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janolov - Posted - 12/15/2023: 08:22:45
I have chosen Coal Creek by Manon Campbell (youtu.be/WLzITV1q7tw) to this week’s TOTW. It is a rather easy and uncomplicated tune. However, I got interested of it more because of the title, than of the music itself. My initial thought when I discovered the tune was that it had a connection with Coal Creek, Tennessee, and the tunes and songs Coal Creek March, Last Payday At Coal Creek, Shut Up The Mines At Coal Creek, and so on. But I was probably wrong! But because I spent some time researching Coal Creek, Tennessee and the music associated, I decided to focus on music around Coal Creek, rather than only Coal Creek as played by Manon Campell.
Coal Creek, Tennessee
Coal Creek was a city in Anderson and Campbell counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, northwest of Knoxville. The original name of the city/town was Coal Creek, but since Coal Creek is associated with accidents, disasters and rebellions, the name has been hanged two times. First it was renamed to Lake City in 1936, and then in 2013 to Rocky Top. Today it is a rather small city: the population was 1,781 at the 2010 census.
Coal Creek is also the name of a tributary of the Clinch River, that flows north for several miles from its source in the mountains, slicing a narrow valley between the backbone-like Walden Ridge on the east and Vowell Mountain to the west before exiting the mountains eastward through a water gap in Walden Ridge.
There are several incidents that have put Coal Creek on the map – both the geographical and historic map and the music map.
Coal Creek War 1891
The Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system.
After the Coal Creek War, coal-miners garnered a new respect, reclaimed their jobs and formed unions. Coal companies gained a skilled workforce and restructured the industry better than it was before convict-leasing. Families were relatively happy as normalcy and stability returned. Until next disaster……..
Read more about the Coal Creek Ware: Wikipedia, Appalachia Bare
Coal Creek explosion or Fraterville disaster 1902
The Fraterville mine (sometime the spelling is Fraternville) was owned by the Coal Creek Coal Company and was the oldest in Coal Creek, and was opened in 1870. The Fraterville mine sat adjacent to the Knoxville Coal and Iron Company’s abandoned mine, and was considered one of the safest mines in Tennessee, but……..
A big explosion occurred in the mine at 7:30 a.m. on May 19, 1902. The whole camp felt the earth rumble. Witnesses saw smoke, flames, and wreckage shoot up in the air and out of the mine’s opening. The consensus for the number of deceased stands at 184 men. Various nationalities of men, aged sixty to twelve, all died together. Some recovered bodies were without limbs or heads. Twenty-six men and boys survived the initial blast and barricaded themselves inside pockets and passageways, stuffing clothes or anything they could around air crevices to stop the deadly gas. But their efforts were in vain. Some of the men survived several hours, long enough to write farewell letters to their families or friends.
Read more: Wikipedia, Appalachia Bare
On a frosty December 9, 1911 at around 7:30 in the morning a violent explosion occurred in Cross Mountain in the Coal Creek area. Eighty-four miners were killed, and only five survived. The cause of the explosion was the ignition of dust and methane gas released by a roof fall.
More than one company went broke at Coal Creek after the explosions.
Read more: Wikipedia, Appalachian Bare
Coal Creek, B.C., Canada
Just as a coincident, there is also a Coal Creek in British Colombia, Canada which had an explosion just three days after the Fraternville disaster in Coal Creek, Tennessee. Shortly before 7:30 PM on May 22nd, 1902, the local community was devastated when a gas and coal dust explosion killed at least 128 men in the No. 2 and 3 mines of Coal Creek, BC. At the time, the Coal Creek explosion of 1902 was the 2nd largest mine disaster in Canada and one of the largest in North America. To date, it remains the second-largest in BC, and the third-largest in Canada.
When making research about Coal Creek I found that it is a very common name. There are Coal Creeks in several different states (cities, towns, villages, creeks, rivers, streams and so on). There are even Coal Creek places in Australia and Great Britain. Even here in Sweden there is a municipality called “Kolbäck” which can be translated to “Coal Creek”. So a tune titled “Coal Creek” could be referring to a lot of different places all over the world, and not necessarily Coal Creek, Tennessee.
The history of Coal Creek, Tennessee has given rise to a lot of good Old-Time music.
Marion Underwood: He also seemed to have recorded with the name Floyd Russel
Pete Steele, and here (video)
According to Traditional Tune Archive Coal Creek March was composed after the Coal Creek War 1891. In some early recordings by, for example Marion Underwood and Dock Boggs, involved rapping on the banjo head and other effects to represent the drumming of militia.
On the other hand, Pete Steele claims that Coal Creek March refers to the 1902 explosion (the Fraterville disaster), but he never was in Coal Creek, and he learned the tune from a former coal miner, so he may have misunderstood the history of the tune.
