Steel: John Henry

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: John Henry

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“Post songs that ring like steel.” As soon as I read that description of our new theme, I knew what my first selection would be. John Henry, and specifically this version, is a favorite from one of the first albums I ever bought for myself. As the youngest of three brothers, I was used to hand-me-downs, and that even included music to some extent. I got albums for my nascent collection that one or the other of my brothers had gotten tired of, and I also set about replacing music that was no longer available to me when my oldest brother moved out to go to college. But it was with albums like this from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee that I began to define my collection as mine, as an extension and definition of me. It represented the beginning of my exploration of both folk and blues music.

The song is also a good starter for our new theme, in that it pits man against machine. Steel does not occur in nature. It is an alloy of iron and carbon, with other elements added in different proportions to make different types of steel. So steel itself is an early triumph of human technology, but the song John Henry reminds us that technological advances can have a human cost. In the song, John Henry is a steel driver. That is how he defines himself, and he takes great pride in his work. But now there is a machine, the steam drill, that can supposedly do the job better than him. The song tells of how John Henry set out to prove that he was better than any machine, and what it cost him.

A steel driver had the job of hammering steel drills into a rock face. The resulting holes would then be dynamited to make tunnels through mountains. This was an essential job during the building of the railroads in the nineteenth century. There are many claims that John Henry was a real person, and there are historical markers in several different locations that claim to be the site of the contest in the song. What is clear is that the technological change depicted in the song would place the action of the song somewhere in the 1870s. Whether or not the action of the song actually took place at all, the song and the legend are one of the finest expressions we have of human pride in the face of technological change, and that is a theme that still resonates, or rings, today.

Work: John Henry

In the 1880s, large numbers of newly freed slaves were hired to help build the railroads. In this period, the legend of John Henry was born.

One of the most important jobs at that time was cutting blasting holes into the sides of mountains; explosives were than placed in these holes to make tunnels. These blasting holes were originally cut by hand by men like John Henry, who wielded large hammers to accomplish the task. In time, technological advances brought the steam drill, and threatened these men’s jobs. The legend and the song tell of how John Henry had a contest against a steam drill to prove that he could perform as well as the machine that sought to replace him. The specifics of the contest are long outdated, but the theme of man versus technology is universal, and still very much with us today.

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee: John Henry

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Maybe that is why their are so many versions of the song. Here I am featuring the first version of John Henry I ever heard, by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Their music springs from blues, but swells to encompass spirituals. It could be argued that their performance of John Henry is a secular spiritual.

When planning this post, I asked Boyhowdy to collaborate with me on it, by contributing cover versions and additional commentary. As some of you may be aware, his new job has him too busy this week to do so. But he did send me a truckload of versions to use as I saw fit. Here are a few of my favorites.

Woody Guthrie: John Henry

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In Woody Guthrie’s hands, John Henry becomes a heroic tale of the working man. Guthrie has the listener believing that this is a Depression-era tale, when it is actually much older.

John Renbourn: John Henry

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John Renbourn is a British folk artist and founding member of Pentangle. He reminds us that the British had their own railroad boom. Remember that Thomas the Tank Engine was originally British.

The Mammals: John Henry

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The Mammals prove that John Henry works very well as a bluegrass number.