Mississippi John Hurt's "Casey Jones"
Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 12:40 PM
In Mississippi John Hurt’s “Casey Jones,” the melody stayed fairly consistent throughout the song. There were a few changes in rhythm such as when the dialog begins. Mississippi John Hurt clearly changed his voice to make it clear that there were two people having a conversation in the song. Although, the lyrics began to talk about the death of Casey Jones, a father, the music did not change to express these emotions. One reason the music did not change was that the woman, Casey’s wife, did not seem troubled or hurt by the death of her husband but was instead excited at the thought of her children getting a pension.
Many blues songs give listeners a glimpse into what life was life during the times sung about in the songs. The lyrics are expressive of the times during the early 1900s. Because Casey’s wife is so concerned with receiving the pension it is clear that the Jones family and many others during that time were struggling financially.
Reader Comments (3)
The lyrical differences between the several versions of “Casey Jones” are due to artistic intent by the performers and a product of the environment that they were written in. Lucas Oliver (link:http://tinyurl.com/yk8h4qs) discusses how the Grateful Dead’s version of the song “takes the music of a classic American psychedelic rock band and uses the traditional lyrics as a metaphor to some of their own inside drug problems.” The lyrical retooling of the song to fit the Grateful Dead’s purpose is both understandable and to our own benefit (if lyrical and musical styles had not changed, you’d know Def Leppard as Def Mozart) because it gives us a deeper pool of analysis into the changes and developments of popular music. Lucas Oliver also points out how “the idea of ‘authenticity’ is practiced through a completely different style, and different meaning.” The notion of authenticity is really ambiguous when evaluating Mississippi John Hurt and The Grateful Dead; they’re both undoubtedly “authentic” yet they are separated by 42 years and different in almost every way. The different identities of each Casey Jones, one of an admirable railcar man and another of a cocaine abusing person pushing the limit, define authenticity to a different audience and with a different intent.
The lyrical address and relation of the singer to Casey Jones also changes between Mississippi John Hurt and the Grateful Dead. In Mississippi John Hurt’s version we hear of Casey Jones as a folk hero who died admirably and lives in the psyche of American heroes (this may sound overly dramatic, but this is to characterize that type of folk hero). The Grateful Dead completely alter that relationship and talk about Casey Jones in a more descriptive and foreboding manner. Taylor Fridrich (link: http://tinyurl.com/tayfri)
analyzes the way Jerry Garcia’s delivery as intending to be “talking directly to Casey Jones, Warning him, and trying to grab his attention with intensified volume and instrumentals.” This a really good point, and draw upon the difference in relationship that the performer has to the subject their focusing on.
For your essays, look to draw comparisons of lyrical content in relation to the song as a whole, and maybe the historical context it is in or the particular performer. Look at how the song promotes a message, or and ideal, and think about how that may have changed or stayed the same over the course of history. As you can all imagine, “popular” in popular culture is built upon what preceded it adapted to a particular context, and these songs are no different.
i analyzed the same song, i question the idea that they are struggling financially when Casey Jones is an engineer. If he's an engineer, shouldn't they be well off, what do you think of that dichotomy?
I like that you suggest that the reason there is no change in emotions in the song is because the wife doesn't seem to have the loss of her husband forefront in her mind. However, could the lack of emotion also be because she knows what a good man her husband was when he died? As i read from a few other people's critiques, Casey Jones ended up as a sort of hero. If that is also how Casey's wife views the matter, it may be that she isn't distraught by the death but more focuses on how great of a man he was and how brave he was up until his death.