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Permalink Reply by Kevin Sprague (Knotlenny) on August 20, 2009 at 1:35am

What a Great Idea, Joker! It'll be interesting to hear the diverse takes on this song/story. It inspired me to come up with an interpretation of my own . . . . and I've already emailed it to you.
I hope some others will kick in, as well! It'd be cool to have Speal, Hollowbelly, Beshore and Oakroot versions . . . among the others.
K

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Permalink Reply by Joker on August 20, 2009 at 5:49am

And a fine rendition it is K. Thanks for contributing!

Knotlenny said:

What a Great Idea, Joker! It'll be interesting to hear the diverse takes on this song/story. It inspired me to come up with an interpretation of my own . . . . and I've already emailed it to you.
I hope some others will kick in, as well! It'd be cool to have Speal, Hollowbelly, Beshore and Oakroot versions . . . among the others.
K

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Sprague (Knotlenny) on August 20, 2009 at 7:17am

My earliest awareness of a John Henry song was as a kid of about 7 or 8 in the early 1960's - listening repeatedly to my beloved New Christy Minstrels LP. That's just about as whitebread as it gets. After that it was probably Burl Ives or somebody. It took awhile for the Leadbelly (or even Woody Guthrie) versions to penetrate into my small town suburban Wasp cocoon of awareness.

John Henry is a great story . . and of course in it you've got the whole Man vs. Machine thing.

Glad you came up with this idea, Joker. Hope you'll take on more projects like this in the future.

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Permalink Reply by Joker on August 26, 2009 at 11:10pm

All tracks by Friday to make it in the show.

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