A couple months ago, I happened to think of the line "Strummin' with the rhythm that the drivers made" in Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." A few lines before that, it's mentioned that Johnny used to "sit beneath the tree by the railroad track," so I'm assuming that the "drivers" there are steel drivers, hammering in the railroad spikes like John Henry did.
Then it occurred to me that what Johnny B. Goode is doing here is sort of the opposite of a sea shanty. Sailors sang sea shanties to coordinate work; the rhythm of the song synchronized the workers. Here, Johnny's taking the rhythm of the workers and - through extracting its rhythm - practicing his strumming.
