John Henry

Statue of John Henry in West Virginia

One of the joys of roots music is how it allows for variations.  As copyright laws become strictly applied around the world, most musicians either compose their own music or find/make variations of old songs and remake them with a different stamp.

John Henry is one of those old folk songs, with a basic rhythm and lines that lend themselves to expressing feelings, especially strong feelings, as it is about a man who works so hard in driving a tunnel through the mountains that the big, strapping man, depicted in the song simply gives up and "lays down his hammer, and he dies."

That is the essence of a remake.  The tone or theme of the song, in this case a sad situation that is related as a story but that can be updated into a blues song.  That's especially true given the fact that some music historians believe that John Henry was a real person, an African American prisoner who had fought in the Civil War but then ended up as virtual slave labor, as prisoners were found among the poor and the vagrant as well as the criminals around but often with trumped-up charges.  He is then depicted as that man who never gives up.  He helps that tunnel become reality, then he dies as he has become the hero of the work accomplished.

Done in a blues style is the song John Henry.