"Driving that train, high on cocaine / Casey Jones, you better watch your speed" kicks off what is perhaps the best-known and most popular song from the Grateful Dead. The song is just one of the many cultural artifacts prompted by the story of John Luther "Casey" Jones, the much-mythologized railroad engineer who was killed at the beginning of the twentieth century in a Mississippi train collision. Historian Scott Huffard brings us along on a search for Casey Jones in archives, music, and folklore like none have before, uncovering his strange, enduring legacy in American culture. Along the way, we meet the railroaders, folklorists, hobos, striking workers, rambling bluesmen, and country music stars who all found meaning in Casey’s story and added new twists to the myth. 

Casey Jones is the real-life myth that connects the rise of industrial capitalism, the embryonic recorded music industry, and the beginnings of American mass pop culture. By telling this history of a man who was a casualty of corporate America’s drive to systematize and speed up work, Huffard uncovers something universal: Jones and all the songs about him speak not just to railroad labor but also to the lived experiences of millions who toil under brutal conditions with no songs to their name. 

R. Scott Huffard, Jr. is professor of history at Lees-McRae College and author of Engines of Redemption.