Out of disaster, sometimes comes a song. In 2016, torrential rains resulted in one of the deadliest floods in West Virginia, destroying homes in White Sulphur Springs. The event and its aftermath inspired musician Chris Haddox to write “O’ This River.” Now the song has new purpose. Haddox recently used it to raise money for people in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporter Connie Bailey Kitts spoke with Haddox about the story behind the song.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Connie Kitts: Chris, could you introduce yourself?
Chris Haddox: My name is Chris Haddox, and I live in Morgantown, West Virginia. I’m a professor at West Virginia University in the College of Creative Arts and Media. I earn my living through my “professorly” work, but music’s been the constant in my life since I was a kid.
Kitts: Your song “O’ This River” came out of the 2016 flood that hit White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Can you tell us what happened and about your connection to that event?
Haddox: I attend the Presbyterian Church here in Morgantown, and I got a call – somebody at the presbytery office in Charleston. They were looking for musicians to go to White Sulphur Springs. They said, “You know, there’s a lot of people there cleaning up and providing food. Would you be interested in going to just play music? Then maybe that’ll take people’s minds off things for a while.”
There was a big tent that was a central staging area for meals and communications and that sort of thing, and we sat under there and played, and people seemed to enjoy it.
One of the times I was sitting under the big tent, there was a woman sitting there by herself, kind of staring off. And I thought, well, I’m going to go over – she looks distraught, and I’m just going to go sit beside her and chat with her if she wants to chat.
She just started talking, and not really talking directly to me, but just kind of talking in my direction, saying, “You know, I don’t think I can do this again.” She said, “I’ve lived here all my life, and I love living by this river. It’s such a beautiful thing to be by, and when it gets like this, you know, I just don’t think I can live through another flood.”
And so I was just thinking about all that as I was riding home, and the song kind of came out of that conversation.
Chris Haddox performs “O’ This River” at the People’s Bank Theatre in Marietta, Ohio. “Ain’t I standin’ here like before/ The river’s in my blood/ If you’ve never lived here you can never understand.” Courtesy Chris Haddox.
“Ain’t I standin’ here like before/ The river’s in my blood/ If you’ve never lived here you can never understand.” – Courtesy Chris Haddox.
Kitts: Fast forward to today, after Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina, why did you decide to use this song as a fundraiser?
Haddox: I think we all, when we see something like that, our first reaction, as a species, is generally: what can I do to help? I woke up one morning, and that song was running through my head. And as I said in my little fundraising [post], “Can a song born of a flood help raise money for relief from another flood?” That was the idea that was floating through my head. So I just thought, “Well, I’ll donate it. You can buy the song for whatever” – I set a dollar minimum on it, and some people paid a dollar, some people paid $100, so that’s how it came about.
Using Facebook and Bandcamp, Haddox initially raised $2000 in a week’s time. Courtesy Chris Haddox.
Kitts: Your music has these interesting connections to personal and community disasters – both the White Sulfur Springs flood and now the devastation that’s been caused by Hurricane Helene. What role do you think music can play during events like these?
Haddox: There’s a whole genre of disaster songs. Some of them are just a telling of a story, and in others, they’re really kind of tugging at the emotions in it. Maybe at some level, it helps just process what’s going on, to hear it coming back at you. You’re not just reliving it in your head. You’re hearing somebody else sing it.
And I think it has the opportunity to validate what you’re feeling as a person who maybe has gone through that and has experienced that trauma, to hear it out there, that you think, “Wow, it’s not just me that’s feeling this or thinking this.” It just seemed like maybe that’s what this song’s purpose was, to have some bigger impact than just being a song I sing in a show.
Four months after Haddox appeared on stage at the Southeast Regional Folk Alliance festival in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Hurricane Helene tore through the conference location, where recovery efforts are ongoing. Courtesy Chris Haddox.
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At the time of this posting, Haddox had raised more than $2200 for the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance fund, dedicated to helping rural parts of North Carolina.
This week on Inside Appalachia, a Ukrainian musician reflects on what music means during wartime. And there’s a growing number of a certain kind of blood-sucking arachnid — and diseases that come with it. We also sit in on one of the natural wonders of the Great Smoky Mountains.
This week, a Ukrainian musician reflects on what music means during wartime.
And there’s a growing number of a certain kind of blood-sucking arachnid — and diseases that come with it.
