Swannanoa Tunnel: About the Song

When the hammer crews were working, they often sang hammer songs, a subcategory of work songs. As the timing of the hammer man, or men, and shaker was critical for safety and efficiency, hammer songs provided a steady rhythm by which to work. Lyrics, often improvised, commented on working conditions, struggles, strength, and resistance. The steel-driving man John Henry is referenced in many hammer songs, including “Swannanoa Tunnel.” Henry, a convict laborer who worked himself to death, served as a hero and cautionary tale.

Will “Shorty” Love’s version of “Swannanoa Tunnel,” recorded as “Asheville Junction” for Duke University folklorist Frank C. Brown in 1939, perhaps most closely resembles the original hammer song. Love, an African American employee at Duke, sang unaccompanied while pounding a table to mimic hammer strikes.

Audio recording courtesy of Duke University archives

WNCR’s convict laborers were permitted time for rest and recreation on Saturday nights and Sundays. They often sang and played music on the fiddle, banjo, or guitar during these times.  On occasion, visitors from the community came by to hear their songs. When these visitors heard “Swannanoa Tunnel,” some learned to sing and play it, and the song began to travel.

Folk song collector Cecil Sharp published a version of “Swannanoa Tunnel” in his 1917 book English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Sharp was an Englishman who believed that songs from English culture had been preserved in the Appalachian Mountains untainted by outside influences. He collected “Swannanoa Tunnel” from the singing of two White women who lived a few miles west of the tunnel. Perhaps misunderstanding the words they sang, he documented and published it as “Swannanoa Town, O” and claimed it as English in origin. This title and lyric persisted in later published and recorded versions.

Artus Moser was born in 1894 and grew up in Western North Carolina. He collected hundreds of folk songs in this region, which he contributed to the Library of Congress. In 1955, he recorded a version of “Swannanoa Tunnel” as “Swannanoa Town” for his Folkways album North Carolina Ballads. The liner notes for the album indicate that Black prison laborers sang the song and that “until recently, many people in the vicinity of Swannanoa knew this song.” He contests the notion that Sharp misheard “tunnel” as “town-o” and theorizes that “the people in the area, proud of the song and the things it helped to accomplish, adapted it to their own devices when it no longer served as a work song.”

Artus Moser "Swannanoa Town" (1955)

Bascom Lamar Lunsford, born in Mars Hill in 1882, is probably most responsible for the enduring popularity of “Swannanoa Tunnel.” Lunsford was a lawyer, folklorist, and performer whose mission was “spreading the gospel of folk music,” especially from his region. He collected and memorized hundreds of folk songs and ballads that he could perform at will – his so-called “memory collection.” Lunsford learned “Swannanoa Tunnel” from a White banjo player named Fletcher Rymer. It became one of his signature songs. He recorded it multiple times and established it as a representative song from the region.

Lunsford’s book 30 and 1 Folk Songs from the Southern Mountains lists “Swannanoa Tunnel” as “an old labor song” sung by “section hands” who built the tunnel, making no mention of African Americans or convict labor. One of the printed verses appears to shift the song’s perspective from that of a worker to that of a prison guard overseeing the laborers – “When you hear my pistol firin’, ‘nother n----- dead, baby, ‘nother n----- dead.” Lunsford sings this verse on his 1935 recording for the Department of English at Columbia University. Lunsford tells Columbia that the song “possibly was brought to that great section by the construction men, Negroes, who worked in the construction of the great Swannanoa Tunnel. Then it has been influenced a great deal by mountain sentiment. Often in that section, where music has been brought in, then the mountaineer works it over and uses it to his own taste.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s 1935 Columbia University recording with spoken narrative

Lunsford’s subsequent recordings in the 1940s omit the “pistol” verse. In his liner notes about the song on the Smoky Mt. Ballads album, released by Folkways Records in 1953, he doesn’t mention African Americans or convicts as the “construction work hands” who “brought it to that section.” He restates and reinforces Sharpe’s claim that “it is a variant of an old English song.”

Bascom Lamar Lunsford "Swannanoa Tunnel" (1953)

During the 1960s, several folk music revival performers recorded versions of “Swannanoa Tunnel.” Through performance context and variations in lyrics, these tend to obscure further the song’s origins as an African American work song. Paul Clayton, a musician, and scholar who earned a master’s degree in folklore from the University of Virginia, recorded a version similar to Lunsford’s for his 1962 Folkways album Dulcimer Songs and Solos Sung and Played by Paul Clayton on the Southern Mountain Dulcimer.

Paul Clayton "Swannanoa Tunnel" (1962)

Erik Darling, who recorded and performed both as a solo artist and with The Rooftop Singers, released a version of “Swannanoa Tunnel” on his first solo album in 1958. He learned the song from fellow folk music revivalists in New York City. His version includes the stanza, “If I could gamble like Tom Dooley, I’d leave my home, honey, I’d leave my home.”

Erik Darling "Swannanoa Tunnel" (1958)

Bryan Sutton recorded a bluegrass version of “Swannanoa Tunnel” for his 2014 album Into My Own. His new opening stanza adds context to the song without mentioning African American convict laborers. “Train’s gotta run from Rowan County, the land’s run dry, baby, the land’s run dry. And how you gonna get that line over the mountain? Gonna dig right through, baby, gonna dig right through.”

Bryan Sutton "Swannanoa Tunnel" (2014)

Live performance videos by Sutton, and others by folk musician Willie Watson, can be found on YouTube. While the singers’ spoken introductions give the song some context, they do not mention the African American convict laborers who sacrificed their lives to blast the tunnel. Perhaps this article, the RAIL Project, and the sources listed in Further Reading will help bring daylight to the story of the men whose work brought daylight to Buncombe County through the Swannanoa Tunnel.