![]() ![]() Countless 20th-century singers have sung the song, from Mississippi John Hurt, Pete Seeger and Gillian Welch to Johnny Cash, Harry Belafonte and Woody Guthrie. Disrupting the foundational folk legend of “John Henry” - the late 19th-century tale of a “steel-driving” railroad man who, in his noble quest to outwork modern steam-drill technology, ends up working himself to death - is a near-blasphemous gesture in American folk music, akin to rewriting scripture. Why don’t you two write a song about Polly Ann, because nobody knows Polly Ann’s story. ![]() “Maybe,” she pondered out loud to Kiah and Russell one day, “you could reimagine the John Henry story. The singer-banjoist and MacArthur Genuis had convened a group of fellow artists - Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah -in January 2018 to record the collaborative concept album Songs of Our Native Daughters to interpret and revive long-extinct forms of music. As she tends to do, Rhiannon Giddens had an idea. ![]()
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