“Last Train from Poor Valley” was written by Norman Blake and first recorded by the Seldom Scene on their 1973 Rebel album Act 2; Blake recorded his own version the following year. The title’s “Poor Valley” refers to the mountain community above Bristol, Virginia — the Carter Family’s home country — and the song’s broader subject is the Appalachian coal-mining decline of the late 20th century.
The lyric tracks a coal-mining family pushed out by mine closures: the husband heading out on the last train to look for work, leaving his wife and children behind, the small farm and the family church both already gone. The song was used in Barbara Kopple’s 1976 documentary Harlan County, USA — the chronicle of the 1973 Brookside coal-miners’ strike — which gave it a wider profile beyond the bluegrass and folk audiences that had carried it through the mid-1970s.
The recording most contemporary bluegrass listeners know is Norman Blake and Tony Rice’s reading on their 1987 Rounder duo album Blake & Rice, the version associated with this entry. Their flatpicked-and-vocal arrangement, taken at a slow tempo with the lyric’s grief carried plainly, is the version most younger pickers reference. It works as a slow vocal feature in any acoustic set looking for a coal-mining or labour text, and the harmony slot opens on the chorus refrain.