Many versions of the song have been recorded, most notably by Traffic, whose 1970 album John Barleycorn Must Die is named after the song.
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In the 1973 horror film The Wicker Man, a Scottish Policeman played by Edward Woodward searches for a missing child on the west Scottish island of Summerisle, which is populated by modern-day pagans who engage in various Celtic rituals, one of which is the baking of barley bread into the figure of a man known as John Barleycorn, who is referred to by the baker as "The life of the fields".
As did most of their albums, it featured influences from jazz and blues, but the version of the traditional English folk tune "John Barleycorn" also showed the musicians attending to the same strains of folk baroque and electric folk as contemporary British bands Pentangle and Fairport Convention.
The song's spoken intro – "I preach my dear friends, you are about to receive on John Barleycorn, nicotine and the temptations of Eve" – dates to the 1947 novelty recording "Cigareetes, Whuskey and Wild, Wild Women" by Red Ingle and His Natural Seven.
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