Modern Times cover

Modern Times

The New Lost City Ramblers

Album · 1968 · Folkways FTS 31027

Modern Times was released by Folkways Records in 1968 (Folkways Stereo FTS 31027), with notes by John Cohen, Mike Seeger and Tracy Schwarz, the three Ramblers on the record. Cohen’s essay says it might have been subtitled “Rural Songs from an Industrial Society.” Its subject is the movement of Southern mountaineers and farmers into the coal mines and weaving mills in the first half of the twentieth century, a period that also saw the automobile replace the horse and wagon and the diesel replace the steam locomotive.

The notes name country recordings of the 1920s and 1930s as the group’s “research base,” and all but one of the eighteen songs come from commercial recordings. Uncle Dave Macon is represented by “We Are Up Against It Now” and “From Earth to Heaven,” the Carolina Tar Heels by “Got the Farm Land Blues,” the Dixon Brothers by “Weaver’s Life,” and David McCarn by “Take Them for a Ride.” Later material is mixed in: Terry Fell’s “Truck Driving Man” from the 1950s and Roger Miller’s “Private John Q.” from 1965. “That Little Lump of Coal” is the one song not taken from a commercial record; it came from the United Mine Workers Journal by way of the Library of Congress archives.

The album opens with “Shut Up in the Mines of Coal Creek,” sung by Tracy Schwarz without accompaniment. The notes tell of the explosion in the Fraterville Mine in Tennessee on 19 May 1902, which killed between 180 and 200 men and boys, and of the messages the trapped miners left behind, from which the verses of the ballad were made. Cohen closes his essay by suggesting that the country “news” songs on the country charts of the day, such as “Detroit City,” may be the real continuation of the older folk song tradition.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Shut Up in the Mines of Coal Creek alt version 2:53
  2. 2 '31 Depression Blues 3:17
  3. 3 That Little Lump of Coal 3:20
  4. 4 Union Man 2:42
  5. 5 Got the Farm Land Blues 3:11
  6. 6 We Are up Against It Now 2:44
  7. 7 From Earth to Heaven 2:47
  8. 8 Henry Ford's Model A 2:06
  9. 9 Truck Drivin’ Man alt version 2:34
  10. 10 Dollar Down and a Dollar a Week 1:58
  11. 11 Dear Okie 2:18
  12. 12 From 40 to 65 2:55
  13. 13 Private John Q. 2:06
  14. 14 Weaver's Life 3:08
  15. 15 The Death of Ellenton 2:14
  16. 16 Take Them for a Ride 2:53
  17. 17 Timetable Blues 2:47
  18. 18 Bye, Bye Black Smoke Choo Choo 2:56

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