On the Banks of the Old Ponchartrain On the Banks of the Old Ponchartrain On the Banks of the Old Ponchartrain is a song written by Hank Williams and Ramona Vincent. It was the singer's second single on MGM Records, released in September 1947. According to biographer Colin Escott, Ramona Vincent, a crippled woman, wrote the words of the song as a poem and sent it to Williams, who put a melody to it. The song was paired with Fred Rose's novelty "Fly Trouble," resulting in perhaps the oddest single the singer ever released. The song was recorded at Castle Studio in Nashville on August 4, 1947
Big South Fork of the Cumberland River Treaty of Tellico had officially expelled the native Cherokee peoples from the river basin, although the land, which was not well suited to agriculture, was mostly passed over by settlers until the founding of the ultimately failed colony of Rugby, Tennessee, by Thomas Hughes in the 1880s. The mining community of modern day Blue Heron, Kentucky, was established in 1937 along the banks of the Big South Fork, and operated until 1962 when it was abandoned by the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company. The site was later recreated in the 1980s and reopened as an outdoor museum. The Big South