We also sit in on one of the natural wonders of the Great Smoky Mountains.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Last year, Folkways Reporter Clara Haizlett reported about the Appalachian hammered dulcimer, and its Ukrainian relative, the tsymbaly. Along the way, we met Ukrainian musician Vsevolod Sadovyj, who was in Ukraine as the country fought against the Russian invasion.
Haizlett recently caught up with the tsymbaly player over Zoom and brought us an update.
Ticking Off The Trouble Of Ticks
Warm weather sends more people outside. But enjoying nature has it’s inherent risks, including ticks which can cause disease. Pictured is the black-legged tick, or deer tick, which can spread Lyme disease.
Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
With the exception of a cold snap on Christmas Eve, Appalachia had a mild winter. And now we’re paying the price, with a surge of ticks. Appalachian social media has seen a steady stream of complaints about the arachnids, Lyme disease and alpha-gal syndrome.
Producer Bill Lynch reached out to regional epidemiologist Daniel Barker-Gumm and Steven Eshenaur, the health officer for the Kanawha County Health Department, to learn more.
Firefly Magic In The Great Smoky Mountains
Not all bug stories are bad stories. Jacqui Sieber from WUOT takes us deep into the Smoky Mountains to watch lightning bugs, also called fireflies.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Patrick Couch and Kay, Frank Hutchinsen, Jean Ritchie, Hazel Dickens, Paul Loomis, and Tyler Childers.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
In the early 1930s, the way for a story to go “viral” was by being sung about in a ballad. That’s what happened to Otto Wood, a real-life outlaw who grew up around Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He spent time with the Hatfields of southern West Virginia, became a famous moonshiner, and died in a shootout with police in 1930. Less than one year later, his story was told in the ballad “Otto Wood The Bandit,” recorded by Walker Kid and the Carolina Buddies.
True-life outlaw Otto Wood went viral in 1931 — one year after he was killed in a fatal shoot-out with a North Carolina sheriff. How does one go viral in the 1930s? For Otto Wood, it happened partly through newspaper accounts that laid the groundwork for a massive funeral and his subsequent commemoration through a ballad that’s still played today.
Plenty of Wood’s life set him up for his eventual fame. He grew up in the hills around Wilkesboro, North Carolina and lost a hand in a childhood accident. He spent time with the Hatfields of southern West Virginia in the early 1900s, and later became a famed moonshiner.
Legend has it Wood eventually ran into trouble with the law after an incident involving a pawn shop and a family watch.
Here’s how folk icon Doc Watson told it, on his album “Legacy” with David Holt, released in 2002.
“He had pawned his grandfather’s watch, needed some money real bad,” Watson said. “And he pawned it to Mr. A.C. Kaplan, who had a pawn shop in Greensboro, North Carolina. And he promised he’d be back in a short time to redeem the watch. And he had supposedly had a 30 day grace period, according to the agreement. But he went back in about 10 days and the old boy had sold his watch. And he [Wood] was really angry, flew into a rage, and there happened to be one of those old antique pistols … He snatched it up, hit the man over the head with it a little too hard. And he was sentenced for 2nd degree murder.”Wood subsequently escaped from the Raleigh prison where he was sent. In Watson’s telling, he “whittled a gun out of a cake of soap,” jabbed it into a guard’s back and coerced him into driving him away.
But it was his shootout with a sheriff in Salisbury, North Carolina, that entrenched his name in pop culture history.
“The sheriff who had been looking for him, Sheriff Rankin, saw him walking along the street, pulled over and told him to get in the car,” said North Carolina musician Holt, who often performed with Watson. “Otto got in the car and [then ] … opened the back door, rolled out on the ground, and pulled his gun. Rankin got out the front door and shot Otto across a Model A body. Otto shot at Rankin but he missed him, just nicked his ear. And Otto got hit right in the face and died. So that’s a pretty dramatic ending.”
The local newspaper reported that as many as 20,000 people attended Wood’s funeral and filed past his casket. Locals also raised money to send his body home to his mother in Coaldale, West Virginia.
A year later, in 1931 Walker Kid Smith wrote “Otto Wood the Bandit” and recorded it with the Carolina Buddies.
The chorus goes, “Otto, why didn’t you run? / Otto’s done dead and gone / Otto Wood, why didn’t you run / When the sheriff pulled out that 44 gun?”
