Customer Reviews

John Henry

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My husband and I recently went on a 12 hour road trip with our kids ages 5 and 6 and I was scrambling for diversions. On a whim I picked up this CD and it was the hit of the road trip. We listened to it over and over again and after a few times everyone could recite their favorite lines by heart-even my husband! Denzel Washington gives a great performance on CD just as in the movies and BB King's music was very cool! I look forward to purchasing more Rabbit Ears stories on disc. Not only does it provide great music but the kids remember a great classic story they might not have wanted to sit still and read.

The Rabbit Ears series of radio teleplays of classic folk tales, which I believe was originally produced
for NPR, is uniformly terrific. Besides presenting literate and accessible versions of these stories for
kids, Rabbit Ears uses famous narrators, mostly actors and comedians, and popular musicians to
accompany them, enabling adults to thoroughly enjoy them too.

Among the best is John Henry, the great legend of the steel-driving hero who battled and beat a steam
drill before dying "with a hammer in his hand", as told by Denzel Washington with music by B.B.
King. It goes almost without saying that Washington and King do a great job, but, of course, the real
magic lies in the story itself. Based on a purportedly historical figure, who worked on digging the Big
Bend Tunnel in West Virginia for the C & O Railroad, the legend of John Henry stands for the
quintessential American value of the indomitability of the human spirit and the capacity of the
individual to accomplish the extraordinary. It also highlights the undercurrent of Luddism that has
characterized the West's uneasy relationship with machines and our recurring fear that they will make
humankind obsolete.

But heck, kids won't care about any of that stuff and the cultural import won't even be at the forefront
of adult minds. Listeners will simply be enthralled by an amusing tall tale brilliantly told. Highly
recommended for car rides.

GRADE : A+

Many things make this a "do not recommend" - which is tragic when so much time and talent seems to be poured into it.

a) The constant backbeat is distracting and based on the assumption that kids need continual noise and "background music" to anything they are listening to. This scatters kids attention.

b) Denzel does a great actor's job of a Jamaican accent, which is full of terrible English. I don't want my kids talking this way.

c) Political correct nonsense. One story is about a Tiger and a Spider. Denzel says it is an African story brought when slaves were taken here. Well, there are no tigers in Africa, so I guess you took it from somewhere else, mon.

I don't want my kids told lies about their African heritage, there is enough truth. I don't want them speaking like an unschooled huckster, and we don't need six layers of jazz to listen to a story!