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 Hole River navigating up the Big Hole River, but chose the slower-flowing Beaverhead River instead. Trappers from both the Hudson's Bay Company, the North West Company and the American Fur Company exploited the region from about 1810 to the 1840s. Miners and homesteaders settled the area between 1864 and the early 1900s. In 1877 the U.S. troops under John Gibbon fought the Nez Percé Indians along the Big Hole River, during the Nez Perce War in the Battle of the Big Hole. The site of the battle along the North fork of the Big Hole is preserved as the Big Hole National