Rick, the song sounds pretty much the same as the later version (I have the Moses A. version from the mid40s, which I guess is the version you are referring to -- it even has the same bass runs, if my memory serves), but the early version is wrapped up in a story Lead Belly tells as he is going along (like a number of these songs) that purports to explain how each verse came to be sung. There is also a second partial "take". In the first version, he comes back home and finds a "clean house" -- she is gone. In the second, he finds her still there, and she tells him that she is through with him, and the verse about taking morphine and dying appears. All very cheery. I will bring it along tonight.
yours, Peter T.