As a result of "Deep River's" incorporation into the choral canon early on, we seem to have no version of that is likely to be anywhere near traditional, or in its original folk form.

My question is, can anyone turn up genuine traditional folk sources for "Deep River?"

Such sources should NOT be the Fisk University Jubilee Singers or any other such choir, as those organizations radically changed the songs they sang.

I am looking for some clue to what the song was like before it was hijacked by the educators and classicists like quite a few early spirituals (Swing Low, Old Ark's a-Moverin', Steal Away, etc).

The usual verses, given in the only DT thread substantially dealing with this song (which itself deals mostly with "Steal Away"), seem clearly the product of educated composition, not slave (or free) traditional singers.

"Deep River" is absent from almost all the early folk song studies in which spirituals appear in numbers, starting with Allen et al, Slave Songs of the United States, and continuing with Dorothy Scarborough, Odom and Johnson, and Work's American Negro Songs and Spirituals. It does, however, appear in Lomax & Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs, 594-5. Lomax gives no source, so we're left with a song that seems rootless.

Note that Lomax gives what sound like traditional verses. I don't know if we can take them at face value, for the Lomaxes often cobbled together verses to complete fragmentary songs. (Note also the Lomax rather facetious addendum concerning the father, aunty, etc. verses).

Clearly Lomax&Lomax did not think much of this song, probably because it was being sung, not by the genuine folk, but by the Marian Andersons of the haute couture spiritual business.

DEEP RIVER

CHO:
Deep river,
Deep river, Lawd,
Deep river, Lawd,
I want to cross over in a ca'm time.

I'm gonna meet death smilin',
I'm gonna meet death smilin', Lawd,
I'm gonna meet death smilin', Lawd,
I want to cross over in a ca'm time.

My mother's done crossed over,
My mother's done crossed over, Lawd,
My mother's done crossed over, Lawd,
I want to cross over in a ca'm time.

And sometimes, it seems, one's father "has done crossedover," and one's sister, brother, aunty, and cousins, along with the elders and the deacons of the church. —John A. and Alan Lomax.