By Sam Parker, AV & Technology Specialist at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum.
A genre like country music relies heavily on the land and our natural surroundings for inspiration. Most country, bluegrass, and old-time music artists have written about the beauty and simplicity of rural life in some form, but a few go even further. Many artists have used their music to inspire change and speak out about environmental issues. Since today is Earth Day, we want to highlight a few of these environmentalist artists and the causes they sang for.
A number of songs distinctly focus on the growing effects of pollution, human interference in ecosystems, and unsustainable development. In the decades since the 1927 Bristol Sessions, more and more artists have taken a stance on environmental issues and spoken out about being better custodians of the land.
Photo by Al Aumuller
From the Library of Congress
Woody Guthrie, one of folk music’s most famous artists, focused many of his early songs on the Dust Bowl. The hardships of the Great Depression were only compounded for farmers living in the American Great Plains as overuse of the land and improper farming methods led to the destruction of the topsoil. This, in turn, left the region susceptible to wind erosion, leading to winds kicking up massive dust storms that ravaged the plains for most of the 1930s. One of his most famous songs, “So Long, it’s been Good to Know Yuh,” originally titled “Dusty Old Dust,” focused on the Dust Bowl’s ravaging effects on the communities in Northern Texas. In one verse, he sings about how the local preacher invited the townspeople to pray for their salvation, but as the black dust storm blocks out all light and he can’t read his Bible, he tells the congregation, “So long, it’s been good to know yuh.”
Photo by Sloan
From the United States Department of Agriculture
Jean Ritchie, known for collecting British and Irish folk songs as well as the many songs she wrote and recorded with the Appalachian dulcimer, did not stay silent on the growing dangers of pollution and overdevelopment. Primarily focusing on the effects of the mining industry in her native Kentucky, Ritchie wrote “Black Waters,” detailing the destruction of the natural environment due to unsustainable mining practices:
In the coming of springtime we planted our corn
In the ending of springtime we buried our son
In the summer come a nice man saying everything’s fine
My employer just requires a way to his mine
Then they tore down my mountain and covered my corn
Now the grave on the hillside’s a mile deeper down
And the man stands a talking with his hat in his hand
While the poison black waters rise over my land
One of the more famous environmental songs Ritchie recorded is“Now Is the Cool of the Day,” a hymn urging people to be better custodians of the Earth and treat each other with respect. While both songs have powerful messages set to beautiful music, “Now Is the Cool of the Day” became the unofficial song of those opposing mountaintop removal mining. Ritchie even allowed the song to be used by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a working-class organization focusing on limiting strip-mining and mountaintop removal mining in the area, along with a myriad of other progressive causes.
Photo by George Pickow
From the American Folklife Center George Pickow and Jean Ritchie Collection
John Prine, whose family came from Kentucky coal country, grew up in the Chicago suburbs and in the summer visited his parents’ aptly named hometown of Paradise in Muhlenberg County. While some mining operations had existed in the county since the early 19th century, it wasn’t until the 1960s that heavy coal mining operations began as they discovered multiple shallow coal seams, which lead to large coal companies buying up swaths of land for high-intensity mining operations. What little environmental protections followed in the 60s were very loosely enforced as the mining caused soil erosion and pollution of the county’s groundwater. The Tennessee Valley Authority opened a coal-fired power plant in Paradise around the same time. Pollution from its smokestacks became so bad that locals would hang their laundry out to dry, only to return to find their clothing and linens turned gray from the ash. Shortly after, Paradise became a ghost town. The last three families were told by TVA that they had to leave the town by December 30, 1967, so that they could expand their coal plant enough to make it the largest in the world at the time.
Prine wrote “Paradise” about the destruction of his parents’ home, not only the community but the natural landscape as well.
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
And Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
Photo by Matt Ludin
From the United States National Park Service
The year after “Paradise” came out, coal output in Muhlenberg peaked at 26 million tons, but Prine’s song quickly raised awareness of the destruction in Muhlenberg County. By 1991, two decades after the song’s release, coal production in the county dropped to 5 million tons, and the lush green landscape had begun to return to Muhlenberg. Today, the three coal-firing units at the Paradise power plant have been shut down and demolished, and have been replaced with cleaner natural-gas units, along with plans to install a solar farm. However, the only part of Paradise that remains is a lone cemetery near the plant site.
C.W. McCall, most famous for his hit “Convoy,” also advocated for environmentalist causes through his music. In his 1976 album Wilderness, he features the song “There Won’t Be No Country Music,” in which the singer warns that time is running out before the last bits of nature are overcome by human greed. Every verse, the time left shrinks, with the consequences of inaction becoming more and more dire:
Yeah, it’s only gonna take about a minute or so
‘Til the factories blot the sun out
You gonna have to turn your lights on just to see
And them lights are gonna be neon, sayin’
“Fly Our Jets To Paradise”
And the whole damn world is gonna be made of styrene
“There Won’t Be No Country Music” features the usual driving rhythm and supporting chorus that fans of McCall will be familiar with, though with a more grim message, warning listeners that “When they take away our country, they’ll take away our soul.”
These are just a few of the songs written by a handful of artists within the broad country genre about environmental issues, and there are so many more! Such as John Denver, who recorded songs about conservation and treating the Earth better, and even Alabama recorded “Pass It On Down,” again calling on people to be more mindful of the environment and take responsibility for its conservation. All of these artists understood that if we don’t take care of the land now, nurture and protect it, then one day it might not be around to inspire music.
