ballad singer, Mascot
National Heritage Fellowship award (1986)
Born in Kentucky, Nimrod Workman (1895-1994) spent most of his life as a coal miner in West Virginia before moving to East Tennessee, where he lived at the time of his heritage award. A strong a capella Appalachian singer, Workman sang both traditional mountain ballads and labor songs from his decades of union activism.
Media
- I Want to Go Where Things are Beautiful, Drag City DC 379 / 2&F#001 (CD/LP 2008)
- Masters of Traditional Arts, Documentary Arts (CD-Rom, 2002)
- Mother Jones’ Will, Rounder 0076 (LP 1978)
- Nimrod Workman: To Fit My Own Category, Appalshop, Anthony Slone and Scott Faulkner, directors (film 1975)
- Passing Thru the Garden, June Appal JA0001 (LP 1974)
More Information
- “Where Things Are Beautiful: Time Spent with Nimrod Workman,” Root Hog or Die, October 2008.
- “Nimrod Workman,” Folkstreams.net.
- Govenar, Alan, Masters of Traditional Arts: A Biographical Dictionary (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2001), pp. 689-91, 741.