DAVE McCARN
Dave McCarn was a North Carolina textile worker, songwriter and guitarist whose brief recording career produced some of the most compelling portraits of working-class life in early country music. A mill hand from childhood, he wrote songs drawn directly from his own experiences during the Depression, combining humor, social commentary and memorable melodies. Although he recorded only eleven titles between 1930 and 1931, his songs—especially those about life in the cotton mills—became enduring classics of the Southern folk tradition.
COTTON MILL COLIC
Recorded May 19, 1930 – Memphis, Tennessee
Matrix 59944-2 - Victor V-40274
"Cotton Mill Colic" is Dave McCarn's best-known composition and one of the earliest country songs to address industrial labor from a worker's perspective. Written several years before it was recorded, it humorously but unsparingly describes the low wages, debt and grinding routine of Southern textile workers during the Depression. Sung with nothing more than McCarn's voice and guitar, the song quickly spread through mill communities and was later adopted into the folk revival, becoming a standard of American labor music.