The single sold a couple thousand copies. But one of them landed in the hands of Doc Watson. He recorded it for his 1965 album, “Doc Watson and Son,” which hit at the height of the ‘60s folk boom. Doc Watson went on to become an icon of the folk and Americana movement over the late 20th century.
And “Otto Wood the Bandit” was emblazoned into the American songbook. Musicians have been singing about Otto Wood ever since. Like “Slim” Smith, Norman Blake, Barbara Scott and JP Harris.
West Virginia musician Chance McCoy produced and played fiddle on the Harris version. McCoy and Harris didn’t get a chance to play the tune a lot together, especially once the pandemic brought live music to a halt. But they did tour together, and McCoy got to see a crowd in Germany respond to “Otto Wood.”
“We played a house concert in an apartment in Berlin, and I can remember that people were standing on the furniture,” McCoy said. “I remember playing that song, and this room full of 200 Berliners was singing along to ‘Otto Wood.’ I don’t even know if they understood a word, but it’s a good tune.”
So, as someone who’s been playing and singing this song for years — why does Chance McCoy think Otto Wood didn’t run?
“For Otto Wood, he had to end it somewhere,” McCoy said. “It certainly wasn’t going to be spending his life in prison. I think for him, the adventure was over, and he knew it. And it was better to go out in a blaze of glory than to fizzle out in a jail cell.”
David Holt has a different answer. Why didn’t Otto Wood run?
“I think he was trying to run — just the car was too short across and they shot him right in the head,” Holt said. “He was pretty bold, you know. He felt like the people knew him. People liked him. People weren’t afraid of him. So he’s like a minor celebrity. I think actually at the end, he was trying to get away from Sheriff Rankin. It just didn’t work. He would have run one more time.”
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
There are many murder ballads from Appalachia — and most of them are about men killing women. Folkways reporter Zack Harrold is a musician himself. In fact, you can hear him playing guitar and banjo on a song called “Little Sadie” that appeared in the May 20, 2022 episode of Inside Appalachia. “Little Sadie” is a ballad about a man killing his sweetheart — exactly the kind of song Zack sought to understand in his reporting about murder ballads. What can they tell us about history? And is “true crime” the modern-day equivalent?
I got really into bluegrass when I was in college. And it didn’t take long before I ran into my very first murder ballad — “The Knoxville Girl,” as performed by Jim and Jesse McReynolds.
I’d never heard anything like it. Bleak, disturbing lyrics set to such a lively major-key melody. And as I learned more about the bluegrass canon, I kept running into more songs like this. Like “Pretty Polly” and “Katy Dear.”
The more of these songs I discovered, the more I noticed odd similarities in the stories. Almost every time, a jealous lover takes his girl out to the woods or down by the river. She, evidently sensing something is amiss, begs him not to hurt her. Then he kills her — usually with a knife.
And for some reason, the guy’s name is usually “Willie.”
After years of pondering the subject, I decided to get to the bottom of this murder ballad mystery. That’s how I ended up on the phone with Mark Charles of Louisville, Kentucky. His band Vandaveer recorded a whole album of murder ballads — called fittingly enough, “Oh Willie Please.” Having spent so much time with these songs, I wondered if Charles had gained any insights into their creepy similarities.
“Certainly you start noticing thematic similarities and overlapping details,” Charles said. “Some of that’s to be expected because so much of the ballad tradition is storytelling and passing down stories from one generation to another or from one town to another.”
Folk music, by its very nature, takes elements from old songs and transforms them into something new. Many murder ballads such as “The Knoxville Girl” have roots in the British Isles, where they were printed in broadsides — cheap pamphlets that were the 17th century version of tabloid newspapers.
For this reason, early musicologists dismissed American murder ballads as rip-offs of their English forebearers. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
According to murder ballad scholar Christina Blanton, the American tunes are trying to telegraph something very specific about 19th century white American society.
“There were absolutely warnings to women about what happens when you are not well behaved, when you fall in love with the wrong guy, when you are not abiding by the accepted moral code,” she said.
The songs were a way of reinforcing society’s standards for women. It’s no mistake the murders typically take place in the woods or by the river.
“She’s always lured away from that Appalachian town that represents codified society, a place of safety,” Blanton said.
