Here's one for this week:

Look for the online, downloadable recording of "I'll Be Singing" (START HERE), at the Fort Valley State College Folk Festival in the Now What a Time section of the Library of Congress American Memory Collection. There's a lot of great stuff in the Fort material-- some we have done and will do.

"Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943 consists of approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia. The documentation was created by John Wesley Work III in 1941 and by Lewis Jones and Willis Laurence James in March, June, and July 1943. Also included are recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama (including six Sacred Harp songs) by John Work between September 1938 and 1941. These recording projects were supported by the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center). Song lists made by the collectors, correspondence with the Archive about the trips, and a special issue of the Fort Valley State College student newsletter, The Peachite: Festival Number, are also included. One interesting feature of this collection is the topical rewording of several standard gospel songs to address the wartime concerns of the performers. This online presentation is made possible by the generous support of The Texaco Foundation.

~Susan

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I'LL BE SINGING ALL THE TIME IN MY MIND
As sung by the New York, Georgia Singers at the Fort Valley State College Folk Festival, in the summer of 1943.

REFRAIN:
I'll be singing all the time, in my mind;
I'll be singing all the time, in my mind.
Well if the Lord should call me and knock on my door,
I'll be singing all the time.

How well I do remember how Jesus brought me through.
I'll be singing all the time, in my mind.
I prayed and I walked the floor, a night or two;
I'll be singing all the time.

When sorrow overtake me, when trouble starts to brew,
I'll be singing all the time, in my mind.
My friends will talk about me, sometimes my kinfolk too,
Oh, I'll be singing all the time.

When I press my dying pillow and my life is almost through,
Well I'll be singing all the time, in my mind.
And my sight begins to fail me, my fingernails turn blue,
I'll be singing all the time.

SH