This old hammer killed John Henry, won’t kill me
Chain gang near Asheville, 1915. Postcard image. Text in upper right reads “Stripes but no Stars” (Image from North Carolina Office of Archives and History)
This is the second of three posts on “Swannanoa Tunnel.” You can read the first here and the third here.
North Carolina-based musician and radio host Wayne Erbsen makes a curious claim in introducing his performance of “Swannanoa Tunnel” on the compilation album In the Land of the Sky: Songs and Stories of the Swannanoa Valley. He says that it is a “true song, that was sung by the crew that actually built the tunnel,” and talks about the source of the first recorded version.
Whatever Erbsen means in this context by “true song,” I believe he’s right in saying that the first recorded version of “Swannanoa Tunnel” was Lunsford’s (whom we listened to in the previous post). Credit for “collecting” the song in some published format, however, goes to Cecil Sharp, who collected it for English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians as “Swannanoa Town.” Lunsford acknowledges this in the comments I quoted from him in the previous post; and he rightly, I think, dismisses Sharp’s thesis about it. This website tells the story of Sharp’s collection and him presenting us with a mondegreen. Artus Moser gives us a faithful rendering of Sharp’s misheard collected version, complete with the “hoodow calling,” on his North Carolina Ballads.
“Swannanoa Town” performed by Artus Moser (Spotify)
Music for “Swannanoa Town” from Cecil Sharp’s ‘English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians’
“The relation of ‘Swannanoa Tunnel’ to John Henry work songs is something of a puzzle, and I have not investigated the tune derivations as much as I should. The tune in Lunsford and Stringfield is fairly common as a John Henry work song tune. As you have probably noticed, it is very similar to the tune in my book, p. 80, transcribed from a Brunswick phonograph record. I have never yet seen or heard a version of this tune which did not include a John Henry stanza, and I think this is pretty good evidence that the early history of the tune was closely connected with a work song about John Henry. The real derivation of the tune, of course, is probably to be found in an old hymn, but in its present secular usages, I am inclined to think that it has had a longer connection with John Henry than with the other work song types like ‘Swannanoa Tunnel’.”
Something of a puzzle
Cecil Sharp (source Wikipedia)
4. An English Folk Song transplanted to Southern Appalachia, which may or may not have been informed by an old hymn tune. Again, much of this, Sharp’s theory, was dismissed pretty much right away with Lunsford’s comments, and probably correctly. It’s possible that some source of the music came from English sources or hymnody; but, as we’ve seen, there can be a tendency among folklorists of this time to point back to “more authentic” sources even without real evidence.
I’m of the opinion that “puzzle” is a less apt metaphor than “river delta” for what is going on with this song–a river with a few tributaries to begin with, and a number of cross-currents.If the song was indeed a song sung by the workers, I’m not sure how one goes about verifying (or falsifying) this claim, if it’s actually important to do so. There are at least three points of curiosity for me on this point, though. The first is how and when this song might have been sung by the workers. The second is “which workers?”. Lastly, when might this song have taken on a more or less definitive shape and become its own song?
In the previous post, we read Wilma Dykeman’s account of music in the work camp: “if there was a banjo or guitar handy—and there usually was—someone ‘made music’ for the camp. The lonely, bawdy, sentimental, realistic music of all railroad camps, all men in stripes everywhere.” “Swannanoa Tunnel” fits this description in some elements, but not others. In most versions, though, it is hard to imagine it being sung while doing hard labor, or without the benefit of instruments.
Among the recorded versions I can find, there is only one that forms the song into a “field holler“–an arrangement that might plausibly have been sung by workers while working. This is Frank Warner‘s performance of “Asheville Junction” from the Newport Folk Festival:
One thing that strikes me as a little odd is that I can’t find a single example of an African-American interpreter of the song, from any era. If you know of any, please tell me. “John Henry,” for example, doesn’t lack on this score. 94% of the workers constructing the rail line and the tunnel were African-American, but I can’t find any evidence that this song has been carried forward by African-American interpreters.
Any number of plausible reasons may account for this, including limited access such interpreters (particularly convicts or ex-convicts) may have had in the late 19th or early 20th centuries to having their performances documented or recorded. We shouldn’t mistake what’s documented for what is real. It’s possible that the song was part of the repertoire of some early African-American string bands, whose music is now being revived through the music of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, among others.
The African-American prisoners brought in to build the rail line and the tunnel were mostly not from the region. Most, I imagine, left; and the song likely remained behind as a bit of local folklore. Many of the workers who survived the construction were probably just as happy to leave the memory of its building completely behind.
Alan Lomax (source: openculture.org)
I’ve mentioned before the musical similarity of “Swannanoa Tunnel” to “Nine Pound Hammer,” which is also thought to be a close musical relative of “Take This Hammer,” if not the same song. Although most of the versions of “Nine Pound Hammer” you will hear are in the bluegrass genre, you can hear in this recording, collected by Alan Lomax of “Take This Hammer,” traces of the root song. Lomax’s recording was made at Parchman Farm in Mississippi in 1947. It may be that Warner’s version, despite being anomalous, is maybe a little closer to authentic than all the rest.
We’ve had occasion earlier in this blog to discuss how songs and stories that may have started from within an African American context gradually, or not so gradually, get taken over, or have their sources obscured by broader social factors or the overwhelming force of the “folk process.” It’s a strange, but not uncommon, issue of cultural visibility and appropriation. I don’t know that that’s what happened here, though. My best guess is that if this was a song actually sung by the workers, something like “Take This Hammer” or “Nine Pound Hammer” came in with them, and the song became “Swannanoa Tunnel” for a time. When the workers left, “Swannanoa Tunnel” stayed, and flowed into a few other streams, at least when it came to musical arrangement.
It’s an interesting question as to how many different forms it may have taken before it was “collected” by Sharp or Lunsford. Was the John Henry reference contemporaneous to the 1879 construction, or was that added in later? Many different questions. Nevertheless, it seems clear that most varieties of the song now available take their bearings from Lunsford in approach and instrumentation. Regardless, in thinking about Erbsen’s claim that “Swannanoa Tunnel” is a “true song,” we can take refuge in what Tom acknowledged in a comment on one of last week’s posts: “folk music is always true; sometimes, however, the facts are different.”
Next up
In wrestling through a few different issues with this post, which actually surprised me a bit with how tangled it became, I find that I need to defer fulfillment on one of the promises made in the previous. So, in my next and (I think) final post on “Swannanoa Tunnel” this week, I’ll provide a few more interesting versions of the song, including, importantly for our purposes, a few with not so subtle hints of murderousness.
I’ll leave you with British guitarist Martin Simpson‘s instrumental version of “Swannanoa Tunnel.” I’m sure Cecil Sharp would be happy to hear it.