This “Casey Jones” is a third distinct song to carry the name — the country-blues version associated with Mississippi John Hurt. It descends from the same 1900 train wreck that produced the famous ballad, but by way of the Black songster and blues tradition rather than the published vaudeville sheet music.
The Memphis bluesman Furry Lewis recorded a long, rambling “Kassie Jones” in 1928; Hurt’s version is a leaner relative, keeping much of the tune and feel while paring the story down. Hurt’s gentle fingerpicked guitar and easy voice made it his own, and it became part of the repertoire he carried into his 1960s rediscovery.
Jerry Garcia and David Grisman recorded Hurt’s “Casey Jones” on their 1996 album Shady Grove, a collection of old folk and blues songs — a fitting home for a piece that had passed quietly through the hands of one of the tradition’s gentlest voices.
