Working class anthems...

...inspired by the recurring joy I've been getting from remembering Stan Rogers' classic. The criteria here is not necessarily songs about working class life, but rather songs that get everyone singing when they are played at the bar.  If there is a gathering at a house, and the whisky's been flowing, these are the songs that most people know and everybody sings.

Now the immediate impulse is to go with another Stan Rogers, maybe "Barrett's Privateers" or "The Mary Ellen Carter" [1]. But the morbid, fatalistic lyrics of Dark as the Dungeon will get any good bar going [3]. It'll start off as a low hum, and when it is done will leave the bar empty of sound, as everyone stares into the drinks and remembers or imagines the loved ones dead on the job.

Now the only question is whether to go with Cash, Travis, or Ernie Ford. I think I'll go with Travis, which includes the often-skipped final stanza

The midnight, the morning, or the middle of day,
Is the same to the miner who labors away.
Where the demons of death often come by surprise,
One fall of the slate and you're buried alive.

[1] Don't think this is a working class anthem? Go to any bar in the Maritimes and many bars in the west or Ontario, put this one on the juke, and hear the slowly gathering crescendo [2].

[2] I recognize and disregard the redundancy.

[3] Eventually we'll bring these selections up to date a little; it's not just the old hands singing, but the young'uns as well.