Lyr Req: Your Long Journey / Your Lone Journey

Subject: Long Journey
From: Aoife
Date: 29 May 00 - 10:59 PM

Does anyone know the lyrics or origins of a song called "Long Journey?" I know it was recorded by Doc Watson at some time, the ???Holy modal rounders??? and also by Peter and Maryalice Amidon. The chorus goes "Oh my darlin, my darlin, my heart aches...." It is a beautiful song and I would love to know anything about it!

Cheers, Aoife

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: Stewie
Date: 30 May 00 - 01:50 AM

There is a Michael Hurley song by that name. It is the title track of one of his Rounder albums: 'Long Journey' Rounder CD 3011. I don't think it's the one you want as it does not include the line you quoted, but the Hurley song might be why you think it was possibly recorded by the Holy Modal Rounders.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: Stewie
Date: 30 May 00 - 02:42 AM

I think I've found the one you want. Rory Block and Lee Berg duet on a gospel-sounding 'Long Journey' on Woodstock Mountains 'More Music from Mud Acres'. It has a chorus: 'Oh my darling, my sweet darling/My heart breaks as you take your long journey'. It is credited to an R.Watson [unlikely to be Doc, as his name was Arthel]. Unfortunately, there is no lyric sheet. If no one else can readily supply the lyrics, I will transcribe them for you later.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 30 May 00 - 12:53 PM

It was also recorded on Rounder by Dry Branch Fire Squad, with Suzanne Thomas singing lead on the album entitled "Long Journey." One of the saddest and most beautiful songs I've ever heard.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: Aoife
Date: 30 May 00 - 03:15 PM

Thanks guys. Yes, it is a beautiful song. I first heard it sung by Suzannah and Rosie Armstrong Park in Boston a couple of weeks ago, then heard it on the newest album by the Holy Modal Rounders. These guys say they learned it off of a Doc Watson record. Has anyone heard of the Amidons, as I previously mentioned? I know it is on one of their CD's but I am not sure which one. And yes, the chorus goes "Oh my darlin, my darlin, my heart breaks when you take your long jurney..." Thanks again

-Aoife

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: Midchuck
Date: 30 May 00 - 04:28 PM

It was written by Rosa Lee Watson, Doc's wife. I'm not sure if she's still living or not.

Emmylou (sigh!) also recorded it.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: rich-joy
Date: 12 Jul 03 - 05:29 AM

any luck with the lyrics yet???

Cheers! R-J

Subject: Lyr Add: YOUR LONG JOURNEY (Doc Watson)
From: rich-joy
Date: 12 Jul 03 - 05:51 AM

just found on LyricsCafe!!

YOUR LONG JOURNEY
(Doc Watson / Rosa Lee Watson)

God's given us years of happiness here
Now we must part
And as the angels come and call for you
The pains of grief tug at my heart

Oh my darling
My darling
My heart breaks as you take your long journey

Oh the days will be empty
The nights so long without you my love
And when God calls for you I'm left alone
But we will meet in heaven above

Oh my darling
My darling
My heart breaks as you take your long journey

Fond memories i'll keep of happy ways
That on earth we trod
And when I come we will walk hand in hand
As one in Heaven in the family of God

Oh my darling
My darling
My heart breaks as you take your long journey


It's a heart-rending number - Ginny Hawker and Tracy Schwartz also do a nice version ...

Cheers! R-J

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: masato sakurai
Date: 12 Jul 03 - 06:23 AM

It's on Doc Watson's My Dear Old Southern Home album. Sound clip can be heard HERE.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: cetmst
Date: 12 Jul 03 - 07:23 AM

