18 Sing Out! • Vol. 50 #2 • Summer 2006

I t was the first outreach meeting of the fledgling WestVirginia Music Hall of Fame, down in Delbarton, inMingo County. The stage was alive with performers,

this night highlighted by two fleet-fingered pickers, one aBéla Fleck-in-waiting 14-year-old in an orange jump suit,the other an elder pushed on stage with his wheel chair andoxygen who ripped through classic bluegrass riffs. One 80-year-old woman hurried home to retrieve a beautiful photoof a relative playing banjo in her yard over 100 years ago.

Mingo County is about as deep into West Virginia miningcountry as you can get. Victimized by corrupt politics, de-pressed by recent deadly mining accidents next door in LoganCounty, damaged by major flooding and awash in poverty andFEMA trailer parks, it’s viewed as a pretty grim area to live.

Tell that to Delbarton.The people there obtained a grant for a building, fin-

ished with volunteer labor, where they could hold weeklymusic shows. Now, every Saturday night the town holds freemusic concerts that steadily draw audiences of a couplehundred people from the region. That’s nearly half the town’spopulation of about 450.

“We kind of tag-teamed withthe weekly music event and ar-ranged for someone to cater thecornbread and beans,” saysMichael Lipton, Projects Directorfor the Hall of Fame. “Before ev-eryone ate, they said a prayer andactually thanked God for sendingus down there. And they were in-credibly proud of their musicians.

“It was both heart-warming and heart-breaking,” Liptonsays of the town’s reaction. “You have to see somethingfrom someone else’s perspective to really know its worth.To see how these people responded, it was kind of amaz-ing. And it was a good example of how the traditions oflive music are seeing a resurgence.” In Delbarton’s opti-mism, Lipton felt something of a renewed resolve towardhis pet project. “Not that I needed more incentive, but ourevent in Delbarton left me with a feeling of responsibility,that I had to really deliver the goods.”

Michael Lipton’s official title of Projects Director is a ge-neric one but there’s no mistake that the West Virginia MusicHall of Fame is his baby. Lipton, a Charleston-based guitarist,works for Mountain Stage, the popular weekly live music pro-gram syndicated on public radio, and was editor of GraffitiMonthly for nearly two decades. He got the idea for the W.V.Music Hall of Fame in the fall of 2004 and started the 501(c)3process to set up a non-profit organization. “It’s not an espe-cially new idea,” Lipton says, “but, as with a lot of other things,West Virginia was lagging behind.” Soon, the Hall had a boardof directors that included Mountain Stage producer Andy

Ridenour, Wheeling’s Grammy-winning songwriter Tim O’Brien,W.V. Secretary of Arts KayGoodwin, and other art, politicaland legal representatives.

Armed with a small travelgrant, Lipton checked out otherstate music halls of fame thatranged from Mississippi’s pri-vate grass-roots foundation, to

Music of the Coal Fields:A new Music Hall of Fame digs into the

bituminous-dusted roots of West Virginia music

BY TRISTRAM LOZAW

Summer 2006 • Vol. 50 #2 • Sing Out! 19

Georgia’s state govern-ment run p rogram. “ Idefinitely got the mes-sage that in addition tobeing music and art isto r i en ted , the Ha l l o fFame had to be practical.You need to gear thingstoward suppor t ing theproject f inancial ly. Sowhile thinking about thaton the drive back, I gotthe idea for our first ex-hibit, ‘Music of the CoalFields.’”

Lipton thought the ma-jor coal companies wouldbe a great source for funding for “Music of the Coal Fields.”But as he learned, and the recent spate of tragic mining ac-cidents underscored, the coal firms were skeptical of anypublicity. Luckily, Lipton’s roots and Gospel-flavored rockband, the Carpenter Ants, had been recruited for a labor rightstour with Rev. Jesse Jackson and the United Mine Workers’Cecil Jackson. With Cecil Jackson’s help, the UMW gavethe Hall of Fame a gift that got the project rolling and openedthe door for matching funds.

For the “Music of the Coal Fields” exhibit, Lipton re-searched archives, sought out photos, instruments and othermemorabilia, and assembled a collection of 27 coal-dustedrecordings. He found live tapes in the W.V. Dept. of Cultureand History archives, vintage black work songs at W.V. Uni-versity, the ear-opening tracks on Songs and Ballads of theBituminous Miners, from the Library of Congress’s “Archiveof Folk Culture” series, combed various stray discs, and “pil-fered” tracks from Rounder Records. “Their reissue seriesfeatures a number of early records from Appalachian art-ists – among them Blind Alfred Reed, George Tucker, Ha-zel Dickens and Nimrod Workman – and they allowedthem to be included.”

