Several talented performers and composers come to mind when I think about coal mining and music. Two famous musicians who sprung from coal mining roots were the brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, whose father Thomas Dorsey, Sr. was an anthracite coal miner. Family legend claims that Thomas Sr. taught himself to play the coronet, and he eventually became so skillful that he traveled for awhile with a circus band. Later, after he married and settled down as a miner, he began to coach coal miners' bands, at one time working with as many as eight different groups. In 1902, during a strike, he took a miners' band to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and gave concerts there.
A 1954 article about the Dorsey brothers titled "Our Coal Miner Father Made Us Famous" claimed that "if it hadn't been for a music-mad miner named Thomas Dorsey, Sr., there'd be no Dorsey Brothers' band to make music history."
The brothers claimed that their father began preparing them for musical careers while they were babies; then, when they were old enough, he bought them instruments and ordered them to learn to play. The Dorsey children, Tommy, Jimmy, and Mary, along with their father, formed what was described as a "regular music act" that was in great demand.
When they were older, the brothers became interested in jazz, and during the 1920s they became famous jazz musicians. Their father helped them form a band of their own, named Dorsey's Wild Canaries, which broke up in 1922. In 1934, they formed the Dorsey Brothers' Orchestra, but soon after, the brothers quarreled and split up. They were reunited, finally, in 1953, after nineteen years.
Two other musicians who come to mind are Merle Travis and Tennessee Ernie Ford. Travis, the son of a Kentucky coal miner, wrote the words and music to the old familiar song, "Sixteen Tons," and Ford, who hailed from Bristol, Tennessee, recorded the version that sent the song to the top of the charts.
In December 1955, the United Mine Workers Journal claimed that "Sixteen Tons" was the most popular song in America. Shortly after the song's debut, more than a million copies of Ford's recording and 110,000 copies of the sheet music were sold in three weeks, both new sales records.
