The thing about the horrors of coal mining is, you forget. 

Unless you've lived it, and sometimes even if you have, you forget about the grueling poverty of many coal towns, about corn bread as a food group, about bare feet and faces blackened by coal dust and daddies who came home at night bone-weary and wives who were grateful to see them come home at all. 

Between catastrophes, people forget. 

They forget about the "smothering" feeling of black lung that left miners unable to draw a peaceful breath. About men and women who went deep into mountains, earned squat and sometimes never walked out. About the days when the arrival of a union was something to sing and shout about, labor organizers people to idolize. 

"Before World War I and leading up to World War II, there was a lot of romance to coal," says Jack Wright, the Wise, Va., native who is one of the producers of Music of Coal. 

The motivation for Wright's CD is twofold: First, Wright thinks that every generation has to relearn the lessons of the past. In the case of coal, that would be the rape of the land, the exploitation of families, the flickers of hope for social justice. 

The second is more personal: Coming from coal country, the music simply plays a refrain in his head. In the '70s, Wright participated in a small-scale collection of coal music. The experience left him wanting something bigger. That's Music of Coal. 

"As the industrialization of the country was happening, and people were moving to become coal miners, I think there was a lot of romance to that ... and then when the organizers started coming and things got hard, it got high on political agendas and became national in its politics. And when miners started to organize, there was a lot to sing about." 

There's a connection between labor and art: music, photography, painting. Says Thandabantu Iverson, an assistant professor at Indiana University Northwest who worked briefly in the mines in the 1970s: "Because of the intensity of experiences that people have, they are inclined to write, to sing, to do quilting, all those things that working people do to say we're still here, we're surviving and we will continue to survive." 

There are 48 songs on Music of Coal. Individually, just about any one of them is devastating. There are desperately tired miners, terrified families, and lives that are gritty, impoverished and often violently cut short. Taken together, these songs are as comprehensive a history of coal mining's rise, fall and aftermath as any book about Appalachian coal culture ever written. 

The history of Appalachian mining is fraught with controversy. Wrote the late Kentucky historian Thomas Clark in 1960, "The tentacles of the mining industry and the mineral run deep into the human resource, Kentucky politics, and even into the physical topography of the land itself." 

And into its music, too: 

A short life of trouble in a dark and dusty mine 

Has been my occupation, now I walk the picket line. 

I was down in bloody Harlan when they tried to organize; 

The miners faced starvation, you could see it in their eyes. 

Music of Coal includes songs, labor history and the unique perseverance of a region held in thrall by poverty that was grueling and danger that never stopped. Here you will find Natalie Merchant growling her way through Which Side Are You On? And there's character actor Ned Beatty taking an almost hypnotic turn on Sixteen Tons. And the 1908 Edison Orchestra (as in Thomas Edison) singing a Disneyesque tour of the mines -- in which there is all of the noble effort and little of the life-defying risk -- packed into three minutes, the longest recording technology of the day would allow. 

There are references to United Mine Workers giant John L. Lewis, labor activist Mother Jones, murdered UMW reformer Jock Yablonski and even Johnny Cash, who is said to have been fascinated by coal music. 

There's Coal Miner's Boogie, a Ralph Stanley/Dwight Yoakam duet called Miner's Prayer, and a raw but soaringly emotional Harlan County protest spiritual called What Are We Gonna Do? 

Families stood around 

As they brought you out one by one. 

Breathing, there was none, 

A mother had lost her son. 

What would we say? You never came out that day. 

What are we gonna do 

About coal mine 32? 

Between World War I and World War II, there were about 700,000 miners in Appalachia. Says Wright: "Out of that body of people, you're going to have some poets and artists." 

After World War II, the number of miners and poets and artists starts dwindling. The clatter of machinery gets louder in the mines. As fewer miners write about their experience, more miners' families take up poetry and songwriting. 

"It's an industrial and working class poetry, a lot of it, but it's pretty eloquent when it comes to just listening to," Wright says. 

Take the song Coal Miner's Blues: 

Loading' coal, loadin' coal 

I'm a double first cousin to a dad-blamed mole 

Never get rich to save my soul 

In forty 'leven years a-loadin' coal, loadin' coal. 

The notes in the book are Wright's opinions, not always beyond dispute. When he opines that "No name evokes more images of Appalachia than West Virginia," Kentuckians can say, well, thanks for the slight. 

But Wright points out that West Virginia is Appalachian pretty much all the way through, whereas Kentucky -- well, there's the Bluegrass and the flatlands of Western Kentucky, although some of those are given over to strip mining. And there's the Hoosier-adjoining lands of Louisville and the Cincinnati sympathizers of Northern Kentucky. So Wright might be correct: West Virginia might be the most Appalachian state. 

And the coal dust blowed like a dark summer snow 

And I don't hear the roar of the tipple any more 

Or the whine of the trucks on the line. 

Robin and Linda Williams are folk singers who appear regularly on public radio's A Prairie Home Companion. But they're also on Music of Coal singing Blue Diamond Mines by Perry County native and "mother of folk," Jean Ritchie: 

You old black gold, you've taken my soul 

Your dust has darkened my home.

And now that I'm old, you're turning your back. 

Where else can an old miner go. 

"We're not from coal country. We don't live there," Robin Williams said. "But the music of coal miners has been with us our whole career. ... The coal industry is part of the American fabric. ... Their work should not be taken for granted." 

I'll never trust a rich man as long as I draw a breath, 

To keep his marble mansion, he'll starve your child to death 

And when my life is over, don't mourn my passing long 

Organize resistance and keep the union strong.

'Music of Coal' rings so true

What: Jack Wright, co-producer of Music of Coal, will speak. The Reel World String Band, featured on the CD, also will be on hand.
When and where: 7 p.m. Nov. 8 at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, The Mall at Lexington Green.
Tickets: Free; available at the bookstore.
Learn more: (859) 273-2911 or www.josephbeth.com.

What are your coal memories?

What do you remember about life around the coal mines?

Many Herald-Leader readers have grown up around or somehow been affected by Kentucky's coal mining economy. That's why we're making an unusual Herald Readers Book Club pick for November: the Music of Coal book and two-CD set. 

Does this sound familiar? If you're a Herald-Leader reader, it should: I wrote about the book in September. I also wrote about the book-CD's cover photograph, and the life of the boy in the photograph, Lendel Slone of Knott County, now 52. 

Music of Coal is a gift to Kentuckians not simply because it offers extensive liner notes about each song, a sort of compact history of the human and environmental toll of the coal industry, much of it offered up by amateur musicians giving first-person testimony. (And I'll stand by my contention that the song, There'll Be No Black Lung Up in Heaven is the best song on the collection. If you'd like to differ, I'd love to hear from you.) 

Music of Coal also offers a history of the labor movement surrounding coal -- from the iconization of United Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis to the murder of UMW reformer Jock Yablonski to the call to union solidarity that is Which Side Are You On?  

And if you think that Tennessee Ernie Ford's Sixteen Tons is the gold standard -- and if you are of A Certain Age, you know that you do -- wait until you hear character actor and Louisville native Ned Beatty's take. It's equal parts hypnotism and camp, and Beatty hasn't been this bravura since Paddy Chayefsky's Network. 

Producer Jack Wright calls the music "an industrial-and working-class poetry," and the first time listening to the CDs can be draining. But the second time you're listening for the music and artistry and lyrics. It's Appalachian history set to music. And it's mesmerizing.

Reach Cheryl Truman at (859) 231-3202 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3202, or ctruman@ herald-leader.com.

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