Ain't No More Cane

"Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos" (/ˈbræzəs/ ^ⓘ BRAZ-əs) is a traditional prison work song of the Southern United States. The title and lyrics allude to prison work gangs cutting sugar cane as hard labor along the banks of the Brazos River in Texas, where many of the state's prison farms were located in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The song has been recorded and covered many times, including by Alan Lomax, The Band, and Bob Dylan. It is sometimes attributed to Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter); while he did make several recordings of a short version of it, titled "Go Down, Ol' Hannah", the song did not originate with him and most versions sung are not derived specifically from his lyrics. Lomax understood its source to be the Texas prison community.

The song relates the harsh conditions of prison labor on the Brazos: the narrator contemplates making an escape and describes members of the work gang succumbing to exhaustion, wind chill, and heat stroke, linking the prospect of their rising again to the rising of the sun (called "Old Hannah") and the coming of the Last Judgment: "If you rise any more, bring Judgment Day [with you]." Some versions of the song contain the line "Wake up, dead man", which is the source of the name of folklorist Bruce Jackson's 1972 work Wake Up Dead Man: Afro-American Worksongs from Texas Prisons (later re-subtitled: Hard Labor and Southern Blues); it also inspired the title of Rian Johnson's 2025 film Wake Up Dead Man.