It’s also not a mistake that the songs’ drownings evoke images of old-time river baptisms.
“After they’re dead they do finally attain that perfect feminine nature,” Blanton said.
The songs clean up their victims in other ways, too. The stories are strikingly similar and, if you pay close attention, so are the victims.
“A woman needs to be pure and good and she’s misled by this mean, mean horrible man. And this mean, mean horrible man doesn’t want the responsibility of fatherhood, in a lot of cases, or to provide financially — so he offs her,” said Madison Helman, a graduate student at West Virginia University who is currently working on a dissertation about murder ballads.
Helman has dug into old court records and newspaper reports about the crimes that inspired several famous songs. She’s found interesting disparities between what actually happened and what made it into the lyrics.
Take the ballad “Omi Wise,” for example. It’s based on a real murder in north carolina from a few hundred years. In the song, a guy named John gets Omi pregnant out of wedlock. He lures her into the woods, promising to elope, and instead drowns her in the river. Toward the end of the song, the whole town goes out to look for her body and bring John to justice.
In real life, Omi already had kids with other men, and was likely meeting with John so he would sign some paternity papers.
“And there’s not really this angelic virginal maiden who was led astray by love. It’s a woman who was doing her own thing, living her life kind of on the outskirts. And when she went missing, not that many people went looking for her,” Helman said.
It seems murder ballads only interesting in telling the stories of women who fit a particular profile. If victims didn’t fit the profile, like Omi Wise, sometimes their stories got changed. Other times, the stories don’t get told at all.
It’s something we still see in true crime podcasts, documentaries and books.
“The cases that still get the most press are a pretty white well-off blonde girl,” Helman said. “And I’m not saying they shouldn’t also get sympathy and elicit support, but there are hundreds of women who don’t fit that profile and are in that same situation, and we don’t hear about it.
“That happened back then, too.”
So why do we continue singing murder ballads? Or consume any other kind of true crime media, for that matter?
“People are fascinated by pretty dark stuff,” said Mark Charles of Vandaveer. “It’s fitting and telling that in the ballad tradition, the more heinous the story, the more memorable it might become.”
Folks might be drawn to these dark stories, but when Vandaveer went on the road to promote their murder ballad album, they found audiences had a limited appetite for the songs.
“We quickly found that on stage a couple of murder ballads go along way,” Charles said. “Put three in a row in a set, and you can feel the air escape the room.”
Of course, Vandaveer knew it was dealing with dark stuff when it decided to make the album.
That’s why they also decided to give a portion of the proceeds to a womens’ crisis center in Louisville, Kentucky.
“It was important to us that we have some perspective and make sure that the audience was aware of that side of the project too,” Charles said.
Because as grim and disturbing as these stories can be, they are also depressingly familiar.
“The victims in the songs were women. And you know, stories of domestic abuse have not abated and instances of domestic abuse have not abated,” Charles said. “It’s a little bit like shining a light on a problem that’s been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
Suzannah Park is a ballad singer and teacher who lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She grew up singing all kinds of folk songs, but there are some ballads she just can’t bring herself to sing.
Some Appalachian ballads tell stories of gruesome murders of women at the hands of men. Others flip the script and allow women to emerge victorious, by playing tricks on captors or by fighting back.
Suzannah Park is a ballad singer and teacher who lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She grew up singing all kinds of folk songs, but there are some ballads she just can’t bring herself to sing. Inside Appalachia guest host Saro Lynch-Thomason recently spoke with Park about her relationship to ballads about women and violence.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Park: My grandparents got dubbed “the mom and pop of the Chicago folk music scene.” And they would host these really large music parties at their house as well. So different traveling musicians would come through and they would stay at my grandparents’. There would be a music party at my grandparents with that traveling musician, as well as loads of different local musicians. So it was really kind of a hub-home, where the performing, the sharing, the exchanging, the stories, the meals, were sort of all built in together.
Suzannah Park is a ballad singer and teacher who lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
And then my grandparents also did multiple trips coming down here to the south to collect songs—part of their way of keeping songs alive, collecting them, sharing them. So yeah, my mom and my aunt grew up in that. And then it continued when I was little. There were still people that would come through, and we would still have these music parties and do house concerts. And there were just a whole bunch of people that came through, which I didn’t realize were—you know, when you’re growing up, you’re just with the people you’re with and you love them. But I didn’t know that Jean Ritchie was special in, like, the history. I just knew that she and my grandma looked really good sitting together singing, you know? She was just like another sweet grandma. And I liked when they sang together because they had a lot of fun. They looked like they were happy together. And so I was just, like, “Oh, Jean’s here, yay!”
