Early Versions
A manuscript variant of "Take This Hammer" from 1915 was published folklorist and English professor Newman Ivey White:
This old hammer killed John Henry,
But it can't kill me.
Take this hammer, take it to the Captain,
Tell him I'm gone, babe, tell him I'm gone.
In the 1920s, folklorists, notably Dorothy Scarborough (1925) and Guy Johnson and Howard W. Odum (1926), also collected transcribed versions. Scarborough's short text, published in her book, On The Trail of Negro Folk-Songs (1925), is the first version published under the title "Nine-Pound Hammer", before the earliest commercial recording of that name. This was the white "hillbilly" (as country music was then called) 78 single by Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters. Hopkins's "Nine Pound Hammer" added the chorus "Roll on buddy / Don't you roll so slow. / How can I roll / When the wheels won't go?" This was the first of many hillbilly recordings of the song, including, notably (The Monroe Brothers' "Nine Pound Hammer Is Too Heavy", in 1936.) Carl Sandburg's popular anthology, The American Songbag (1927) contains the song "My Old Hammah" ("Shine like silver"). In 1928, before the Depression put an end to his recording career, African-American blues singer Mississippi John Hurt issued a commercial single, "Spike Driver Blues" on Okeh records. This song, with intricate finger-picked guitar accompaniment, combines some elements of the "Joh Henry" ballad. It was later included in Harry Smith's celebrated 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music LP set, leading to the rediscovery of the performer. Norm Cohen terms "Spike Driver Blues" "a lyrical variant of "Nine-Pound Hammer" and "more an entertainment piece than an actual work song, but their close kinship is unmistakable".
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