To muddy the waters a little more, see Paul Oliver's 'Songsters & Saints' page 20 for a discussion of Peg Leg Howell's 'Rolling Mill Blues' that was recorded for Columbia in April 1929. Oliver points out its lyrics appear to have derived from a song cluster in the white tradition that included 'In the Pines' and 'The Longest Train'. The headless body is 'lovin' Corinne' and linked to a mining train accident. Here is Oliver's partial transcription:

The rollin' mill, babe it done broke down
Ain't no shippin' no iron to town

The longest train I ever seen
Run round Joe Brown's coal mine

The engine was at the coal mine hill
And the captain never left town

The train run off the track last night
And it killed my lovin' Corinne

Her head was found in the drivin' wheel
And her body have never been seen

Oliver goes on to refer to Judith McCulloh's unpublished Ph.D thesis for Indiana University (1970), titled 'In the Pines: The Melodic-Textual Identity of an American Lyric Folk-Song Cluster', which was based on the study of 160 variants of the song on record and in print. McCulloh believes the mine references were to mines in Dade County, Georgia, owned by Governor Joseph Emerson Brown in the 1870s. She suggests the railroad accident with the gruesome headless body image probably originated in the Reconstruction period. In Oliver's words, 'Howell was synthesising verses that had been in currency for over half a century'.

For a discussion of the interweaving of the songs 'The Longest Train', 'In the Pines', 'Reuben's Train', 'Train 45' and '900 Miles' see Norm Cohen 'Long Steel Rail' Uni of Illinois Press pp 491-517.

--Stewie