Willie Dale

War has been protested in some way ever since men fought each other on the battlefields.  Women pleaded for peace, as men took up swords in those early days of man's history.  And in modern times protestrrs have demonstrated their objections in many ways, often times in song.

The song "Willie Dale" is rots music that relates the death of a young man, the mourning that occurs when someone dies too soon.  And the depiction of the loved one in remembrance is always poignantly best expressed in song, as performed here.

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.

Bill Bailey

One of the earliest blues is one that is still done by many blues artists and roots music performers. The song was published in 1902 with words and music by Hughie Cannon and remains a standard with jazz and Dixieland bands.  

Many artists have performed this song including Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Patsy Cline, Bobby Darin, Aretha Franklin, Brenda Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Durante, Danny Barker, Harry Connick Jr, Renee Olstead, Michael Buble, Sam Cooke, Al Hirt and Della Reese.

Here is the song, done both straight and with conversation parody, with the costuming and narrative that brings it home again.  A song that remains a perennial favorite is this one, "Bill Bailey."