“Ben Dewberry’s Final Run” is a railroad ballad written by Andrew Jenkins, a blind Georgia preacher and songwriter known for narrative “event” songs. Jimmie Rodgers recorded it in 1928, early in the brief career that made him a foundational figure in country music.
The song follows a familiar nineteenth-century pattern, the brave-engineer ballad: Ben Dewberry is a fearless railroad man who pushes his locomotive hard, rounds a curve too fast, and dies in the wreck. It belongs to the same family as “Casey Jones” and the other train-disaster songs that fascinated early country audiences.
Through Rodgers’s recording the song entered the broad country and old-time repertoire, and it has stayed a favorite of acoustic musicians. Jerry Douglas recorded it on his 1987 album Everything Is Gonna Work Out Fine, the kind of older railroad piece that flatpickers and resophonic players have long kept alive.