Lyrics, melody and harmony lines printed in Sing Out v. 17 #1, 1967, transcribed from singing of Doc Watson by Ethel Raim on Folkways
FA2366. Following note signed by D.K.Wilgus, Ralph Rinzler and Eugene Earle: This song entered the Watson Family repertoire from the Okeh recording of the wite country performer, Frank Hutchinson. Although Doc was certainly aware of the recording, he learned the song through the singing of his brother Arnold and feels he was influenced by Arnold's style. In the process, Hutchinson's nine-stanza text was shortened and the knife-guitar accompaniment restyled. The late Frank Hutchinson was a West Virginia artist and must have learned his repertoire and style from Negroes in railroad or mine camps. The song as a whole may be found on a blues recording unknown to me, but it is found in no printed collection I have seen. If the song is a "white blues", it was put together as others from Negro sources. White performers were recomposing songs from Negro sources before Jimmie Rogers rocketed to fame using some of the same material. "Train That Carried My Girl From Town" is an eight-bar blues of the "Alabama Bound" group.
Does anyone have any further information on Frank Hutchinson or Arnold Watson ?
Smithsonian Folkways CD The Watson Family has the lyrics and attributes the song to Rosa Lee Watson with help on the lyrics from Doc. An extensive note by Jeff Place gives some history of the Watson family and Ralph Rinzler's role in recording the songs. Other recordings on cassettes are by Solstice Assembly on "Under the Drawbridge", "Women on the Edge" by Malaika.
The song is on my list of what I want played at my funeral.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: Stewie
Date: 12 Jul 03 - 09:29 AM

Cetmst, I am a little puzzled. What song recorded by Hutchison [only one 'n' in his name] is related to 'Long Journey'? According to Russell's discography in 'Old Time Music' #1 and his complete works on Document CD, he did not record any song by that name. It is a while since I listened to the complete Hutchison repertoire, but I can't recall anything similar that might be lurking under another title.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: cetmst
Date: 12 Jul 03 - 06:14 PM

I was transmitting the note of Ralph Rinzler and D.K.Wilgus that   accompanies the entry in Sing Out. Know no more about Frank Hutchison than a very short note in The Folk Music Sourcebook but would like to learn more.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: Stewie
Date: 12 Jul 03 - 10:24 PM

Cetmst, apart from Tony Russell's article in 'Old Time Music #1' [April 1971] and a couple of pages in Charles Wolfe's essay on white blues in Lawrence Cohen (Ed) 'Nothing But the Blues' Abbeville Press 1993, little is written (or known) about Hutchison beyond that contained in notes to reissues of his recordings:

Mark Wilson notes to 'The Train That Carried My Girl From Town' Rounder LP 1007 [1976]
Charles Wolfe notes to Various Artists 'White Country Blues' Columbia Legacy C2K 47466 [1993]
Tony Russell notes to Hutchison's complete recorded works on Document DOCD-8003 and DOCD-8004
Russell also drew on a 1971 interview of Aunt Jennie Wilson, a Longan County banjo player and friend of Hutchison, by John Coffey [unpublished].

The gist of Wolfe's brief sketch in Cohn's book is as follows:

Hutchison was born in 1897 in Raleigh County, West Virginia, and grew up in Logan County. When he was seven or eight he met one of the black railroad workers who came to the county to lay tracks for the mines. This man's name was Henry Vaughan and he taught Hutchison to play blues on the guitar, using a knife as a slide. Some time later, Hutchison met 'a crippled Negro living back in the hills' named Bill Hunt who was a songster as well as a bluesman. Hunt taught the young Frank dozens of songs from his repertoire of 19th century traditional tunes that 'blacks and whites had shared before the blues became fashionable'. By 1920, Hutchison's repertoire contained a variety of rare old rags, blues, traditional ballads and novelties.

In the early 1920s, Hutchison eked out a living, playing small shows in mining camps, at political rallies, at private parties and at movie shows to introduce and even accompany silent movies. Pop Stoneman and others remembered him as 'a big red-headed Irishman' who 'always specialised in blues, just blues of all kinds'. Hutchison travelled often, but seldom left the West Virginia-Kentucky area. Somehow in 1926, he connected with Okeh Records and travelled to New York to record his first two sides: 'Worried Blues' and 'The Train That Carried My Girl From Town', both featuring him using a knife as a slide. Subsequently, he recorded a total of 32 sides for OKeh [1926-1929]. Later, Okeh seemed to want him to diversify, insisting on his working with a fiddler by the name of Sherman Lawson. After being involved with 'The Okeh Medicine Show', a six-part record series of skits, Hutchison ceased recording and then stopped playing music altogether. This was most likely because of the Depression rather than Okeh's demands. He spent his later life as a storekeeper and eventually moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he died in 1945.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: cetmst
Date: 13 Jul 03 - 06:54 AM

