Online Encyclopedia
Casey Jones
Casey Jones is a folksong hero based on accounts of John Luther Jones , a railroad man. The song was written by his fireman, Wallace Sanders .
According to the article on Yalobusha: Famed railroad engineer J. L. "Casey" Jones moved from Jackson, Tennessee to Water Valley in 1893. In 1896, four years before his death in a train wreck which brought him fame, Jones moved back to Jackson.
Jones was killed in a railroad disaster in Yazoo County, just north of Vaughan, Mississippi, in 1900.
Jones' picture appeared on a 1950 United States postage stamp honoring railroad engineers.
Joe Hill used Jones as an anti-hero in his parody song "Casey Jones, the Union Scab", later sung by Harry McClintock and Utah Phillips, among others.
There was a TV series of the same name in the 1960's.