated gospel trombonist .

The puppet meister was one Marcellaise Tigner, a native of Wichita, Kansas who released more than 40 Little Marcy albums between 1964 and 1982.

I'll yield to the scholars at Weirdomusic.com to tell this tale:

After Tigner's husband, Everett, overheard a group of record company executives discussing plans to hire child singers to make a children's album, she and Whitney entered the studio to record her rendition of the standard "Jesus Loves Me" as a showcase for her own childlike voice. The demo landed Tigner a deal with Cornerstone Records, and in 1964 she released her first children's effort, Happy Day Express: Sing With Marcy. A series of albums and live performances followed, but Tigner felt uncomfortable appearing on-stage while singing in a child's voice. While appearing in the film Teenage Diary, she befriended co-star (and Miss America 1965) Vonda Van Dyke, herself an accomplished ventriloquist; at Van Dyke's urging, Tigner purchased a copy of Paul Winchell's book Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit and began learning the trade. The same doll maker who designed Edgar Bergen's Charlie McCarthy character was soon commissioned to create Little Marcy, who became the on-stage conduit for Tigner's vocal performances.

Weirdomusic noted, "Though largely inactive from the 1980s onward, [Little Marcy] retained a large fan following, although in latter years her core audience counted far fewer Sunday school students than collectors of so-called "incredibly strange music."

Mrs. Tigner died in 2012 at the age of 90.

But her evil spawn, Little Marcy lives on. In your nightmares. (So far I've found no hard evidence to verify the rumor that she's shacking up with this guy.)

Here are some videos:

I think Nirvana did this first one.



There's a little bit of Little Marcy in Ned Flanders. (And if The devil doesn't like it, he can sit on a tack ...)



Here is an infamous Little Marcy Classic for which there is no YouTube PLAY HERE

This short documentary exposes the truth about Little Marcy. Watch it before the Powers That Be yank it off the Internet

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 12, 2015
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
The Phantom by Flat Duo Jets
Ring of Fire by Social Distortion
Skeletons by The Routes
Kill You Tonight by The Sinister Six
Killers From Space by Figures of Light
Motobunny by Motobunny
The Wolf Pack Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Cadillac Hips by Soledad Brothers
Bikini Girl by Panty Meltdown Aftermath
Bikini Girls With Machine Guns by The Cramps

Web by Thee Oh Sees
Golden Surf II by Pere Ubu
Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry
Mean Ass Girlfriend by The Barbarellatones
Call of the West by Wall of Voodoo
Fattening Frogs for Snakes by Sonny Boy Williamson

Song for a Future Generation by B-52s
Star Dream Girl by David Lynch
Daddy Rolling Stone by The Who
Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Man by Public Enemy
Wicked Waters by Benjamin Booker
Jimmy's Warmup by Jimmy Russell
Medley: It's Allright/ For Sentimental Reasons by Sam Cooke
Feel All Right by The Oblivians with Mr. Quintron
Sugar Farm by T-Model Ford

Vodka is Poison by Golem
El Perversion by Deadbolt
We're Desperate by X
Run Run Run by The Velvet Underground
On a Mississippi Porch by Marcus James
Glow in the Dark by Lovestruck
Yours to Destroy by Laura St. Jude
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
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THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 10, 2015
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens

Wave That Flag by The Bottle Rockets (Chicken Truck)

Time Heals by The Gear Daddies

Dig Them Squeaky Shoes by Andy Starr

Nervous Breakdown by Wanda Jackson

Dixie Fried by The Howlin' Brothers

The Devil's Right Hand by Steve Earle

Down in Mississippi By J.B. Lenoir

Big Bad Bill is Sweet William Now by Ry Cooder

Feels Good by Dustbowl Revival

Let's Talk About Us by Van Morrison & Linda Gail Lewis

 

The Women Make a Fool Out of Me by Ernest Tubb

The Silver Tongued Devil and I by Kris Kristofferson

Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean

Let's Take a Ride by The Beaumonts

Whiskey And Women And Money To Burn by Joe Ely

Tongues by Jo Carol Pierce

Boomtown Boogie by Butch Hancock, Terry Allen & Jo Carol Pierce

The Way I Was Raised by Jo Harvey Allen

Cup of Tea by Joe Ely & Jo Harvey Allen

The Devil's at Red's by Anthony Leon & The Chain

Bad News by Alejandro Escovedo & Jon Langford

Fast Train Down by The Waco Brothers

Good News by Amy Helm

Mighty Lonesome Man by James Hand

Hey Mama, My Time Ain't Long by Ray Wylie Hubbard

When the Hammer Came Down by House of Freaks

Two Daughters And A Beautiful Wife by Drive-By Truckers

 

The Last War by Jim Stringer

Think I'll Just Sit Here and Drink by Merle Haggard

Gypsy Songman by Jerry Jeff Walker

Richland Woman by David Johansen & The Harry Smiths

Here Comes That Rainbow Again by Jerry Lee Lewis with Shelby Lynn

It's Not MyTime to Go by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks

The Lost Cause by Legendary Shack Shakers

Take it Down by John Hiatt

CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

 

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: The War That Never Ends

If the South woulda won we'd still have Junior

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
July 10, 2015

It’s the war that never seems to end.

