EXCERPTS:

“My grandfather was a coal miner for over 50 years in Coaldale on the other side of Tamaqua. So, I’ll be doing some songs about him and about different experiences here in the Coal Region too. But we’ll start off with some folklore,” Smar said.

Smar is a native of Coaldale. He’s the son of the late Joseph and Josephine Krajcovich Smar. He said his grandfather, John Krajcovich, was from Coaldale.

He graduated from Panther Valley High School in 1972.

“I remember I was in the hospital in Coaldale. We had a poor family and we could only have one gift for Christmas. I wanted a train set and I wanted a drum as well, but since I was almost dying, my parents got me both. But when The Beatles came over, I switched to guitar. I loved all of their songs. They were very big to me,” Smar said.

FULL ARTICLE:

MAHANOY CITY — At the former Merchants Banking Trust Co. building Saturday morning, folk musician Jay Smar, Landingville, sang about the people who struggled to make a living by working in the anthracite mines.

“Good morning everyone. This program is called ‘Folklore and Coal Mining Songs of the Northeast.’ Every time I do a program in the Coal Region, I feel like I’m preaching to the choir. You folks might know more than I do about this particular subject,” Smar, 62, said before a crowd of 20.

“My grandfather was a coal miner for over 50 years in Coaldale on the other side of Tamaqua. So, I’ll be doing some songs about him and about different experiences here in the Coal Region too. But we’ll start off with some folklore,” Smar said.

Then he strummed his Martin six-string guitar and sang “The Battle of Glen Onoko.”

Recently, the Mahanoy Area Historical Society announced it would host special events at the bank building at 28 E. Centre St., which is owned by the borough. And the society is calling the venue its “Museum Annex.” Saturday’s event was made possible by grant funding the society received from PA Council on the Arts, according to Peg Grigalonis, historical society president.

After Smar performed his second song, “There’s Coal in Summit Hill,” Kathy Wufsus, Park Place, stepped outside, pulled out her cellphone and called a friend.

“You have to hear him play guitar,” she said, praising the performer.

Smar is a native of Coaldale. He’s the son of the late Joseph and Josephine Krajcovich Smar. He said his grandfather, John Krajcovich, was from Coaldale.

Smar played drums for five years when he was a boy. But when he was 13, around the time he said he had to endure an appendectomy, he developed an interest in string instruments.

“I remember I was in the hospital in Coaldale. We had a poor family and we could only have one gift for Christmas. I wanted a train set and I wanted a drum as well, but since I was almost dying, my parents got me both. But when The Beatles came over, I switched to guitar. I loved all of their songs. They were very big to me,” Smar said.

He graduated from Panther Valley High School in 1972. He studied at Penn State in Hazleton for a year, but left after a year to pursue music on his own.

“I had to take different jobs. I was a truck driver. And I wound up being a tree surgeon for Jaflo Tree Service out of Allentown,” he said.

He said he’s a self-taught musician for the most part. But he studied music theory with jazz musicians including C. Carl Trollinger, Slatington, and Ken Gehret, Reading.

“I’ve been playing solo since I was, like, 17,” he said.

He enjoyed playing folk music and songs made popular by James Taylor and Neil Young.

When he was 23, he played with The Classics IV, a band that formed in Florida in 1965, and is known internationally for the songs “Spooky,” “Stormy” and “Traces.”

“I toured with them for two years, from 1976 to 1978. We toured mostly in southern Canada and the east and west coast. We were out for nine months at one time,” Smar said.

Over the years, he learned to play numerous instruments, including claw-hammer banjo, fiddle and harmonica. And he flat-foots, which is similar to clog dancing.

He developed an interest in the folk music of the Anthracite Coal Region in the 1980s.

“It was in Jim Thorpe at Glen Onoko. I was hiking up to the waterfalls. Somebody told me there was a story about the waterfall. As a matter of fact, I’ll be starting off with that today. I dug up that story at the Dimmick Memorial Library in Jim Thorpe and I wrote about it,” Smar said.

In 1987, he released his first album, “The Battle of Glen Onoko.”

“One day I was down in Harrisburg and I met an elderly gentleman there. He started talking to me. He said he could hear my Coal Region accent. I told him I did folk music and I wrote some songs about the region and he said ‘Did you ever hear of George Korson?’ And I said ‘no.’ And that’s how I was introduced to George Korson,” Smar said Saturday.

George Gershon Korson was a journalist and historian who resided in Pottsville in the mid-20th century.

Smar had one of Korson’s books on display Saturday, “Minstrels of the Mine Patch, Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry.”

“He had this infatuation with coal mining and he couldn’t find any songs about it. So he got a tape recorder and went around our region and recorded coal miners,” Smar said.

Smar said his 2009 CD “Heritage & Coal Mining Songs of Northeast Pennsylvania” was an effort to rekindle interest in Korson’s work.

To date, Smar has produced eight CDs.

“I just released one in March called ‘Giving Back, A Tribute to My Peers.’ Now, I’m 62 years old, and I just felt it was time to start paying homage to the artists that I admired, like Doc Watson and Leo Kottke. They really influenced my style of playing,” Smar said.

Looking ahead, he’s planning to tour Scotland and the U.K. in 2017.

For more information on Smar’s work, visit his website, www.jaysmar.com.

Source: https://www.republicanherald.com/news/coaldale-native-brings-stories-songs-to-teen-canteen-1.2101729