The two occupations with the biggest libraries of folk songs are sailors and cowboys. Cowboying songs have been collected by the book loads and celebrated with recordings and professional performers and people still get together to sing sea shanteys who have never hoisted a sail. Less celebrated are the songs of coal miners, although there are plenty out there. Coal miners do not sing as they work, but they have sung about their work, and about their struggles for a very long time.
Through that rich, haunting corpus of songs, Chico Schwall and friends trace the history of mineers: the workers’ struggles in Wales (1980s), West Virginia (1920s-30s) and Scotland (forever). Some songs are obscure, others are classics, like Merle Travis' "Dark As a Dungeon", "Which Side Are You On" by Florence Reese and John Prine’s "Paradise". Also, Woody Guthrie’s brilliant but undersung "Goodbye, Centralia". And Jean Ritchie’s "Black Waters".