Story
The song tells the story of a mysterious and quiet miner who earned the nickname Big John because of his height, weight, and muscular physique ("He stood six foot six and weighed two forty-five"). He supposedly came from New Orleans, where he killed a man over a Cajun Queen.
One day, a support timber cracked at the mine where John worked. The situation looked hopeless until John "grabbed a saggin' timber, gave out with a groan / and like a giant oak tree just stood there alone", then "gave a mighty shove", opening a passage and allowing the 20 other miners to escape the mine. Although the miners were about to reenter the mine with the tools necessary to save him, the mine fully collapsed and John was believed to have died in the depths of the mine. The mine itself was never reopened, but a marble stand was placed in front of it, with the words "At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man---Big John". (Some versions of the song change the last line to "lies a big, big man" to replace what was at the time considered to be borderline profane language.)
Its 1962 sequel, The Cajun Queen, describes the arrival of "Queenie", Big John's Cajun Queen, who rescues John from the mine and marries him. Eventually, they have "a hundred and ten grandchildren". The sequel's events are more exaggerated than the first, extending the story into the realm of tall tales.
In June 1962, the story continued (and evidently concludes) with the arrival of Little Bitty Big John, (the flip side to Steel Men on Columbia 4-42483), learning about his Father's act of heroism.
In 1964, Dottie West recorded a sequel to the song called My Big John. This song was told from the point of view of the "Cajun Queen" that drove John away---her search for him, then discovering about his death.
Read more about this topic: Big Bad John
Famous quotes containing the word story:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When I die, my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills. That’s the story of my private life.”
—Gloria Swanson (1897–1983)
“If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, “I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life.” I mean people are going to say, “You’re crazy.” Plus they’re going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that’s a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)