John Hardy

Early writers confused his story with that of John Henry, and the two ballads have often been mixed. John Harrington Cox discussed five versions of “John Hardy” in a 1919 article in the Journal of American Folklore that tried to separate them.

The earliest known recording is by Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis, issued by Columbia in 1924 (167-D). Ernest Stoneman followed with a recording for OKeh made at Asheville on 27 August 1925 and issued as a 12-inch single (OKeh 7011), and Buell Kazee recorded it for Brunswick in 1927. As an instrumental it is listed as an old-time song tune and breakdown in A, played in AEae tuning on the fiddle. The Library of Congress holds a 1939 recording by H. L. Maxey of Franklin County, Virginia, and the tune has been recorded by Hobart Smith, Dink Roberts and Dock Boggs, among others, according to the Fiddler’s Companion. In 1967 Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson included “John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man” on their album Strictly Instrumental.