{"id":4395,"date":"2020-02-28T12:39:57","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T17:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4395"},"modified":"2020-02-28T14:51:49","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T19:51:49","slug":"mary-hott-on-the-devil-in-the-hills-of-west-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4395","title":{"rendered":"Mary Hott on the Devil in the Hills of West Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In 2013, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wvpublic.org\/post\/ghostly-stories-whipple-company-store#stream\/0\">West Virginia Public Radio ran a report<\/a>, part of a series on spooky places around the state, about the Whipple Company Store in Scarbro, West Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"This Week in Morgan County - Mary Hott, Singer Songwriter, her new album\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/avTsinL2W48?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe spooky stories go beyond typical ghost tales and towards a horror that bleeds into reality,\u201d reporter Catherine Moore told her listeners. \u201cThe stories that point to forced sexual servitude on the part of women who lived in the coal camps around Whipple. Esau scrip was allegedly issued to women whose husbands were out of work \u2013 a kind of loan in which the women\u2019s very bodies were the collateral. We also heard about a room in the store where women were supposedly forced to trade sexual favors for new pairs of shoes. Some historians are skeptical, citing, among other concerns, a lack of written documentation. Others say these stories have been buried, but are far from dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Singer and songwriter Mary Hott of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia was listening to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI heard the radio report on the Whipple Company Store,\u201d Hott told <em>This Week in Morgan County.<\/em> \u201cPeople were telling stories \u2013 rape, torture by mine guards, to keep control, to keep the miners and their families under control, to keep out unions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\tUntil hearing that report, Hott had never heard of the Whipple Company Store. She decided to look into it more. She read books and articles, watched movies about the coal fields \u2013 including the award winning Matewan. And then she decided she wanted to write songs and put out an album about it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The working title of the album \u2013 <em>Devil in the Hills.<\/em> It will be out later this spring. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reverbnation.com\/maryhott\">(MaryHott.com)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cState historians were saying \u2013 we can\u2019t prove this was true,\u201d Hott said. \u201cBut we know how victims respond \u2013 they don\u2019t talk out of fear. That is what inspired me to write songs about it. People had been writing books. I thought \u2013 if we set it to music, maybe more people would hear the stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who is the devil in the hills?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur unwillingness to acknowledge what has been done\u201d to the miners and their families, Hott said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are eleven tracks on the album \u2013 including seven original songs, one spoken word, and a couple of gospel oriented songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How did you get the album made?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI was reading and reading. The more I read the more I found other stories to read. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VCIoiHf_Lt4\">movie Matewan.<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/americanexperience\/films\/theminewars\/\">A documentary on the mine wars.<\/a> I finally got to the point where I had the songs \u2013 words and a melody. Then it came to the point \u2013 now I have to record this. I hadn\u2019t thought much about putting a band together, but in the previous year I had started working with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wvmusichalloffame.com\/\">West Virginia Music Hall of Fame<\/a> and got to know <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carpenterants.wvmusichalloffame.com\/\">The Carpenter Ants.<\/a> I approached Michael Lipton about recording the album. He said \u2013 absolutely and \u2013 let\u2019s get our producer in \u2013 Don Dixon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI went down to Charleston a couple of times to record it. Michael Lipton has music credit on the album. Once they started playing on the album it became a richer sound.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;One song is called Annabelle Lee \u2013 a song about human trafficking in the coal fields. It&#8217;s a story out of northern West Virginia, about how company agents would come up to some of these towns and rent young girls between the age of 12 and 18. Their parents would send them because it was a way for the family to survive. They would say \u2013 we did it to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2013, West Virginia Public Radio ran a report, part of a series on spooky places around the state, about the Whipple Company Store in Scarbro, West Virginia. \u201cThe spooky stories go beyond typical ghost tales and towards a horror &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4395\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4395"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4402,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4395\/revisions\/4402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}