Category: songs

John Prine 1971

About coal strip mining in Appalachia. The town of Paradise, KY was demolished in 1967 so TVA's coal plant could expand. In 2020 it was converted to a natural gas plant.

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn

Chorus:
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

Well, sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes we’d shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man

When I die, let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin’
Just five miles away from wherever I am 

Colin Cater 2000

Cater writes on Mudcat: “Idea derives from who knows when – I got it from Ratlebone and Ploughjack?Song took several years to develop – chorus came first then the verses a couple of years later.”

Chorus:
Only once a year, Penny for the Ploughboy
To keep us in good cheer and multiply the grain
Only once a year, Penny for the Ploughboy
Speed the plough until the year turns round again

At the end of the year all the fields were brown in the days when I was young
With corn in the barns, frost in the ground and never a green shoot sprung
Then the ploughmen came with hobnailed boots and the Molly dance rich and slow
And with magical plays and songs of the land they bade the corn to grow

Then they ploughed and sowed and harrowed him in and the rain from heaven did fall
The wind did blow and the sun did shine and he soon grew amazing tall
When the corn was ripened the harvesters came and the barns and the breweries rang
And when all was safely gathered in they raised their voice and sang.

But now the seasons are all changed round, a slave to the great machines.
The fields are ploughed in the high summer time, by the turn of the year they’re green
Gone are the trades, the horses, the families that followed the seasons along
And the old pubs close because they can’t resound to the fiddle or a country song

But there’s strength in the plays, the dances and songs that have lasted a thousand years
There’s strength in barley malt and hops brewed into a country beer
It puts a spring in the step of an old straw bear, makes the dancer leap for the skies
And when the Molly gangs come to speed the plough they’ll raise their glass and cry. 

Jess Arrowsmith 2008

Melrose Quartet: https://melrosequartet.bandcamp.com/track/pilgrimage

Where are they going, your sons and daughters,
where are they going with games and fun?
Where are they going, your sons and daughters,
where are they going with games and fun?

Chorus:
Under the moon, over and done,
Under the moon and the rising sun
We cannot go back, so says everyone.

They’re going for soldiers, sons and daughters,
Going to fight and carry a gun

Why are they going, your sons and daughters,
Why are they going with fife and drum?

They’re off to the fighting, sons and daughters,
Fighting a war that cannot be won

Will they come back, your sons and daughters,
Will they come back while they’re still young?

Only a few of them, sons and daughters,
Passage of death will wait for none

Leon Rosselson 1972

Written for E. D. Berman's successful Save Piccadilly campaign which also employed street theater to fight high-rise development proposals to make the "heart of London" more respectable. "I don't remember the details but in essence it meant putting people underground to make room for more traffic. The plan was shelved and Piccadilly and Eros, in all their seediness, remain as a disreputable meeting place for lonely souls and lost tourists. The Save Piccadilly campaign asked me to write a 'protest' song. I wrote two. This one with its banner-waving singalong refrain, 'That's not the way it's got to be' and "The Man Who Puffs The Big Cigar'."

Piccadilly’s just a slum where the slugs and weirdies come
Knock it down and clean it up and watch the towers rise
Make it look respectable, everything identical
Trees will be permitted of the regulation size

But where have all the people gone?
The concrete towers in spring look sad.
Why does the wind blow hard as stone?
Why is this place so cold and drab?

Chorus:
That’s not the way it’s got to be, people before property
We want a meeting place and not a traffic jam
Let Eros speak for all of us, London’s streets belong to us
No to their profits and their Piccadilly plan

Concrete is very neat, keep the people off the streets
Shove them down in tunnels where they won’t get in the way
Hotels and offices, valuable properties
What a lot of money we’ll be making every day

But where have all the people gone?
The concrete towers in spring look sad.
Why does the wind blow hard as stone?
Why is this place so cold and drab?

Road space is what we need, give the traffic room to breathe
More cars are expected so provisions must be made
What to do with Eros, Piccadilly’s glamour boy?
Corner him and pen him in and teach him to behave.

But where have all the people gone?
The concrete towers in spring look sad.
Why does the wind blow hard as stone?
Why is this place so cold and drab? 

trad 

Steve Gardham estimated the song was from circa 1800. The Bodleian Broadside Ballad Collection lists it in six books from the 19th century; the dating of these indicates it is at least as old as 1840. The various commentary from recording artists on Mainly Norfolk suggests that it was quite popular in the early 20th century and its verses likely evolved a lot during that period.

It was pleasant and delightful one midsummer’s morn
When the fields and the meadows we all covered with corn
And the blackbirds and thrushes sang on every green spray
And the larks, they sang melodious at the dawning of the day

A sailor and his true love went walking one day
Said the sailor to his true love, I am bound far away
I am bound for the East Indies, where the loud cannons roar
I must go & leave my Nancy, she’s the girl that I adore.

Then the ring from off her finger she instantly drew
Saying take this, my dearest William and my heart will go too
And whilst he stood embracing her, tears from her eyes fell
Saying may I go along with you, oh no my love, farewell. 

