in the company of such "tall tale" legends as Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Calamity Jane. Together, they battle the same villains Daniel is facing in his "real" world.

But how do you dramatize a tall tale that's so ingrained in our psyches? Writer Leon Martell and composer Penka Kouneva have avoided the question altogether. Instead of dramatizing the John Henry ...

Sometimes, though, tall tales center on a real person around whom stories gather, people like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Calamity Jane, John Henry, Molly Pitcher…and John Chapman. John Chapman ...

Now think of that man–his lanky figure in an old suit and an unpressed shirt–walking step for step with Paul Bunyan, setting up a rail spike for John Henry. What you’ve got is a tall tale.

John Henry went on his way. He had heard that any man good with a hammer could find work building the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad through West Virginia. That was where he had been going when he ...

Local historian Albert Burkhardt will tell the tale of “The Real John Henry” 7 p.m. Wednesday at the 1884 Warwick Courthouse in Newport News, as the Friends of the Lee Hall Depot begin their ...

After Carolyn Krause heard Charlotte Blake Alston at the recent Flatwater Tales Storytelling Festival tell the story of John Henry, the African American folk hero and legendary railroad worker, she ...