And similarly, so, other styles of music—Sparky Rucker was a really big musical influence. He and my parents and Guy and Candie Carawan did a tour together before I was born, here in the south. And so when I was growing up, Sparky, whenever he would come through Chicago, or when we were down here, going through Knoxville, we would always stay with them, or he would come and stay with us. So that was a different style of music that my family did, but I got to hear his stories all about slavery and about oppression from a Black blues-gospel singer-historian, and he was always one of my favorites when I was little. And I can recognize now, like, wow, I had this rich, wide, diverse collection of extended people. But also, I just thought that was normal.
Lynch-Thomason: From the outside, at least, that sounds like so much fun. [laughs] You know, I grew up outside of those traditions. And when I moved to western North Carolina, I was so pleased and honored by how easy it was to get to know a lot of traditional singers in the area and become a part of those communities. And nowadays, I think folk song communities are this big mix of people who both grew up in the traditions, like you, and then folks who are coming to it and are figuring it all out. And we’re all making this music together because it’s emotional, and it feels good, and it does so much for us as a community and as individuals.
And something I wanted us to talk about was, as women singing the songs, a lot of times these songs can be about women, and in really hard circumstances or women getting murdered. This can be really intense topic matter. And other times it can be really celebratory, stuff where women are really celebrating themselves, right? And so I’m curious, for you, as a woman singing the songs, are there ways that your experiences as a woman have shaped the repertoire that you’re attracted to or the songs you don’t want to sing?
Park: Great question. And a really important topic as well, just in all the ways that these songs as folk songs, I think, are an extension of the voice of the folk for so many generations. And so, yes, I think about this a lot in what I perform as well as what I teach. I would say that as a little person, I wanted to feel more heroic. I wanted to feel like I was represented in a better way in the stories and songs that I was growing up around. And my mom and my aunt had done some investigation to find songs that were, you know—the females came out victorious in some way.
My sister and I took it on as a project to collect more of those kinds of songs, because I think as kids growing up in the ’80s—so I was born in 82—there was just a lot of wanting to feel represented. There’s a handful of ballads that my family would sing that I have never committed to memory because they hurt too much to sing. But I know them but I still won’t sing them. I think as a singer, as a song carrier, you have to be able to also let the song through you, and some songs I think actually hurt a little too much to sing depending on your own personal experience.
Other songs I find really powerful that it’s like I can play a part in letting there be an opportunity for that voice to still come through me because there’s a way that it’s a relevant song still, that feels like I can hold that space and I can hold that space well. Songs give us an opportunity to tap into an emotion that we might not otherwise feel like there’s space for in our day. It’s like three to six minutes of giving your body an opportunity as the singer and also as the listener to let the story sort of wash through you.
And then my hope is that it can spark—maybe it sparks a discomfort, but I think any time there’s something hard, that also can mean that there’s an opportunity for it to have a release. And songs are just moving. And so it’s paying homage to history, to your own body, to people that might need to hear that this is a relevant issue. It’s been a valuable, cool thing that women can have victorious songs. Or, it is valid and recognizable that we still are murdering and making women go missing as a regular piece of today as well. So yeah, it’s a juicy, juicy, heartbreaking, beautiful, expansive—you know, half the planet is women, so these are songs that should be sung, and should be celebrated, and should be talked about.
Lynch-Thomason: I’m wondering if you could describe a song that you’re like, “Yeah, I’m not gonna sing that one. But here’s another hard one that does mean something to me.” Just to give examples for folks who aren’t as familiar with these genres.
Park: Well, the first song that came to mind is “The Two Sisters.” So I’m the younger of two sisters. My mom is the younger of two sisters. We were raised incredibly close, both of these pairs of siblings, singing and doing stuff together, performing together. And so “The Two Sisters” is this ballad that talks about these two sisters that are really close, and ageism, and the impact of that around if the younger person gets married first. And this is supposedly, historically, back in the day. And the older sister ends up murdering her younger sister because it would disrupt her opportunity for having a cared-for, abundant life, if she’s kind of made a spinster by having her younger sister get married first.
