John The Balladeer!

Manly Wade Wellman was one of his generation's finest writers of fantasy and weird science fiction. He also dabbled in comic, writing The Spirit for several years while Will Eisner completed his military service. In the early 1950's in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Wellman created "Silver John" (his last name is never revealed in the short stories), a character who roamed the hill country of North Carolina with his silver-stringed guitar on his back. He was an itinerant creature who used his talents as a musician to pay for his food and sometimes board. He depended on the kindness of others and offered his particular help when needed. He had a knack for finding supernatural trouble and in his own forthright way, armed with memory loaded with folk songs, found ways to beat back the evils which seemed to lurk in many of the shadowy hollers and sun-soaked peaks of his Appalachian region. 

Wellman wrote his Silver John stories during the 50's into the early 60's and these were collected in Who Fears the Devil? In the early 70's a movie was made, but more on that later. After some time, Wellman wrote a handful of novels (The Old Gods Waken, After Dark, The Lost and the Lurking, The Hanging Stones, and The Voice of the Mountain) featuring the character and then some more short stories, including his very last short story which is included in this collection simply titled John the Balladeer. 

"O Ugly Bird!", "The Desrick on Yandro", "Vandy, Vandy", "One Other", "Call Me from the Valley", "The Little Black Train", "Shiver in the Pines", "Walk Like a Mountain", "On the Hills and Everywhere", "Old Devlins Was A-Waiting", "Nine Yards of Other Cloth", "Wonder as I Wander: Some Footprints on John's Trail through Magic Mountains", and "Farther Down the Trail" are the tales and vignettes which comprised the first collection Who Fears the Devil? In these yarns we see John confront deadly flying familiars, witch women, resurrected legends, and other dark forces.  "Trill Coster's Burden", "The Spring", "Owl Hoot in the Daytime", "Can These Bones Live?", "Nobody Ever Goes There", and "Where Did She Wander?" are the stories Wellman wrote a few decades later when he revisited John's backwoods universe. The novels alas are unavailable as far as I can tell save as vintage editions. 

The Legend of Hillbilly John also known as Fear the Devil is a 1972 low-budget affair which features Hedges Capers, a fair to middling singer but a less effective actor in the lead role. The story combines a few of the early short stories into a hodge-podge, but to its credit it does feature some good views of the legitimate landscape the stories were set in. The cast features a pretty effective array of talent more commonly seen on TV such as Denver Pyle, Severn Darden, Alfred Ryder, and Susan Strasberg. It's not a great movie, it's barely a good one, but it's not uninteresting and it features some offbeat stop-motion as well. If you want to watch it go here. 

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