Oh, it's a good one. Folks liked it because it was catchy, so they missed how angry it was.
[He picks up the banjo and settles it in his lap. Fingerpicks? Those are for weaklings whose fingers aren't themselves several layers of callus thick. The version that hit the charts was the one by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but the version he grew up with the one by Merle Travis. The way Ford sang it was a little too much like a performance for his taste. His playing is great -- his voice less so, but it has that rough and earnest scratchy nature that works great for this particular sort of music. That's real mountain sound. Somewhere in the middle he gets a little lost and a second melody creeps in. It makes sense in his head. Both have a simple driving beat (he has to approximate it by tapping the heel of his boot against the floor). Both are about the crushing weight of trying to work your way out of poverty. His thoughts always get so mixed up and that extends to the muscle memory of music-- he'd never lose the muscle memory but it gets away from him.
It's just you hear a song like these different when you had family in the mines yourself. It's not charming old-timey Americana to him, it's very recent history, and that's the way he sings it.]
no subject
[He picks up the banjo and settles it in his lap. Fingerpicks? Those are for weaklings whose fingers aren't themselves several layers of callus thick. The version that hit the charts was the one by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but the version he grew up with the one by Merle Travis. The way Ford sang it was a little too much like a performance for his taste. His playing is great -- his voice less so, but it has that rough and earnest scratchy nature that works great for this particular sort of music. That's real mountain sound. Somewhere in the middle he gets a little lost and a second melody creeps in. It makes sense in his head. Both have a simple driving beat (he has to approximate it by tapping the heel of his boot against the floor). Both are about the crushing weight of trying to work your way out of poverty. His thoughts always get so mixed up and that extends to the muscle memory of music-- he'd never lose the muscle memory but it gets away from him.
It's just you hear a song like these different when you had family in the mines yourself. It's not charming old-timey Americana to him, it's very recent history, and that's the way he sings it.]