So it’s classism, and it’s sexism, and it’s ageism, all kind of rolled together. And then it’s siblings. And I think singing and being so close with my sibling, with my sister, there was a way that we could resonate and understand that the song sounds so brutal, and you’d think, like, “That sister’s so cold.” But from growing up and hearing so much about the history and the context of oppression in folk music in communities, for us, it was just like having to choose who’s going to survive. I’m thinking about the movie Sophie’s Choice, you know, pick a child, and it’s just sort of like, this is in that same place.
We just performed it once. And we both cried the entire time just standing on stage. And we’re like, “Yeah, we thought maybe we could pull this off.” And it was like, “Absolutely not. There is no way.” And we did fine until, I think, she pushes her into the water. And we both just lost it. It was like, “Oh, God, yeah, this just…”. There’s the empathy piece of being a sibling. Anyway, so that song I’ve never performed since then. I think I was 16. [laughs] And I can hear other people sing it. But I actively know—I kind of tune out a little. I still have a hard time being like—but I love talking about it. But actually trying to sing it and let those notes kind of come through me. I’m like, “Whew.” I skip it if it’s on anyone else’s record. I’m like, “Oh god, yeah, I can’t do that one still.”
So that’s one I’m not singing. One that I’m loving singing—loving is a weird word. One that I really enjoy teaching about and singing is “Orphan Girl.” So this is a young girl who is orphaned. And then it’s classism. She goes to a rich man’s house looking for some food, and the rich man won’t give her food and she freezes and dies out on the steps. It’s significant to me that it’s a little girl asking, but the entire picture is also sort of showing all these different pieces of oppression. At the same time.
Lynch-Thomason: I’m wondering if you could give an example of a song that does kind of flip that script. You know, the songs that your aunt and mother were looking for, that you were looking for, that I also look for, about women kindof getting their way, or something coming out kind of unexpectedly in the woman’s favor.
Park: Yeah, there’s one song that’s coming to mind. It’s called “The Maid on the Shore.” It’s a song about a sea captain who sees a woman on the shore and bribes his men to go and seduce her and get her onto the ship, and then they can all have their way with her and he’ll reward them all for bringing this woman onto the ship. And they go and they get her, and they bring her. And she has this spectacular verse of thanking them all for letting her get here, that she’s just been so tired of being a maiden.
[Singing:]
Oh, thank you, oh thank you, this young girl did cry.
That’s just what I’ve been waiting for, oh,
I’ve grown so weary of my maiden head,
as I walked all alone on my rocky ol’ shore
as I walked all alone on the shore.
And then she sat herself down in the stern of the ship,
and the moon, it shown gentle and clear, oh,
and she sang so sweet and so neat and complete,
she sang sailors and captain right fast asleep.
She sang sailors and captain asleep.
And then she robbed them of silver and robbed them of gold.
She plundered their costly fine ware, oh.
And that captain’s broadsword, she’s took for an oar,
and paddled her away right back to the shore.
She’s paddled right back to the shore.
Oh, were my men crazy, or were they all drunk?
Or were they sunk deep in despair, oh?
To see her get away with her beauty so gay,
how those sailors all wished that that sweet maid was there,
how the sailors all wished she was there.
But there she stands all alone on the strand, oh,
waving her handkerchief fair, oh,
Say you are the captain that sails the salt seas,
and I’m still a maid on my rocky old shore.
I’m a maiden once more on the shore.
So yeah, that’s one of the songs that, I think, particularly being someone who has—I’ve had multiple assaults in my life. And I think that there’s something that feels helpful in singing something that goes so well, in getting out of that situation, that feels fantastical, but also that that’s part of a song, I think, for myself, that feels really healing. To be like, it definitely wasn’t fantastical for me to try to get out of these situations I was in, and so there’s an opportunity to sort of have that hope. Some part of me wanted that sort of outcome and it didn’t happen that way. But I can still sing about it. And that brings part of the healing.
We’ve come such a long way around sexism. And whenever someone offers another one of these songs, it’s like an emotionally—it’s not about the men losing. It’s just about the idea that this woman’s going to be victorious. So it’s never, to me, it’s not like “Who did she cunningly trick?” I’m just like, “She made it,” like, that’s the thing. I’m so relieved. I’m just like, “I’m so glad that got celebrated.” [laughs] The trickery part is not the most important to me in the song. It brings me a smile, but it’s really the survival that is the focus for me.
