Another all time favorite that I just had to make my own
backing/jamming track of the way that I think it should be.
Very notable artists involved in the creation of the song were Pete
Seeger the original folk music developer who worked over the
story, some existing poems and a folk song, Bob Dylan who
slipped some musical wisdom to, and finally The Byrds who
released the version that my effort is very largely based on. The
story itself is a sad and dramatic one, not unheard of in history
about the exploitation of man by man, of children by rich men. It is
widely discussed in many circles so I won't repeat it here. I
ripped a few pictures off the net and supplied the rest form my own
collection, let credit be where credit is due.
Other than what I consider its musical towering evocative merit, the
story plucks some sensitive strings in my own life.
Part of my otherwise very happy childhood was spent in a
mining town
Unknown to me then, my dad was working in the subject mines
for years though much later than the period addressed by the
song
Those miners were a tough gritty lot, best recalled for me by
the faces in an add for a TV series Deadliest Catch
and a song by Johnny Cash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqOB5d8Yiis,
so much so that I'm keeping a copy should it ever drop out of
sight as it were
These same miners later kicked the bolsheviks in the ass
providing me with an opportunity to join my dad whom I had no
memory of ever having seen before
Mining is unimaginably demanding work, physical
torture after which all your muscles ache and scream in pain
for hours, something that I learned not in mining but
farm work when I was 14 and in factory work when I was fifteen.
I was on a spot-welding machine standing on my left leg and
stomping a pedal with the right while manipulating hot and heavy
steel furniture pieces with sharp cut edges. No breaks except
for lunch, if I had to piss it was right down the leg I was
standing on and into my sneakers! Half an hour break at lunch,
1800 seconds and not 1900, lying outside on the grass trying to
optimize the minutes or rest until that bell would ring
again.
Every ship and airplane has the ultimate past-distress
gong, that says "pray", also well expressed in a sig I once saw
"For those for whom the bell has rung, may it never ring again".
Finally, years ago I think following a mining mishap possibly
in Nova-Scotia Canada, I saw on TV a singing quartet of miners
giving what I believe was their rendition of a mining song well
known in mining circles. It had parts like
'if I ever see the sun I'll never go down again' (or
similar). It was BEAUTIFUL, I've been kicking myself ever since
for not having locked it down then and there! What I wouldn't
give now to find it again for inclusion in this file.
