Daw Henson | "Old Piney Mountain" (Cold Icy Mountain)
Added 2018-11-29 15:13:01 +0000 UTCI wanted to share this video with y'all now as I am about to film close-ups and a lesson/discussion on Cold Icy Mountain. I think this is a very early banjo song, perhaps going back to the 18th century when blacks and whites first traveled "over mountain" into Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. Variations of this song have been found all over southern Appalachia.
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Daw Henson sings and plays "Old Piney Mountain" on guitar outside of Manchester, Kentucky at Billy's Branch, 11 September 1937. Recorded by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax for the Library of Congress.
This song is closely related to George Gibson's "Cold Icy Mountain" and a relative of Frank Proffitt's "Going Across the Mountain" and "My Home's Across the Blue Ridge Mountain" recorded by the Carter Family, Tom Ashley and others. Fragments of the same piece are widely distributed throughout the southern Appalachians and still sung today; for example see Henry Grady Terrell's "Old John Henry Died on the Mountain" recorded by Art Rosenbaum at Athens, Georgia in 1981. Matt Kinman of Arizona is also noted for his striking rendition of "Cold Icy Mountain."
