I can't stay much longer, Melinda
The sun is getting high
I can't help you with your troubles
If you won't help with mine
I gotta get down
I gotta get down
Got to get down to the mine
You keep me up just one more night
I can't sleep here no more
Little Ben clock says quarter to eight
You kept me up till four
I gotta get down
I gotta get down
Or I can't work there no more
Lotta poor man make a five dollar bill
Keep him happy all the time
Some other fellow making nothing at all
And you can hear him cryin...
"Can I go buddy
Can I go down
Take your shift at the mine?"
Got to get down to the Cumberland mine
That's where I mainly spend my time
Make good money/five dollars a day
Made any more I might move away -
Lotta poor man got the Cumberland Blues
He can't win for losin
Lotta poor man got to walk the line
Just to pay his union dues
I don't know now
I just don't know
If I'm goin back again
I don't know now
I just don't know
If I'm goin back again
A fairly steady number in the repertoire between 1969 and 1974, it was absent for quite a while, reappearing in 1981, and played a few times a year ever since.
Covered by:
Used as the title of a musical based roughly on a number of Garcia/Hunter tunes, "Cumberland Blues," which debuted in San Jose in June, 1998.
Subject: an addition to your motifs and thematic index
Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 16:49:47 -0400
From: Melinda Belleville
Organization: University of KentuckyDavid:
I've been wanting to write you for some time to tell you how much I *love* your site. You (and everyone that has contributed) have put an incredible amount of work into this.
I'm just getting around to exploring some of the essays after tearing myself away from following some of the annotations to some of my favorite songs.
I'd like to contribute a small item to your names category. I don't know what your criteria is for listing items in your categories but you might include Melinda from Cumberland Blues.
I was always intrigued how Hunter came to use Melinda not only in CB but also in at least 2 other poems of his. I wondered if he had a long lost love or someone else in his past with the name.
When he first put up his web page and listed his e-mail address, I wrote to him to ask him about it. At that time he was still able to answer his mail and I was quite surprised to get a reply back from him. Alas, no lost love, just someone he knew in high school with that name. He said he always loved the name and thought it was one of the most euphonious(sp?) names he had ever heard. So that is how my name has come to be in a Grateful Dead song. A fact I'm quite proud of, not to mention, it is a song about a region of Kentucky and I'm from Kentucky!
Just thought I'd contribute a piece of information to your wonderful site.
Take care
Melinda******************************************************************* Melinda L. Belleville systems programmer/Tech1 Rm. 217 McVey Hall University of Kentucky JJG 606-257-2240 8/1/42-8/9/95 mailto:sysmel@pop.uky.edu *******************************************************************
Also in the Appalachians is the Cumberland Gap, a mountain pass, which is the title of a folk song.
There are eight Cumberland counties in the U.S., in Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Another song worth a look is "Those Old Cumberland Mountain Farm Blues". [via Digital Tradition.]
This note from a reader:
Subject: cumberland
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 10:35:28 -0400
Hi, I'm borrowing a friends computer, my email is thedrick@miworld.net. I live in Cumberland, Maryland. Cumberland is the home of the first national road the "cumberland road". The city was originally Fort Cumberland, and George Washington was stationed here in his younger days. Approximately nine miles from the city are several hundred coal mines, some of which continue to be mined today. Cumberland also has traditionally been a very pro-labor union area. Don't know if this is of interest as it relates to the Grateful Dead song, but thought I would share it.
thank you, a friend of the devil...
Jeff Hedrick
"The name given to the large bell in the Clock Tower (or St. Stephen's (!) Tower) at the Houses of Parliament. It weighs 13 1/2 tons, and is named after Sir Benjamin Hall, Chief Commissioner of Works in 1856, when it was cast."
"Peggy Seeger wrote this song after reading about the terrible mine disaster in Spring Hill, Nova Scotia, in the latter part of 1958. This was the world-famous tragedy in which a number of trapped miners were miraculously rescued after eight days of entombment." (--The Collected Sing Out Reprints, v 1-6, p. 202)