![]() Common verses include,īut it won't kill me, Lord, it won't kill me. The most famous of these are in the Take This Hammer or Nine Pound Hammer family, and were often sung to the rhythmic pounding of the hammer or ax. In Folk-songs of the South, Cox groups the John Henry songs with the John Hardy songs.Īnother source of confusion is the work songs, or hammer songs, that mention John Henry. A typical verse of John Hardy goes,īut John Hardy was a famous African American bad man, not a steel driver, although the confusion that prevailed, significantly enough so that it was even perpetuated by ballad scholar John Harrington Cox in his Folk-songs of the South 6, suggested that as both John Henry and John Hardy were steel drivers (false), they were in fact the same person. In the first quarter of the century, several scholars confused John Henry with the outlaw John Hardy, both of whom were the subject of ballads, and this led to considerable misunderstanding. Says, "The Big Bend Tunnel on the C and O road His feat(s) have been memorialized in the ballad, one familiar verse of which goes, Most familiar is the character John Henry, the man who drove steel on the C & O Road and died with his hammer in his hand. When we talk about "John Henry," we may be referring to a ballad, a work song, a folk hero, or a legend. That's where you and I come in.īut first, some history. 3 Others are interested in the cultural implications of songs and legends like John Henry, while others are concerned to illuminate how the white tradition and the African American tradition have interacted in the construction and perpetuation of the John Henry legacy.įinally, there are book collectors, eager to own all the major works on John Henry, as well as the countless printed versions of the ballad. One prominent folklorist has made a minor specialty of the graphic depiction of folklore, and his collection of John Henry graphics was the subject of a tantalizing article. Some collectors are folklorists, both amateur and professional, interested in ballad migration and variant forms of the ballad. There are probably hundreds of recordings - Broonzy alone has recorded it many times - and at least two discographies exist: One is in Norm Cohen's Long Steel Rail 1 and another is in Brett Williams' John Henry: A Bio-Bibliography. Some are record collectors, determined to have every recording of John Henry, from Leadbelly's, to Burl Ives', to Big Bill Broonzy's, to Woody Guthrie's, etc. Those interested in pursuit of the John Henry trail come at it from varied perspectives. ![]() Indeed, I can personally testify to the difficulty of some of the items in the canon. 'What's an article on John Henry doing in AB Bookman's Weekly? Are we going to collect both books about him?' Ha, Ha! You may think that such a joke hits the spike on the head, but in fact the material on John Henry is plentiful, and not a few pieces pose a serious challenge to the collector.
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