My own theory is that there may be two different versions of Coal Creek Marches. Marion Underwood’s and Dock Boggs’ versions are similar and played in the key of G in ordinary G tuning. Pete Steele, and also Roscoe Holcomb, play another version of Coal Creek March in the key of D and open D tuning (“Reuben tuning” f#DF#AD) without these militia sound effects, and this version may very well have been composed after the Fraterville disaster.
Last PayDay At Coal Creek
Last Payday at Coal Creek is a song made famous by Pete Steele. He said this song came from the second mine explosion (1911) that, he said, "busted the company." More than one company went broke at Coal Creek at that time, so we don't know the song's exact origin. The song has African-American influences (blues structure), and it might have been a pre-existing song modified to fit a local situation. Pete Steele has also said that he never had been in Coal Creek, but he learned two tunes (Coal Creek March, and Last Payday At Coal Creek) from a miner from Coal Creek.
Shut Up The Mines At Coal Creek
In 1929, a Kentuckian named Green Bailey recorded this song, which was undoubtedly written shortly after the explosion in 1902 . The tune sounds like a typical 19th century maudlin song, so it's probably a poem set to music, perhaps by Bailey himself.
Clifton Hicks plays a song named Shut Up The Mines Of Coal Creek that he learned from George Gibson (and George Gibson must have learned it from someone else). Clifton refers to the 1902 disaster.
Coal Creek Troubles was tune played by Jilson Setters that were recorded by John A. Lomax in 1937.
Mike Seeger has made a cover version.
The lyrics indicates that the singer/composer is from Kentucky, but also refers to soldiers, so probably the song is about the Coal Creek War 1891:
Some are from Kentucky,
The place known as my birth,
As true and honest-hearted men
As ever trod the earth.
The Governor sent the convicts here
And works them in the bank;
The captain and his soldiers
Are leading by in rank.
Now bak to the TOTW this week. According to Titon (Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes, 2001) Manon Campbell was born 1890 and died in 1987. He lived in Letcher County, Kentucky. He first learned banjo on a home-made gourd banjo. When he was 10 or 11 years he just picked up his uncle’s fiddle and played. His first tune was Coal Creek.
First, I thought that Campbell’s Coal Creek had a connection with Coal Creek, Tennessee and Coal Creek War (he seems to have learned the tune just before the Fraternville disaster 1902). The distance between his home place in Fletcherville, Kentucky and Coal Creek, Tennesse is about 150 miles, so the news from Coal Creek could have been spread to Kentucky rather fast.
In Traditional Tune Archive, Campbell told the tune at one time had words attached to it, although he remembered but a fragment: " 'Do you want to go to Coal Creek; do you want to go to town? Do you want to get knocked down' or something like that", and also recalled "Oh, that was just a piece that they used to frolic and dance to." This lyric seems to have some resemblance with the "Sugar Hill" lyric group, and seems to have no connection to the tragedies in Coal Creek, Tennessee.
Also according to Traditional Tune Archive Manon Campbell’s Coal Creek is close related West Virginia fiddler Oscar Wright's "Shootin Creek" (On this page you can listen to his and others version). Also Henry Reede’s version seems to be similar (but other versions of Shootin’ Creek seems to be more related to Cripple Creek). The main difference seems to be that Shootin’ Creek by Oscar Wright is played in the key of D, while Coal Creek by Manon Campbell is played in the key of A (mixolydian mode).
A CH tab (by JanetB !) of Oscar Wright’s version is in the BHO tab archive hangoutstorage.com/banjohangou...82016.pdf and also by Henry Reede’s version hangoutstorage.com/banjohangou...82016.pdf .
Oscar Wright was from W.V. and four years younger than Manon Campbell, and Henry Reed was also from W.V. and six years older than Manon Campbell. If Campbell learned this tune at the age of 10 or 11 years, and if he was influenced by Shootin’ Creek he probably had another source than Wright or Reed.
There is no other known recordings of Campbell’s version of Coal Creek, but the tune is mentioned with music notation in several books: Miliner-Koken Collection of Old Time Fiddle Tunes, J.F. Titon’s Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes, and Traditional Tune Archive, so the tune has gained a lot of a attention from the Old-Time fiddle community.
Manon Campbell has also made some other appreciated recordings, for example Coal Harbor Bend that was the TOTW 31 Mar 2017 .
I have made a clawhammer tab, which is attached below and I have posted the TablEdit file (with guitar accompaniment) BHO tab archive
Edited by - janolov on 12/15/2023 08:39:11
JanetB - Posted - 12/18/2023: 16:45:38
Your rich history presentation is appreciated, Jan. This is one of those exceptional A+ efforts we see sometimes on TOTW.
Since you brought up the Shooting Creek/Oscar Wright connection possibility, I also arranged Mannon Campbell's Coal Creek in a double C tuning so I could play the two of them as a medley. It's actually easier to play the open G arrangement of Coal Creek and my tab is similar to yours, Jan. My A and B parts of Shooting Creek seem to be in reverse to that of Coal Creek. You'll hear the similarity when the tune transition happens.
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