lyrics of the coal mines

RAGGED HUNGRY BLUES (AUNT MOLLY JACKSON) (1930-'31)

 AUNT MOLLY JACKSON, her relatives from the fascist country of Harlan County, Kentucky, all come to Leadbelly's house almost every day.... AUNT MOLLY JACKSON would sing us an hour or two of Bloody Harlan County, songs of organizing the coal miners to beat the thugs of old Sheriff Blair. MOLLY told tales from her life as a mountaineer midwife, sung us the songs that she used to make the sweethearts lose their bashfulness, the husband and the wife go back to their bed, the lonesome ones take up a new heart, and the older ones to be in body and action as quick, as funny, as limber and as wise as the younguns coming up. MOLLY IS LIKE LEADBELLY. She is the woman Leadbelly. She is in her cotton apron what Leadbelly is in his bathrobe. She talks to him exactly as to her reflection in her mirror. He speaks back to her like the swamplands to the uplands, the same as his river would talk to her highest cliffrim. She loves him in the same half jealous way that he loves her, because he sees and feels in Aunt Molly the woman who has found in her own voice the same power on earth as he has found.

I'm sad and weary, I've got the hungry, ragged blues.
Not one penny in the pocket to buy one thing I need to use.

I woke up this morning, with the worst blues I ever had in my life;
Not a bite to eat for breakfast, a poor coal miner's wife!

When my husband works in the coalmines, he loads a carload every trip;
Then he goes to the office at the evening to get denied of scrip.

Just because they took all he made that day to pay his mine expense,
A man that will work for just coal oil and carbide, he ain't got a stack of sense.

All the women in the coal camps are sitting with bowed down heads,
Ragged and bare-footed, and the children cryin' for bread.

No food, no clothes for our children, I'm sure this head don't lie;
If we can't get more for our labor we'll starve to death and die!

Don't go under the mountain, with a slate hangin' o'er your head;
And work for just coal oil and carbide, and your children cryin' for bread.

This mining town I live in is a sad and lonely place
Where pity and starvation is pictured on every face!

Some coal operators might tell you the hungry blues are not there.
They're the worst kind of blues this poor woman ever had.