Search - Various Artists :: Dark As a Dungeon: Songs of the Mines

Songs relating to miners and mining have made a significant impact in country music over the years the legendary singer and guitarist Merle Travis devoted a whole album to them at one point, apart from writing two of the most powerful mining songs ever: Sixteen Tons and Dark As A Dungeon. It is not coincidental that mining songs have been even more popular proportionately with Bluegrass musicians and audiences, because so many of them were raised in or near the coal fields of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia.

Dark As A Dungeon: Songs of the Mines is a striking anthology of some of the most popular as well as some of the most obscure recordings dealing with this subject. The songs deal with the destruction of the land (John Prine s notable Paradise, sung to perfection by The Seldom Scene), the trials and tribulations of a miner s life ( Black Dust Fever ), right on to the outright tragedy of lost lives (Valerie Smith s powerful rendition of Becky Buller s In Those Mines and Ralph Stanley II s poignant Daddy s Dinner Bucket ).

Not everything was totally bleak in the mining regions, as Randall Hylton s Coal Town Saturday Night reminds us, and David Davis wonderful The River Ran Black shows the mixed feelings of nostalgia and anger that many miners and their families dealt with.

This collection is notable for the superb performances by some of the greatest artists in Bluegrass, including THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN, THE SELDOM SCENE, KEITH WHITLEY & RICKY SKAGGS, BLUE HIGHWAY and LARRY SPARKS among them.