Last month’s killing of nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston reopened a lot of old wounds; the young man who police say has confessed to the crime reportedly had the deluded hope of starting a race war. Dylann Roof didn’t accomplish that. 

But what he did spark was another intense national debate about the Confederate flag, the nature of the Confederacy itself, and the meaning of the American Civil War. 

And what do you know? The scars still are too tender to declare this debate done.

This week South Carolina's legislature voted to remove the Confederate flag from the Capital grounds and Gov. Nikki Haley signed the bill. Somehow, I don't think this war is over.

The battle over Confederate culture has been fought in the world of music as well — and I’m not just whistling “Dixie.” Here is a look at a handful of the musical shots fired in the past 50-some years.

* “The Burning of Atlanta” by Claude King. This 1962 single was the follow-up to Claude King’s biggest hit, the country classic “Wolverton Mountain.” In many ways, the song — which concerns Gen. William Sherman’s torching of the Georgia city in Nov. 1864 — fits in the “faux folk song” phenomenon of that era, songs like Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans,” “El Paso” by Marty Robbins, and Bobby Bare’s “Miller’s Cave.” But “Atlanta” has an edge to it, especially considering what was going on with the civil rights movement in the South in 1962. King singing, “We don’t care what the Yankees say, the South’s gonna rise again,” was more than a little charged in this context.

* “Down in Mississippi” by J.B.  Lenoir. For some reason, bluesman J.B. Lenoir’s swampy tune, recorded in Chicago in 1966, didn’t get a fraction of the airplay that “The Burning of Atlanta” received. Lenoir definitely wasn’t fantasizing about the South rising again. As far as he was concerned, things hadn’t really changed that much from the old days. Lenoir had been writing topical blues and protest songs since the ’50s. “Mississippi” is his finest. “They had a huntin’ season on a rabbit/If you shoot him you went to jail/The season was always open on me/Nobody needed no bail.”

* “An American Trilogy” by Mickey Newbury. Elvis Presley turned this haunting medley into a showstopper for his live performances in the mid-’70s. But it was renegade Nashville songwriter Mickey Newbury who put the three songs — “Dixie,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “All My Trials” together. It is a sweet plea for reconciliation. Hat tip to the online publication Saving Country Music for recently re-publishing Chris Campion’s liner notes to Newbury’s An American Trilogy compilation album, which focuses on Newbury’s performance of “Trilogy” at a Hollywood nightclub in 1970. Campion describes “All My Trials” as “a Bahamian lullaby turned plantation spiritual.” He continues, “It fit so well, forming a breach and symbolizing a quiet revolution to the other two songs, charged as they were by their association with Civil War conflict.” Campion says that Newbury’s wife was concerned that the Confederate anthem “Dixie” would offend Odetta, the iconic African-American folksinger who was in the audience that night. But from the stage, Newbury himself “could see Odetta’s eyes glisten as they welled up, her face shine as the emotion stained her cheek.”

Remember this guy?

* “If the South Woulda Won” by Hank Williams Jr. Had the South won the Civil War, Hank Williams Jr. suggests in this 1988 ditty, it would be so cool. We’d celebrate Kentucky bourbon, Cajun cooking, Elvis, Patsy, and his dad. The Supreme Court would be in Texas where they’d execute criminals quicker to avoid all those boring appeals and embarrassing exonerations. The girls all would have sexy Southern accents. All this, plus slaves!

* “Ronnie & Neil” by Drive-By Truckers. The Truckers’ 2001 album Southern Rock Opera is a concept album about what frontman Patterson Hood calls “the duality of the South.” This song is the strongest. It starts off talking about the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. (“Four little black girls killed for no goddamn good reason,” Hood sings.) Then it gets into the rhetorical back and forth between Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant and Neil Young, who had written a couple of disparaging songs about the South (“Southern Man” and “Alabama”). Van Zant in “Sweet Home Alabama,” responded, singing, “I hope Neil Young will remember Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.” But Hood points out that in real life Ronnie and Neil became pals, a symbol of reconciliation.

* “Wave That Flag” by The Bottle Rockets. This song, from the 1993 debut album of the influential alt-country band from Festus, Missouri, deals directly with the stars and bars. “Wave that flag, hoss, wave it high/Do you know what it means? Do you know why?/Maybe being a Rebel ain’t no big deal/But if somebody owned your ass, how would you feel?” 

* “Take it Down” by John Hiatt. This stark and mournful song from John Hiatt’s Crossing Muddy Waters album from 2000, starts out talking about lost love and ends up commenting on the issue of the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina capitol. The message is that people should realize when they’ve been defeated — be it a romance or a civil war — and stop clinging to symbols of the past. 

* “The Lost Cause” by The Legendary Shack Shakers. Over the strains of what sounds like a player piano, in this 2010 tune, J.D. Wilkes describes a battalion of undead Confederate soldiers. It’s not really a ghost story; it’s a refutation of historical revisionism that glorifies the Confederacy: “A company of skeletons in rags/March home under tattered white flags/Dusty Bibles and deep empty pockets/Dark dreams and deeper eye sockets/We ain’t right in the head and our women lay dead/We’re the losers who chose the Lost Cause.” The final verse seems even more ominous after Charleston: “From the dirt where they plant us,/‘Sic semper tyrannis!’/ May we one day avenge our lost cause."

You can hear most of these songs on this playlist, plus a few bonus tracks: