“John Henry” is one of the most widely sung ballads in American folk music, the story of a Black “steel-driving man” who hammered drills into rock to clear the way for railroad tunnels. In the legend, John Henry races a newly invented steam-powered drill, beats the machine by hand — and dies, his heart giving out, with the hammer still in his grip.
The story is generally tied to the building of railroad tunnels through the mountains in the years after the Civil War, when steam machinery was beginning to replace human labor. Whether John Henry was a real man has long been debated; some historians have argued he was, while folklorists have treated him as legend. The song almost certainly began as a rhythmic hammer-song for the work itself, and it was widely sung before it was first recorded in the 1920s.
“John Henry” has been recorded countless times across blues, folk, old-time, and bluegrass, as both a sung ballad and a hard-driving instrumental showpiece. The version heard here, “John Henry Blues,” is by the banjoist Jim Mills.
