Black Waters: A Song History

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Jean Ritchie wrote “Black Waters” about strip mining in the coal country of eastern Kentucky, where she was born in 1922 in Viper, Perry County, the youngest of fourteen children in a celebrated family of ballad singers.[1] Her father showed her the rudiments of the mountain dulcimer when she was about seven, and in a National Endowment for the Arts interview, asked about her songs on environmental and social issues, she named “Black Waters” as the first of them, a response to the damage strip mining did to land and water.[2] Accounts of how it came about differ: Silas House, writing for Appalachian Voices, says she had wrestled with the song for some time and completed it when she was invited to take part in a memorial concert for Woody Guthrie,[3] and a FolkWorks column by the singer Susie Glaze says Pete Seeger asked her for a song for that memorial.[4] Glaze has dated the song to 1967 in one FolkWorks piece[5] and to 1971 in another,[6] while Ritchie herself recalled writing her strip-mining and coal songs in the late 1950s and early 1960s, issuing some of them under the pen name ’Than Hall to spare her mother, who disliked talk of politics.[1]

Photograph of an abandoned coal tipple and miners' houses in a wooded Kentucky hollow

Abandoned tipple and coal miners’ homes, some of whom still remain on relief, near Chavies, Perry County, Kentucky, Farm Security Administration photograph. Library of Congress. No known restrictions. Perry County is Jean Ritchie’s home county; the photograph has no connection to the song.

The song appears on Ritchie’s Sire LP Clear Waters Remembered, which AllMusic dates to 1971,[7] although Silas House places the recording in 1974.[3] House describes the song as the anthem of the movement against strip mining,[3] and Facing South calls it something of an anthem for opponents of both strip mining and mountaintop removal.[1] Ritchie told the NEA that it had been used in many plays and documentaries and that Johnny Cash and Michelle Shocked were among those who had recorded their own versions.[2]

The NEA named Ritchie a National Heritage Fellow in 2002, listing “Black Waters” among the songs she wrote about life in eastern Kentucky’s coal country.[2] The Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center, which holds the George Pickow and Jean Ritchie Collection, gives her a central role in making the mountain dulcimer popular across the country; she died at her home in Berea, Kentucky, on June 1, 2015.[8] “Black Waters” is included in Aubrey Atwater’s Song By Song, Volume II (2022), a book of songs and method for mountain dulcimer.[9][10]

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Sources

  1. Facing South (Institute for Southern Studies): "Remembering Appalachian folksinging legend Jean Ritchie".
  2. National Endowment for the Arts: "Jean Ritchie: Appalachian musician/songwriter, 2002 NEA National Heritage Fellow".
  3. Appalachian Voices: "Silas House: A Remembrance of Jean Ritchie".
  4. FolkWorks (Susie Glaze): "Pete Seeger and Jean Ritchie".
  5. FolkWorks (Susie Glaze): "Black Waters Are Here Today".
  6. FolkWorks (Susie Glaze): "The Gentle Protest – Jean Ritchie's 'Black Waters'".
  7. AllMusic: "Clear Waters Remembered – Jean Ritchie".
  8. Library of Congress, Folklife Today: "Jean Ritchie, 1922-2015".
  9. Atwater~Donnelly: "Song By Song, Volume II: Table of Contents".
  10. Atwater~Donnelly: "Atwater~Donnelly Duo".