Dreary Black Hills, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer arrives in the Black Hills to find "loafers and bummers" filling the streets of Cheyenne -- but there is no gold to be found. He misses his home, and warns others against going there; all they are doing is making the railroad speculators rich
AUTHOR: unknown (see NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1876 (broadaide); c.1885 (see the comment on the ADDITIONAL Wehman reference); 1909 (Belden-BalladsSongsCollectedByMissourFolkloreSociety)
KEYWORDS: gold hardtimes railroading
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1875 - Announcement that gold has been found in the Black Hills
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW,NE,Ro,So)
REFERENCES (18 citations):
Belden-BalladsSongsCollectedByMissourFolkloreSociety, pp. 249-350, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text plus mention of 1 more)
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, pp. 116-117, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders/Ballard/Brown/Barry-NewGreenMountainSongster, pp. 108-109, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 179-180, "The Black Hills" (1 text)
Sandburg-TheAmericanSongbag, pp. 264-265, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 176, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax/Lomax-AmericanBalladsAndFolkSongs, pp. 438-440, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fife/Fife-CowboyAndWesternSongs 24, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
Pound-AmericanBalladsAndSongs, 87, pp. 185-186, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text)
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, pp. 9-10, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text)
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah, #161, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text plus a fragment, 1 tune)
Larkin-SingingCowboy, pp. 95-97, "Dreary Black Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 122-123, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, pp. 480-481 "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text plus a broadside print)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 59, "The Dreary Black Hills" (1 text)
cf. Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan, p. 478, "The Dreary Black Hills" (source notes only)
DT, DREARBLK*
ADDITIONAL: Wehman's [Universal Songster] Collection of 96 Songs No. 6 (New York, n.d., digitized by Internet Archive), p. 26, "The Black Hills" [see notes re source]
Roud #3604
RECORDINGS:
Bill Bender (The Happy Cowboy), "Dreary Black Hills" (Varsity 5150, n.d.; rec. 1939)
Harry Stephens, "The Dreary Black Hills" (AFS, 1940s; on LC28)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Captain Old Blue" (tune)
SAME TUNE:
Captain Old Blue (File: PrivCOBl)
NOTES [155 words]: What seems to be the earliest printing of this, a broadside published by Bell & Co. of San Francisco and dated c. 1876 by Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, is entitled "The Dreary Black Hills As Sung by Dick Brown" (who seems to have performed as "Deadwood Dick"). On this basis Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, and some others, attribute it to Brown. Which is possible, but no more.
Regarding Wehman's Collection Norm Cohen writes, "Songbook #6 was undated, but most likely 1884-5." Each page except the first is headed Wehman's Universal Songster. The first page is undated but states, "Published Quarterly -- January, April, July and October. Norm Cohen's Finding List... has WE29, Universal Songster as "monthly serial ... [beginning] 1881 (Norm Cohen, A Finding List of American Secular Songsters Published Between 1860 and 1899 (Middle Tennessee State University,Murfreesboro,2002), p. 150). - BS
Last updated in version 6.6
File: San264

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