John Henry: Steel Drivin' Man

I clearly remember hearing folklores of Paul Bunyan and John Henry....these stories now feel so different to me...as I think about the railroad and western expansion, industrialization, workers' rights, ethnosexual mythologies of black men...etc. However, problematic these stories may seem now-what remains so alluring to me...is that at one point in time folks were all hearing the same stories...passed down from one generation to the next that had nothing to do with fanfare, Harry Potter, or Pixar. I like ancestral stories...where 'real' people are the icons, heroes and villains wrapped up in one...with songs and hand-drawn pictures to match...Call me old fashion.

I will probably post folklore/mythologies to remind myself...to re-tell the story of who I used to be...when I first learned of John Henry, Babe the Blue Ox, Johnny Appleseed...and how it feels to look at them now...knowing a bit more of the story.

The soundtrack: John Henry by Mississippi Fred McDowel (on Youtube)

Below is Excerpted from: http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/reading/bunyanhenry/background.html

SEE NPR FOR MORE:http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/johnhenry/)

The contrast between Paul Bunyan and John Henry could not be greater. John Henry, the “Steel-Drivin’ Man,” was a truly popular folk hero whose famous contest is attested in popular folksongs dating back to the late 19th century. It is generally acknowledged that “John Henry” is the best known and most recorded American folk song. As you will find out this week, it is actually many folksongs, attested in many different versions sung by very different sorts of singers.

It seems fairly certain that the John Henry legend derives from a historical incident, although scholars disagree about where the event might have taken place. Some argue that the contest between John Henry and the steam drill took place near Birmingham, Alabama during the building of the Coosa Tunnel for the C&W Railroad in 1887-8. Other scholars argue that John Henry worked on the C&O Railroad expansion into the Ohio Valley, and that the contest took place during the building of the Big Bend Tunnel inSummers County, West Virginia during the 1870′s.

Although it is not clear exactly where and when the story might have taken place, the substance of the story is the same. John Henry was a “hammer-man” whose job was to drive a steel drill into the rock, building tunnels through mountains to allow the railroad to pass on through. The hammer-man was helped by a shaker (or turner), whose unenviable job was to bend down and twist the drill after each blow of the hammer. After the hole was deep enough, explosives would be placed inside and the rock would be blasted out. When the railroad company proposed using a steam-drill to replace the hammer-man, John Henry agreed to a day-long contest, man against machine. John Henry won the contest, but died as soon as it was over.

Many of the folksongs tell us that John Henry was married, and they emphasize his role as a husband or as a father. Other songs focus on the grief of John Henry’s mother after his death. Still other songs tell us that there were many women who mourned John Henry’s passing. Clearly, for many of these folksingers, John Henry was a symbol of both physical prowess and potency. Some of the folksongs also include the story of his birth, and his own prediction that the “Hammer’s gonna be the death of me.” Other songs protest the brutal working conditions or the poor pay that the railroad workers received. Geoff Edgersprovides an excellent overview of the different meanings of John Henry’s legend as expressed in the many different folksongs that tell the story:

A hero becomes what you need. So in the ballad, John Henry’s makeup depends on who is telling his tale. Is he a strong, black man driving the railroad west? A husband and father? A sweaty, sexual dynamo swinging the hammer? A symbol of futility because he died on the job or an inspiration because he beat the white man’s steam-drill?

Considering that John Henry did clearly exist – and that we know the color of his skin – it’s surprising how rarely his race is mentioned. [...] It’s likely that the black singers, whether prisoners or blues men, took his race as a given, seeing no need to mention it. He is their Paul Bunyan. In the case of Johnny Cash, race had nothing to do with the ballad. This was a union song, not a civil rights anthem. After all, John Henry, as ultimate working-class hero, has been embraced by disparate groups: black prisoners, white mountain musicians, college folk revivalists, elderly blues singers. Most Southern states have claimed him, as does Maine in Woody Guthrie’s version, even though he was likely born in North Carolina or West Virginia.

The connector is this valiant battle, man against machine, man against boss, man against the power structure that keeps his people (African-Americans? laborers?) in chains. He’s a hero to Woody Guthrie, a warning to Mississippi John Hurt, an inspiration to the chain gang. From verse-to-verse, generation-to-generation, the story changes to suit the singer. The name and steel-driving solitude stay the same.

The first printed version of “John Henry” appeared in 1900, based on folksongs that had been circulating in the late 1800′s. The first recording of a John Henry song is in 1924, by “Fiddlin’ John Carson“, a white musician from Georgia who was born in 1868. The first recording by an African-American musician was made in 1927 by RagtimeHenry Thomas, a blues singer from Texas. Thanks to the iBiblio website and NPR, you will be able to listen to a variety of John Henry recordings this week, including versions by Leadbelly, Uncle Dave Macon, Bill Monroe, Missisippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie, and Johnny Cash.