Lynch-Thomason: Thank you so much for talking with us today, Suzannah. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.
Park: It’s a pleasure. I could hang out with you all day.
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
Like any traditional song that has endured through generations, there are lots of versions of “John Henry.” There are also many different interpretations of the song. For some people who grew up in Black communities in Appalachia, the song elicits a variety of feelings.
The ballad of “John Henry”tells the story of a railroad worker who challenges a steam drill to a contest to see who can drill a hole through a mountain fastest and farthest. With his immense strength and skill, John Henry wins, but he dies from his efforts.
There is much debate about the historical facts of the song. But most accounts describe Henry as an African American man from West Virginia or Virginia who worked for the C&O Railroad. Researchers say he was either a freed slave working for pay or that he was incarcerated and forced to work as a convict laborer.
Like any traditional song that has endured through generations, there are lots of versions of “John Henry.” There are also many different interpretations of the song. For some people who grew up in Black communities in Appalachia, the song elicits a variety of feelings.
We’ve Always Heard That Song For Theresa Gloster, the ballad of “John Henry” has always been there.
Theresa Gloster of Lenoir, North Carolina grew up hearing her grandfather sing “John Henry.” Gloster and her family continue to sing “John Henry” at family gatherings. Photo courtesy of Theresa Gloster
“I can’t remember not hearing it,” Gloster said. All our lives, from children to adults, we’ve always heard that song.
Gloster is in her 70s and was born in McDowell County, West Virginia. She grew up in a historically African American community in Lenoir, North Carolina where she lives today. Gloster was raised by her grandparents in a house full of other children. Her grandfather, who she calls “Daddy,” traveled back and forth from North Carolina to West Virginia to work in the coal mines. Whenever he was back home with the family, Gloster said he was always singing and telling stories.
“Daddy would sing ‘John Henry,’ and when he didn’t sing it, we’d ask him to sing it,” Gloster said. “And after he would sing it one time we’d say, ‘Daddy, sing it again. Daddy, sing it again.’”
Gloster thinks her grandfather was drawn to John Henry because the story resonated with his experience as a coal miner—another job that is physically demanding and dangerous.
Gloster is a memory painter. One of her recent paintings shows her childhood home in North Carolina, with her Mama and Daddy both sitting on the porch. In the painting, her Daddy is singing “John Henry” while all the children dance in the yard. Photo by Theresa Gloster
“He knew what it took to go in those mines and to work,” Gloster said. “And he also knew the ins and outs because his father got killed in the coal mines. So he knew the hardship of it. And he also knew the joy to be able to provide for his family.” For Gloster, the story of “John Henry” was a lesson from her grandfather about hard work and perseverance.
“To me, John Henry had a determination,” Gloster said. “Regardless of how hard it is, and how hard life was…you don’t let it beat you down. You get up and you just keep going, you just keep going.”
The ballad of “John Henry” remains important to Gloster today. In fact, she still sings it.
“When we get together—even to this day—if there’s a baby around, somebody is going to start singing ‘John Henry,’” Gloster said. Singing the song helps Gloster feel connected to her grandfather.
“To sing the song to this day, I enjoy it as if he was singing through me,” Gloster said. “It’s like, all of a sudden his presence just comes up in the room. Just Daddy’s sound, I can just hear his voice. And everything is positive to me.”
I Feel Like It’s Kind of Propaganda But not everybody has positive associations with the ballad of “John Henry.” Some people, like Ruby Daniels, see the song differently.
“I feel like it’s kind of propaganda. That this Black man would sacrifice himself for industry. Maybe he sacrificed himself so his family could eat,” Daniels said.
Ruby Daniels of Beckley, West Virginia learned “John Henry” in her middle school choir class. For her, the song tells a tragic story about the exploitation of Black workers. Photo by Mary Hufford
Daniels is in her 40s and lives outside of Beckley, West Virginia in what used to be a Black coal camp. Her family has lived in the area since the late 1800s. Daniels grew up in Maryland, but spent summers in West Virginia with her grandmother. On the drive from Maryland to West Virginia, Daniels’s family would pass through Hinton, and they often stopped to see the statue of John Henry there. It’s located by the Big Bend Tunnel, where some versions of the ballad say the competition took place. As a kid, Daniels was impressed by the statue.
