Hello Banjoists,
Cherry River Line has been one of my favorite tunes for a long time & I just spent 6 months recording a traditional/original version for my new cd, Blue Sky Banjo & since its not easy to come up with a tune that hasn't already appeared in TOTW--I'll start it out here & invite folks who are more historically oriented than I to discuss the two radically divergent versions of Cherry River Line that seem to have evolved.
I remember first hearing this tune about 25 years ago when Mary & Lo Gordon recorded it with their two boys, Matt & Tim Gardner on a cassette tape. It was very pretty, but I did not learn it & not sure where they did--although I know they had quite a bit of contact with Dwight Diller our of West Virginia at that time.
The next time I became aware of this tune was when Tim Gardner (he's now a grown man & awesome fiddler, banjoist, guitarist & builds awesome old time banjos --Cedar Mountain Banjos) recorded it with a friend on his cd --and here's a link to where you can hear it.
http://www.reverbnation.com/timgardner
Then I took a ballad course with Sarah Grey & she played it and sang it on the banjo more like this & her words, like the ones I had heard before--were words of lost love of a railroad man who worked the Cherry River Line in WVA.
Here's a link to her version.
While I was looking up versions on Youtube for this TOTW--I found that Lester McCumbers--a fiddler over 90 years old is playing a totally different Cherry River Line in fiddle contests & most of the other Youtubes I found were of folks picking his instrumental version. IMHO--his version sounds very much like Rueben or Cold Rain & Snow or even an early version of Train 45--take a listen & see what you think :)
As you can imagine-- as with most of the older traditional tunes, there are many, many verses to this song--and they tell a very scattered story--some about lost love, the mountains, the railroad men & miners.
I really liked the verses about lost love and railroad men & miners--so I visited the copper mine museum in Copperhill/Ducktown & just studied the faces of the miners--they had group pix--from the 1890-through the early 1900s. Most of them appeared to be young poor immigrants from middle Europe--with brown eyes and dark hair--and their eyes spoke yearning & hope--at least in the pix. Realistically--they were probably mostly dead in the next few years from mining accidents and copper poisoning--& I doubt any of them would have been able to afford a wife or girlfriend of their dreams--but it made me ponder how a young miner or railroad man must feel.
So I started out with this traditional verse. "He told that little girl, do the best you can, I'll get me anothe woman, you can find you another man. "
And I wrote a newer version, but tried to capture the feeling of the original with the miners of Copperhill & Ducktown as well as the Cherry River Line railroad men .
At first--I played it with clawhammer guitar & it sounded like this :)
For the Blue Sky Banjo recording--it has been shortened a bit & I play banjo instead of guitar--but it still is in the tradition of the Tim Gardner & Sarah Grey versions. Hope this helps :) Best wishes always, Mary Z Cox