.. a very old song

Joplin / mandolin ..
Jason / guitar and vocals ..
Dave / event manager ..
crowd / loud ..

been recorded as blues all the way to country ..

but - still got the blues ..
Lyrics
19Nov2014

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Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as blues legend Leadbelly, as did many others released this song ..

For almost a hundred years after the abolition of slavery, convicts, mostly African American, were leased to work as forced labor in the mines, railroad camps, brickyards, turpentine farms, and then on road gangs of the American South. Forced labor on chain gangs, levees, and huge, plantation-like prison farms continued well into the twentieth century. It was not unusual for work songs like "Take this Hammer" and its "floating verses" to drift between occupations along with the itinerant laborers who sang them. The elements of both the ballad of "John Henry" and the "Take This Hammer" complex appear to date from the late nineteenth century, probably the 1870s.
- from Wikipedia