Book Review: Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry: the Untold Story of an American Legend by Scott Reynolds Nelson - Page 3

Nelson's evidence for identifying John William Henry, Prisoner 497, as the source of the "John Henry" legend is inconclusive, though tantalizing. Biographical information on Nelson's John Henry is, and probably will remain, too skimpy for certainty. The song "John Henry," however, probably is, as Nelson claims, the most recorded American folk song. There are more, probably many more, than 200 versions. (It appears on two recordings discussed in my Indie Round-up column just in the past six months: the Big Bill Broonzy Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953, and Hillstomp's 2004 debut CD.) It exists in many versions and has taken on many meanings. "Among trackliners who lived by their strength, [it] found its home as a story of heroism, one tinged with anxiety about the future," Nelson says. Though the story of John Henry's death may have originally been told in the form of a relatively tuneless "hammer song," it

was carefully folded into the familiar and disturbing horrors of the ballad tradition. Coal miners, black and white, made John Henry one of their own...a Moses who gave the South the Promised Land of the West, but could not live to see it. For prisoners, the song suggested the questions about loved ones: Would they be true, and would prisoners ever live to see them again?

Nelson seems ambivalent about the "English professors and sociologists" through whose agency the song was transformed from a "complex and unsettling story" to "a fabulous, impossible legend" that had, by the twentieth century, come to serve as "a historical commentary, its performance carefully calibrated to recall a bygone era." He seems to lament a loss of purity, while recognizing that songs belong to the people and are forever developing and mutating. Placing "John Henry" in context at the nexus of what became American blues, folk, and country music, he closes with a section that includes a description of how the song spread after its "rediscovery" early in the twentieth century, from earliest recordings to popular interpretations by white artists - among them Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, Drive-By Truckers, and Bruce Springsteen - and black artists such as Harry Belafonte, Mississippi John Hurt, and Cephas and Wiggins (though he does not mention all of these).

Nelson's focus on the development of American musical forms through the lens of "John Henry" will prove enlightening to musicians and to fans of roots music. He does, however, fly quickly through this history, and some of his declarations seem a little pat. Was Carl Sandburg really the "first American folk singer?" Did Fiddlin' John Carson "invent" country music? The book contains occasional inconsistencies and editorial or factual errors. No German or American city had a population in the "tens of millions" during the years 1871 to 1921 (or ever), and that's a 50-year span, not 40. The band They Might Be Giants titled an album John Henry but did not record the song.

Article Author: Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Blogcritics' Culture and Theater Editor. In addition to reviewing NYC theater, he writes a semi-regular round-up of independent music releases. By day he is a computer professional and a freelance writer and editor, and at night he's a …

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