A series of eight programmes in which Paul Oliver looks at the origins of blues music and at the kinds of music which preceded it.
7: John Henry and the Boll Weevil
White ballad traditions gave a form which black 'songsters' could use, but they sang of heroes with whom they could identify - the indestructible insect, the boll weevil, the steel-driver John Henry , and the bad man Railroad Bill. Mono