Me Johnny Mitchell Man

DESCRIPTION: A miner's song in "Slavic" dialect, telling how the immigrant has been working in the mines, in bad conditions, for many years. When "Me Johnny Mitchell man" calls a strike, the singer will welcome it
AUTHOR: Con Carbon
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch)
KEYWORDS: emigration mining strike labor-movement
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1899 - John Mitchell becomes President of the United Mine Workers of America. He devoted much of his energy to soothing tensions between Slavs and longer-settled workers so that the UMW could effectively strike against the mine owners
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch, pp. 234-236, "Me Johnny Mitchell Man" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Korson-PennsylvaniaSongsAndLegends, pp. 394-396, "Me Johnny Mitchel Man" (1 text, 1 tune)
Botkin-TreasuryOfAmericanFolklore, pp. 865-867, "Me Johnny Mitchell Man" (1 text, 1 tune)
Foner-AmericanLaborSongsOfTheNineteenthCentury, p. 211, "Me Johnny Mitchell Man" (1 text)
Roud #4757
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "On Johnny Mitchell's Train" (character of John Mitchell)
NOTES [68 words]: For other songs by Con Carbon, see:
- When the Black Diamond Breaker Was Burned to the Ground
- Mackin's Patch
- (possibly) When Jim Gets to Klondike
- (possibly) A Hungarian Christening
He wrote quite a few others which cannot be shown to have entered tradition.
There is a capsule biography of him on pp. 289-291 of Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch. He is said to have been born in 1871 and died in 1907. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: BAF865

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography