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:
“The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but today, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some “Judæa Capta,” with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him.... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart’s blood.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)
“So every journey that I make
Leads me, as in the story he was led,
To some new ambush, to some fresh mistake:
So every journey I begin foretells
A weariness of daybreak, spread
With carrion kisses, carrion farewells.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)