Death in the mines, more thoughts on the Trimdon Grange explosion - and the Unthanks' excellence
June 09, 2023
Back when hacking was an adjective for a certain kind of cough and phone-tapping was something only spies did, Mike Amos got me my first job as a journalist and taught me how to be a reporter. It is no exaggeration to say that I owe him my career.
Fifty-odd years on, neither of us works as an actual employee of that slowly disappearing species, the newspaper. But we both plod on in our different ways. Mike, as brilliant a journalist as the North East of England has produced (and with awards to prove it) is an indefatigable blogger about all matters, but especially sport-related matters of regional interest.
His site, Grass Routes, is updated daily, in itself a formidable feat, and is so well-written and interesting that its large body of readers cheerfully overlook a striking quota of typos.
Here, at https://mikeamosblog.wordpress.com/, some thoughts of mine about songs dealing with mining disasters and in particular the Durham "ptman poet" Tommy Armstrong's heart-breaking lament for victims of the Trimdon Grange explosion in 1882, served as inspiration for today's main item. Thank for your kind words, Mike, reproduced now with your consent. My own view on who performs Tommy's great song best has been known to change a lot. I currently favour the Unthanks' exceptional version. Mike omitted in his blog posting to add another candidate worthy of consideration: Alan Price singing it a capella, No clip exists to my knowledge; Bill Taylor, a Bishop Auckland lad made good in Canada (and another of Mike's newspaper contemporaries) saw him bring the house down with it to end a show in New York ...
By Mike Amos
On the evening of January 29 2022, hours after his beloved Sunderland had lost 6-0 at Bolton in their fourth season in League One, my old friend Colin Randall posted on his Salut! Live folk music website that some would label it a disaster.
“It is nothing of the sort” Colin added. “Humiliating yes, or shambolic, unforgiveable and of far reaching consequence. Disaster is different, for example when scores of men and boys go to work and don’t come home.”
He was talking, as was yesterday’s blog, of the Trimdon Grange explosion in February 1882 in which 74 were killed.
The blog had opened with the words of The Trimdon Grange Explosion, a song written by Tommy Armstrong – known widely as the Pitman Poet – and performed in Trimdon Mechanics Hall a few days later to raise a few pounds for the widows and orphans.
Colin – raised in Shildon, eminent journalist, greatly knowledgable folk music man – recalled on Salut! other songs about mining disasters like Big Bad John (Jimmy Dean), New York Mining Disaster 1941 (the Bee Gees) and Woody Guthrie singing The Dying Miner.
He might also have mentioned the song beginning “In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, deep in the heart of the Cumberland mine”, sung hauntingly by Peter Paul and Mary (and, particularly, by Mary Travers with whom I was sacklessly smitten.)
Colin supposes Trimdon Grange Explosion to be the best of all and the finest of many recorded versions to be by the Unthanks (pictured above), improbably but effectively accompanied by the Brighouse and Rastrick brass band.
Salut! Live offered links to that one and to versions by Alan Price and by the Mekons (who when last encountered were at war with Dan Dare.)
Men and boys set out that morning
For to earn their daily bread
Never thinking that by the evening
They’d be numbered with the dead
Rachel and Becky Unthank are sisters, born seven years apart, from Ryton, west of Gateshead, known until 2009 as Rachel and the Winterset. Their father sings with a band called the Keelers, their mother in a folk choir.
So if today’s blog is even later than usual, it’s because I’ve been playing over and over again The Unthanks singing about the explosion there has been at Trimdon Grange.
Like Salut! Live it’s greatly to be recommended – and proof that events in Bolton on January 29 2022 really weren’t that bad after all, Sunderland finished fifth and were promoted via the play-offs.
*Tommy Armstrong (1848-1920) was born in Shotley Bridge, near Consett – as was former England cricketer Paul Collingwood, though a recent blog supposed his birthplace to have been Sacriston.
He was married with 14 children, spent much of his working life at pits in the Stanley area but also, rather inexplicably, had a spell running a paper shop in Whitley Bay.
“Me aad songs have kept me in beer” he once, honestly, observed.
Many were about current events – like the Consett Choir Calamity, about a charbanc crash which in 1911 killed 11 choir members on their way to a concert – many more appeared to be about workmen’s club outings.
Many were memorably humorous, like the Ghost That Haunted Bunty. There was even a song about Tantobie Wednesday Football Team.
Save for the Trimdon Grange Explosion, the most memorable of all may have been Wor Nanny’s a Mazer, about missing a train at Rowlands Gill. I sing it, quite wonderfully, on request.
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