The coal fields tracks reveal a lifeline of dark, bitter-sweet melodies, descended from Irish and English tradi-tions and reflecting the resilience and inspiration withwhich musicians responded to the hardships of West Vir-

ginia – geographic isola-tion, hardscrabble lives, la-bor-intensive jobs, dismaleconomy. The songs runfrom the profound and rareto the amusing and nostal-gic: the poignant a cappellaprotests of “We Done Quit”by black Pursglove minerSam Johnson and Rev.Archie Conway’s “CoalMiner’s Goodbye”; a liveduet featuring Dickens andPhyllis Boyens recorded atthe 1978 Vandalia Gather-ing folk fest; Louis Jordan’sfamous run-in with police

in “Salt Pork, West Virginia”; a radio ad for Leatherwood Milkfrom the Regional Coal Archives; barbershop stylings of “CoalLoading Machine” from The Evening Breeze Sextet; EdHaley’s mournful fiddle version of “Man of Constant Sorrow”discovered on an old 78; and a lot more.

Blind Alfred Reed leads off the “Music of the CoalFields” collection with “How Can a Poor Man Stand SuchTimes and Live.” Reed, whose “Money Cravin’ Folks”

(Above) This classic photo showsthree important facets of life in thesouthern West Virginia coalfields: afiddle, a shotgun and a gramo-phone. (Right) Bluesman Nat Reesehas spent most of his life playingroad houses, house parties andcoal camps throughout southernWest Virginia.

© Mike Keller.WV Dept. of Culture & History

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also appears, grew up the blind son of a farmer in thesoutheastern edge of the state. The religious singer-fid-dler was a ferocious voice against the exploitation of theworking poor in his original protest songs, which wereusually sweetened by old-timey guitar strums providedby his son Arville.

Reed was the first artist to gain notoriety after record-ing songs for the Bristol Sessions of 1927, the famed re-cording sessions of Appalachian artists by Victor Records’Ralph Peer that launched the country music careers ofthe Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and others. In total,Reed recorded 21 of his songs for Victor, and throughrecords, hired shows and street busking supported his wifeNettie and their six children. Blind Alfred died in 1956at the age of 76. His recordings have most recently beenreissued by Domino Records.

In 1971, the three-member Rounder Collective conductedinterviews with Reed’s children that yielded one of the bestoverviews available on the singer’s life, an essay recentlyrepublished in The Bristol Sessions(McFarland & Co. 2005), an enlighteningbook edited by Charles K. Wolfe and TedOlson. Later that year, the Rounders re-leased a seminal Reed collection that in-spired a new generation of musicians in-cluding Tim O’Brien, Ry Cooder and theNew Lost City Ramblers. Soon that list willexpand. Lipton says O’Brien, Kathy Mattea,Connie Smith, Brad Paisley, producer DonDixon and others have been lined up torecord new versions of Blind Alfred com-positions for a new CD to be released bythe W.V. Music Hall of Fame.

T he soundtrack to “Music of the Coal Fields” also features HazelDickens, sometimes called the QueenMother of Bluegrass. The Appalachiansinger and coal mine activist is re-nowned, in true Woody Guthrie tradi-tion, for her “Hard Hitting Songs forHard Hit People” (also the name of her1981 solo debut, reissued on a RounderCD in 1998), as a quick look at a few ofher titles would confirm: “Coal Tat-too,” “Coal Miner’s Grave,” “They’llNever Keep Us Down.” Artists as di-verse as Dolly Parton, Bill Frisell andFreakwater cite Dickens as a major in-fluence.

Born in 1935, Dickens grew up in Montcalm, W.V.,the eighth of 11 children. Her father trucked timber tothe mines, was a weekend Baptist preacher, and pluckedbanjo, all of which would play a part later in Hazel’ssongwriting. At 19, her family straining under the finan-cial realities of mining life, Dickens and three siblingsmoved away to work in the Baltimore factories. As a first-hand witness to brutal mining conditions who lost threebrothers to black lung disease, Dickens already hadenough coal in her blood to ink a lifetime of songs. Youcan still hear her Baptist roots in Dickens’ raw, pointedblend of country, bluegrass and sacred music as it chillsthe bone on “Black Lung” and “Cold Blooded Murder,”two tracks included in the exhibit, as well as the musicshe wrote for Harlan County USA.

