Big River (Jimmy Nail song) Big River (Jimmy Nail song) "Big River" is a song written and performed by Jimmy Nail and released on the album "Big River". It was released as a single in 1995. In 2011, it was recorded by Joe McElderry for the DVD, "Big River Big Songs: The Tyne". McElderry also performed it for "Sunday for Sammy" in 2012. The big river referred to in the title is the River Tyne that runs through Nail's home town, Newcastle upon Tyne. The song is an elegy to the days when shipbuilding and industry in general were at their height in Newcastle and
Big Sandy River (Ohio River tributary) Sandy" was in use no later than February, 1789. The tombstone of David White, an early settler along the river in Kentucky, marks his passing in 1817 with the note that he lived many years near the Mouth of the Big Sandy. Two well-known fiddle tunes take their name from the Big Sandy River: "Sandy River Belle" and the "Big Sandy River". Loretta Lynn's "Van Lear Rose" and Dwight Yoakam's "Bury Me" also mention the river. On October 11, 2000, the Martin County sludge spill polluted hundreds of miles of the Ohio River, the Big Sandy River and its tributaries.