"This is a ballad, and it's appropriate to Labor Day. It's a classic ballad about human beings versus machine power. And the origins of the song go back to the 1870s (post-Civil War reconstruction period), but I think it's a song about today, given that often the economic struggles we have is between whether a machine or computer should do it, or a human being." -- Larry Brown on 'The Ballad of John Henry', which he performs at 1:38. September 3, 2018