Thanks, Stewie. I've been listening to this music since a childhood friend played a recording of "The Martins and the 'Coys" in the 30's and my mother played the piano and sang us to sleep with folk songs and lullabies. Couldn't afford and had no place to keep records until the late 40's and early 50's what with school and service, and then began with Leadbelly, Josh White, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Burl Ives, Susan Reed, Carl Sandburg, John Jacob Niles, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Wade Hemsworth, Cynthia Gooding, Josef Marais, Walt Robertson and others, some still alive, the rest whose music and legends live on. Your notes and other Mudcatter entries reveal the depths of my ignorance and limits of my collection and I'm grateful to you all for the opportunity to keep learning. - Chuck

Subject: RE: Long Journey
From: harpgirl
Date: 05 May 04 - 09:42 PM

Tracy...what can you tell us about your version?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Long Journey
From: Janie
Date: 09 Mar 11 - 09:27 PM

Was listening to different Youtube performances of this song tonight and came across the following comment, posted just a few days ago, under the performance by The New Brownstone Boys.

Yesterday I was on the phone with Doc Watson, my friend of nearly 45 years. His wife Rosa Lee wrote the tune and Doc helped with the last verse. ALSO, the name of the tune, according to Doc is Your Lone Journey. Modern musicians changed the name but it is Your Lone Journey. Thought you might wish to know so that when you are next on stage, you can credit Rosa Lee as the author. Keep playing!!! Fred Coon (The banjo players among us will know who Fred Coon is.)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Long Journey
From: Janie
Date: 09 Mar 11 - 09:50 PM

I wonder if it might be appropriate to change the thread title - indicating both the correct title for the song and also that the lyric has been added?

Doc recorded it on "My Dear Old Southern Home." It definitely is Your Lone Journey. Now that Krauss/Plant have recorded it with the wrong title though, it won't be long before the original title will be lost all together.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Long Journey / Your Lone Journey
From: GUEST,Hank P
Date: 15 Feb 12 - 09:50 PM

I have a Sing Out magazine dated Feb/Mar 1967. "Your Long Journey" is in the magazine; almost word for word and note for note of the Raising Sand version. DK Wilgus, Ralph Rinzler and Ethel Raim credit the original version of the song to Frank Hutchinson (Huthison (?)), and reference Okeh records as a source. I recognize two of the three names as noted musicologists. At any rate it is a wonderful song and touhes everyone who hears it. Hank

Subject: ADD Version: Your Long Journey
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 04:03 AM

Another song I'm preparing for the Rise Again Songbook. Here's my transcription from Doc Watson's My Dear Old Southern Home CD. Main difference is "pangs" instead of "pains." Also "happy days," not "ways."

YOUR LONG JOURNEY
(Rosa Lee Watson)

God's given us years of happiness here
Now we must part
And as the angels come & call for you
The pangs of grief tug at my heart
D - A - / G D - / D - A D / A D G D

Oh my darling, my darling
My heart breaks as you take your long journey
A* - D* - / A D G D   *fermata

Oh the days will be empty, the nights so long
Without you my love
And as God calls for you I'm left alone
But we will meet in heaven above

Fond memories I'll keep of the happy days
That on earth we trod
And when I come we will walk hand in hand
As one in Heaven in the family of God

Rosa Lee Watson (wife of Doc)
On Doc Watson My Dear Old Southern Home, Alison Krauss & Robt. Plant Raising Sand.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Long Journey / Your Lone Journey
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Apr 16 - 09:37 AM

I find that Doc and Rosa Lee's recording has 'happy ways' and not 'happy days':

Fond memories I'll keep of the happy ways