Okay, it's time for me to get into this one. I'm gonna be hollering down the rain barrel again, I suppose, but, please listen just this once. You don't have to listen to a bunch of city kids doing nightclub arrangements of this song. You don't even have to settle for Odetta singing it, as she was when I worked with her at the Gate of Horn in Chicago forty years ago. Odetta herself would tell you what I'm going to tell you now. Go back and listen to the source! That's where Odetta learned it.

The original 1933 recording of Ernest Williams and a group of prisoners at Central State Farm in Sugarland, Texas, is available on CD. John A. and Alan Lomax made the recording at this brutal prison farm where convicts worked the cane fields "from can to can't." These men are singing about soomething that is very real to them, with verses like:

What's the matter, something must be wrong...
Keep on a-workin', Shorty George done gone.

Shorty George was the name they gave the train that brought women visitors to the prison camp.

You ought to been on the river in nineteen ten,
They's rollin' the women like they drive the men.

"Little boy, what'd you do for to get so long?"
Said, "I killed my rider in the high sheriff's arms."

The power of the singing conveys the realism of the story as no nightclub arrangement could ever do. For God's sake, folks, get on the phone to Dick Greenhaus at Camsco (800-548-3655), or whatever source you might prefer, and order Rounder CD-1510 - Afro-American Spirituals, Work Songs, and Ballads. Give a listen to the source, to the real thing. And while you're listening, pay attention to the other songs on this great CD: "Jumpin' Judy" (refers to the whip used to punish prisoners), "Long John," "Long Hot Summer Days," "Rosie," and the incredible two-voice presentation of "Lead Me to the Rock" (a truly astounding performance).

I implore you, please, just this one time, listen to me. It might change your life! It certainly did mine. Right now, I'm reading Cleveland Benjamin's Dead!, A Struggle for Dignity in Louisiana's Cane Country, by Patsy Sims. Read it, if you can find it. It, and hearing these great field recordings, could and should inform your singing. Go on! I dare you!

Sandy^^