“Swannanoa Tunnel,” also known as “Asheville Junction,” began in the late nineteenth century as a work song. It was sung by African American convicts, leased to the Western North Carolina Railroad, as they hammered and blasted a series of tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hundreds of those laborers died in the construction.
The song keeps the rhythm of hammer work, its lines punctuated by the swing and fall of the tool. Its words carry the danger and exhaustion of the labor — the cold mountain, the falling rock, the refrain that someone has been hurt — in plain, unsparing terms.
The North Carolina folklorist and performer Bascom Lamar Lunsford learned the song locally and recorded it, doing much to keep it in circulation among old-time and bluegrass musicians. The version heard here is by Bryan Sutton.
