John Hardy: A Song History

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"John Hardy" is an anonymous ballad about a real killing at a West Virginia coal camp.[1][2] Hardy, a Black railroad worker, shot and killed another Black man during a dispute at a craps game.[1][2] He was hanged at Welch, in McDowell County, on January 19, 1894.[3] The song most likely began in McDowell County and spread fast: printed versions from West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina appeared within two decades of the execution.[1] Notes from Smithsonian Folkways call it "a ballad of African American origin" and say it became a favorite of Black and white singers alike.[4] Folklorists catalog it as Laws I2 and Roud 3262.[2]

1938 photograph of houses on a wooded hillside above a creek in the coal town of Welch, West Virginia

Marion Post Wolcott, Coal mining town in Welch, Bluefield section of West Virginia, photograph, 1938. Taken forty-four years after Hardy was hanged at Welch; shown for its setting.

As the ballad passed from singer to singer, Hardy's story became entangled with that of John Henry, the legendary steel-driving railroad man.[1] In Folk-Songs of the South (1925), John Harrington Cox printed nine texts on the assumption that Hardy and Henry were one man, and the Ballad Index notes that most of them mix in John Henry verses.[1][2] Louis Watson Chappell's later study, John Henry: A Folk-Lore Study, disputed those accounts and separated the heroic laborer from the outlaw Hardy.[1]

The ballad reached records early: Eva Davis sang it for Columbia in New York on April 22, 1924, with Samantha Bumgarner on banjo, and Buell Kazee recorded it for Brunswick on April 19, 1927.[5][6] The Carter Family cut it as "John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man" in Camden, New Jersey, on May 10, 1928, and Victor issued it in 1930 as V-40190; the disc label credited A. P. Carter as composer, although the ballad had been collected years earlier.[7][2] Harry Smith included that recording in his Anthology of American Folk Music, released by Folkways in 1952.[8][9] Lead Belly performed it too, and Smithsonian Folkways has issued a version on which he accompanies himself on accordion; the notes say he developed it on the button accordion, the first instrument he played.[4] Other performers have included Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs and the Kingston Trio.[1] Jim Miller includes it in 15 Tunes In The Public Domain Recorded By The Carter Family, Volume 2, a collection of songs recorded by the Carter Family with mountain dulcimer tablature, lyrics and chord symbols, published by Fingers Of Steel.[10]

Our book that contains the song "John Hardy"

Sources

  1. e-WV, The West Virginia Encyclopedia: "John Hardy".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "John Hardy [Laws I2]".
  3. West Virginia Archives & History: "On This Day in West Virginia History: January 19".
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection" (booklet).
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 81712. John Hardy / Eva Davis".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Brunswick matrix E22493-E22494. John Hardy / Buell Kazee".
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-45024. John Hardy was a desperate little man / Carter Family".
  8. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Folkways FP 251 (LP). Anthology of American folk music volume one: Ballads".
  9. Smithsonian Folkways: "Anthology of American Folk Music Selected for GRAMMY Hall of Fame".
  10. Fingers Of Steel: "Jim Miller, 15 Tunes In The Public Domain Recorded By The Carter Family, Volume 2".
  11. Image: Marion Post Wolcott, Coal mining town in Welch, Bluefield section of West Virginia, photograph, 1938. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

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