Dickens and Phyllis Boyens, her singing partner on theVandalia track, loom large on the heralded Coal Mining Women(Rounder), a CD collection that, as Marty Stuart wrote, findsAmerica’s soul at the bottom of a coal mine. A native of Mingo

20 Sing Out! • Vol. 50 #2 • Summer 2006

(Above) The West Virginia No. 1 Bandfrom Wevaco, W.V. (Right) A black string

band performs on radio station WOBUwhich began broadcasting in 1927. The

station, which would later become WCHS,is the third oldest radio station in the state.

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County, Boyens startedsinging in her motherMolly’s church at five,sang on the revival cir-cuit and later broke outas a respected Appala-chian country-folk art-ist. Boyens appearedin both Coal Miner’sDaughter and HarlanCounty USA, films thatreflected her real-life involvement with coal miningculture; she and Dickens led the first delegation ofwomen to the picket line during the three-year min-ers strike at Stearns, Ky., in the 1970s.

The gift for song ran in Boyens’ Chataroy, W.V.,family. Her father was the noted singing preacherNimrod Workman, with whom she recorded 1973’sPassing Through the Garden (June Appal). Work-man is represented in the exhibit by “Both LungsBroke Down” and two more originals. He was alsofeatured on PBS’s American Patchwork and pro-filed in the acclaimed 1993 documentary TheGrand Generation.

Uncovering oft-overlooked WestVirginia artists like those above hasbeen something of a treasure huntfor Lipton. His music backgroundgave him a good base for launchingthe Hall of Fame, but it’s also beena period of discovery. “This wasn’tthe kind of music I grew up with inFlorida,” he reveals, “though I’velearned a lot about it just from liv-ing here for three decades. Obvi-ously, coal has played such an im-portant part in West Virginia history,and there’s a presence of coal fieldsmusic that runs through the wholestate’s conscience.

Though much of the coal-miningmusic Lipton uncovered is of theprotest variety – songs empathizing with the working manand spotlighted by the recent spate of mining disasters inthe state – there’s a “whole other side” to the music ofthe mining regions. In assembling materials for the CoalFields exhibit, he found photos of “bands and orchestrasthat had been sponsored by coal companies. And thenthere were the African-Americans, Poles, Hungarians,Greeks, Lebanese and Italians who came to southern min-ing towns in the early 1900s bringing their own music,instruments and culture with them. So far I haven’t foundany of the company-sponsored or ethnic recordings, but Iassume they exist.”

Many of the great Mountain State talents are often bestknown for their support roles, for passing through the back-stories of more-famous performers. For instance, J.D. Sumnerof the Sunshine Boys backed up Elvis Presley with his group

The Stamps. In 1925, Blue-field composer and lyricistMaceo Pinkard co-wrote“Sweet Georgia Brown,” asong more closely associ-ated with (and sometimescredited to) Louis Arm-strong. Two of the originalFlamingos (“I Only HaveEyes For You”) were fromWest Virginia. One of themembers of Coalwood Gos-pel crew The Swan Silver-tones was part of theWomack music family gene-alogy. And their biggest hit,“Oh Mary Don’t You

Weep,” was Paul Simon’s source for theline in “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”Even Hazel Dickens, one of the best-regarded Appalachian singers, is betterknown in some circles as one-half ofHazel and Alice (Gerrard), the duo thatinspired the mother-daughter Judds tosing together.

T here’s another theme that threadsthrough West Virginia music:

non-conformity. And as the Hall ex-pands with an eye toward a permanenthome as well as more state-wide ex-hibits, Lipton sees it expanding itsranks to include performers like clas-sical composer George Crumb, Ann

Magnason, Daniel Johnston, Bill Withers, Hasil Adkins, fin-ger-picking champion Robert Schaefer, and keyboardist Win-ston Walls – edgy eccentrics all. “There’s definitely an under-current of non-conformity – some would say strangeness –for artists in West Virginia.”

Lipton sees that as part of the Mountain State’s rug-ged individuality, something the West Virginia Music Hallof Fame can help celebrate. “I think people here reallyneed to be reminded of the good things that the state hasproduced, especially that being a musician is a respect-able, viable, and important thing to do.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Check out the W.V. Music Hallof Fame Web site at <www.wvmusichalloffame.com>; orc/o Michael Lipton, 1427 Lee St., Charleston, WV 25301;Ph: 304-342-4412.

Summer 2006 • Vol. 50 #2 • Sing Out! 20

(Left) Aunt Jennie Wilson (1900-1992) was amongthe first women banjo pickers from her region.(Center) Carl Rutherford was one of the premierguitarists and singers in southern West Virginia,whose original songs were often about coal miningand life in the coalfields. (Below) Appalachian singerand activist, Hazel Dickens is sometimes called theQueen Mother of Bluegrass.

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