“I thought it was amazing to see this beautiful Black—I mean, the statue is black, and he’s muscular, and he has these mallets in his hand,” Daniels said. “He’s like a chocolate candy bar. He looks so good.”
Daniels learned “John Henry” in her middle school choir program. But she never heard anyone in her family sing it. Like Gloster, Daniels also comes from a family of coal miners. But for Daniels’s family, they didn’t have a positive connection with the song. Henry’s death in the story cuts too close to home.
“Coal is not our friend,” Daniels said. “I have a great uncle that died in the coal mines. …My great-grandfather was a coal cutter, so he was injured by the mountains. A lot of the older men that would come around here, hang out with my grandparents—they were amputees. They would have legs gone. And everybody had black lung, including my grandmother.”
When Daniels hears “John Henry,” she hears the story of how Black and immigrant workers have been exploited throughout the country’s history.
“In regards to Great Bend, it wasn’t just John Henry that died. A lot of people got silicosis from drilling into these mountains,” Daniels said.” I learned that between 800 and 1000 people died in the Great Bend—in the building of that… I just feel like that’s been a common history with African American labor. In any event, even you know, back to slavery. That, ‘Oh, we can kill that property. We will work them to death on the cotton fields. We’ll work them to death on the tobacco fields.’”
Throwing the Hammer Down Like Daniels, singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah also sees “John Henry” as a story about the exploitation of workers.
“His proof of worth was the fact that he could work faster than a machine and that he dies in the process,” Kiah said. “That’s pretty devastating.”
Kiah is in her 30s and lives in Johnson City, Tennessee. She’s a member of the roots music supergroup Our Native Daughters, which is made up of four Black female banjo players. For their debut album, Kiah co-wrote a song titled “Polly Ann’s Hammer.”
The song is a reworking of Sid Hemphill’s version of “John Henry.” With Kiah singing lead, “Polly Ann’s Hammer” tells the story of John Henry’s wife.
Amythyst Kiah of Johnson City, Tennessee is a singer-songwriter and a member of the group Our Native Daughters. She co-wrote the song “Polly Ann’s Hammer” that centers the experience of John Henry’s wife, Polly Ann. Photo by Sandlin Gaither
“Everybody knows who John Henry is,” Kiah said. “We know that story. But what we wanted to highlight and bring to the forefront is Polly Ann.”
Many versions of “John Henry” include references to Polly Ann. But not all. For instance, when Gloster was growing up, she never heard her grandfather sing about Polly Ann.
“I didn’t know that John Henry had a little woman and her name was Polly Ann,” Gloster said. “And John Henry got sick and they put him to bed and said ‘and Polly drove that steel, like a man. Polly drove that steel like a man.’”
When Gloster learned about Polly Ann, she was reminded of a time in her own life, when she was married to a coal miner and living in West Virginia. It brought up memories of the hard work the women in the community did. Gloster realized that “John Henry” was also a song about the women’s strength.
“Where he left off, she just picked up the torch and she said she’d carry on,” Gloster said. “She could do whatever he couldn’t do, and she’d be the best that she could be. And that’s what you see in those women out there. It’s like they handled things. I really see that in them. And in that song, you see the strength of the woman, you see her strength.”
For Kiah, writing “Polly Ann’s Hammer” was a way to pay homage to Polly Ann and the working-class women she represents.
“She was the one that had to take care of the kids. She was the one that had to create a sanctuary for her family. And on top of that, she could also drive steel,” Kiah said. “She’s got two jobs. One involves forgetting your sense of humanity and the other one involves very much having to have humanity—to deal with your children, to deal with your husband who is also a tired cog in the wheel. …So, if anything, you could even argue that her life is more difficult.”
The song was also a way to envision a different future for Polly Ann’s child. A future where people aren’t just a cog in a machine, but one where their humanity is recognized. In the last verse of the song, Kiah sings, “This little hammer killed John Henry/Won’t kill me, won’t kill me/This little hammer killed your daddy/Throw it down and we’ll be free.”
“Polly Ann is hoping that one day her child is gonna have more options than maybe what she had,” Kiah said. “So, the idea of throwing the hammer down and you’ll be free—to be free to choose what you want to do, which is an important part of freedom.
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