Phil Ochs 1963

While composing the song, Ochs told his sister Sonny that he was writing "the greatest song I'll ever write". Notably, anti-gay activist Anita Bryant was among those who covered the song, about which Ochs was amused.

Come and take a walk with me through this green and growing land
Walk through the meadows and the mountains and the sand
Walk through the valleys and the rivers and the plains
Walk through the sun and walk through the rain

Chorus:
Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh our power shall rest on the strength of our freedom
Glory shall rest on us all, on us all

From Colorado, Kansas, and the Carolinas too
Virginia and Alaska, from the old to the new
Texas and Ohio and the California shore
Tell me who could ask for more?

But we’re only as rich as the poorest of the poor
Only as free as a padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand

Now again our land is troubled by men who have to hate
They twist away our freedom and they twist away our fate
Fear is their weapon and “treason” is their cry
We can stop ’em if we try! 

trad

Edith Gawler & Bennett Konesni

Prettiest little girl in the county-o
My mama & papa both said so

Chorus (x2):
I’m gonna love her in the mornin’
I’m gonna love her in the evenin’

Prettiest little girl in the county-o All dressed up in calico

Prettiest little girl in the county-o I walked right up and told her so

Swing ’em like you love ’em Boys, you ain’t above ’em

Prettiest little girl on Shelter Isle, oh that Edith makes me smile 

Keith Marsden 1985

Based on the life of Marsden's friend Henry Atkinson, who started work in the mill at fourteen years of age, and worked his way up to becoming Mill Manager. Shortly after his retirement he died of emphysema which he had contracted, as it says in the chorus, 'I passed my time in the dust and grime'.

Fifty years man & boy have I worked the mills, though I never could stand the place.
But I got to the top by my own bootstraps, and not ‘cos they liked my face.
And I made a good life for my child and wife, I’d respect from my fellow men.
But the gaffer’s giving me the gold watch next week and he’ll never see me again.

Chorus:
Prospect, Providence, Perseverance, Albert, Valley and Crank.
I passed my time in the dust and grime, with never a word of thanks.
Oh, the wages were low and the hours were long, and the gaffers was hard, lads, hard.
But the last time’s coming, thank God, coming soon, when I’ll walk up the damned mill yard.

There’ll be no more sweating on a seek-oil dam through the heat of a summer’s day.
There’ll be no more choking on the rag’ole dust, there’ll be no more fratching for pay.
There’ll be no more trying to mend a clapped -out loom, where the noise makes you climb the walls.
There’ll be no more measuring the gaffer’s boots by the seat of your overalls.

There’ll be no more bawling of a weaver out when a piece makes the menders grieve.
“Oh, my shuttles were all cracked so I’d too many traps, and the weft wasn’t fit to weave”.
Then the spinner finds fault with the willyer’s blend, who says that his rags were too cheap.
And the blame gets passed right down the line, till the gaffer goes and kicks the sheep.

Though the pension’s small I’ve a bit put by that’ll do for the wife and me,
And there’ll be enough spare for the odd glass of beer and a few days by the sea.
And I’ll roll a few woods and I’ll still find time for the jobs that I used to shirk.
I’ll have so much on that I’ll wonder then, how I ever found time to work.

Though the pension’s low still the prices rise, my wife’s going out of her mind,
And I’m no longer sure what it’s all been for, the year long, lifelong grind.
And I’d dust so long that my lungs have gone, and I cannot get my breath.
I can’t laugh or talk or even walk, and I long for the peace of death. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1838

Martin Simpson wrote in 1993 that this tune was composed by Lotus Dickey of Indiana. Pete Sutherland probably learned it directly from Dickey and brought it to New England.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Chorus:
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. 

Alex Sturbaum 2017

"I spent nearly half a decade working in Western Washington, doing environmental restoration in the Puget Sound area. It's hard and fulfilling work, and I thought it was just as deserving of a song as whaling, mining, logging, and other hard labor I've spent years singing about. Scotch broom is a plant that is well loved in the music of Scotland, but it's a pernicious invasive species out here."

Alex Sturbaum: https://alexsturbaum.bandcamp.com/track/pulling-broom

It was on one winter morning clear
We loaded up and packed our gear
We lit out at the break of day
We were pulling broom up Concrete way

Chorus:
And it’s one more day,
of the smell of earth and woodsmoke
One more day,
pulling broom

The Scotch broom fields grew thick and wide
River roaring on the other side
Get up, buddy, no time to sleep
For the broom grows high and the roots run deep

Little owl calling in the Doug fir trees
As the grey dawn wakes us from our ease
In the morning sun we’re on the road
With a big iron bar and a heavy load

The Northwest rain comes pouring down
So hard you feel like you might drown
So you bend your backs and you pull together
And hope like hell for better weather

Now the burn pile’s stacked and the fire’s died down
And before too long we’ll be homeward bound
Come sundown we’ll be on our way
With an aching back and a full week’s pay