quote: There's a fine version on Jody Stecher's 'Going Up on the Mountain' which has recently been reissued on CD [Acoustic Disc ACD 39]. Stecher learned it from Mrs Smith Jones. He asked her about the mysterious words, 'Sasalado on Salasari', in the chorus: 'She had sung it on other occasions as 'Fa Sol La Do on Sol La Sa Ri' which is pretty close to solfege. "Doremi Falasido?", she asked. "Why I know what 'Doremi Falasido' means". She probably did too, but she never really said other than delivering a magnetic and elliptical soliloquy about Eden, gifts, speaking "in tongues" and how even the original songmaker did not know the meaning'.

I used to have the LP of "Going Up the Mountain." Probably 20 years ago. I can't find it now, so I guess I sold it long ago; but I put Turtle Dove in my songbook based on hearing him sing it, and I made some notes about the song under the lyrics. I remember my notes as having come from the LP liner notes, but I can't be completely sure of that in light of the different version given by Stewie. I can't think where else I might have gotten this information, but it's possible that I got it mixed up and it was actually someone else who said these things, not Bessie Jones, or maybe not as she told it to Jody Stecher. But my notes say that this is how Bessie Jones explained the meaning of the lyrics:

(a) She said the chorus ("Adam and Eve, no, no; Adam and Eve, don't tell it to me") is what God said when he heard about the apple.

(b) She said no one knows the meaning of "sasalado on salasari," it jus' God talkin' to God. The original singer, whoever that was, didn't make up the words, but sang God's words while possessed by the holy spirit.

(My notes say the Stecher LP is Bay Records #210, and the pre-CD version of that Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Islanders' recording is Prestige-International #25002)