In the mid-1940s, Woody Guthrie recorded a version of Cumberland Gap for Moe Asch's Folkways label, containing the chorus, Cumberland Gap, Cumberland Gap/Seventeen miles to the Cumberland Gap and a stanza referring to the gap's distance from Middlesboro, Kentucky. Folk musician and folk music scholar Pete Seeger released a version somewhat similar to Guthrie's in 1954. Donegan's 1957 skiffle version, which reached No. 1 on the charts in the United Kingdom, also resembled Guthrie's Folkways version, although his chorus uses fifteen miles rather than seventeen miles.