performed by Ella Jenkins.
key: F blues
mode: F Ab Bb B C Eb
melody: d mə f s ta d'mə'
form: strophic
meter: duple
English function names: tonic dominant
Tagg (modified): home counterpoise (away)
Riemann: T7 D7
Scale degrees: I7 V7
Chords: F7 C7 F7
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C7 F7
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |Since I primarily teach middle school kids, I'm required to be vigilant about lyrical content. This is not a song I would use with middle school kids. But if you are an adult following along at home, you can take responsibility for dealing with the lyrical content yourself. That's a content warning: the lyrics require an ability to parse ideas about death and violence. Even Jenkins writes in the liner notes that this album "is geared to high schoolers, college students, and other adults."
This song is a folk song, but is often credited to Paul Campbell. There are and have been many, many Paul Campbells in this world. This particular one, however, is a fabrication — it's The Weavers. The Weavers were Pete Seeger's group, along with Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman. It was common for the folk revivalists and their folksong collecting predecessors — among them Pete Seeger's dad, Charles, and the Lomax family who were employed to record and notate folksongs as part of the New Deal — to obtain publishing rights for what were actually public domain works, simply through the act of recording, notating (which often fell under the idea of arranging the piece), and changing up the lyrics, melody, or accompaniment (which falls under the concept of the "folk process"). It seems, too, that the Weavers never recorded it; only Belafonte's version is credited to Paul Campbell. It feels a bit specious now, especially considering music from Black or indigenous peoples, who never got a cent from such publishing deals.1 At the same time, I think of the number of scholarly editions and all the zillions of recordings of classical music for people long gone that generate income for people living now. Making money from music making has always been a strange business.
The liner notes from the Leon Bibb recording on a Folkways compilation called "Hootenanny Tonight"2 point us to the Lawrence Gellert collection. Gellert was an independent collector of folksongs of the black south. Much of what he collected would now be classified as protest songs, like this song.
Ella Jenkins' version is the only recording I've found that uses only two chords. The phrasing is varied throughout the performance; the progression given above happens often, but not always. Interestingly, the placement of the return to the tonic in the second phrase creates a sense of meter change to unpaired duple. Unpaired duple is precisely the kind of thing that happens in more traditional performances that often would get scrubbed out in transcriptions or other people's versions. It's the kind of thing that is considered "wrong" in certain circles. I'm sure some transcribers felt that way. I'm sure some transcribers simply wanted to simplify things for educational purposes, since that's where a lot of these transcriptions ended up. One of the masters of uneven/unpaired phrasing is Woody Guthrie, who really just holds and releases words/notes/chords as he is so moved. He is often playing alone, however. I find it extra interesting when these kinds of phrasings happen in ensemble situations. A video of Jenkins and guitarist Guy Gilbert performing would be most illuminating.
Here's a more precise version for playing along. You can see how beats are added or dropped just by feel and yet the performers hang together.
intro
F7
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verse 1
F7
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C7 F7
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verse 2
F7
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C7 F7
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verse 3
F7
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C7 F7
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verse 4
F7
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C7 F7
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verse 5
F7
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C7 F7
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outro
F7
|:/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / :|/ / / / |But you can also understand why someone might want to simply present the simplified version above as a rough guideline. My guess is that this trio probably performed this song a little differently every time. I like to provide recordings as guidelines. I feel there is educational value in both slavishly following this performance and playing with the timing in one's own way. What changes when you make this more strict? A stricter performance would be better for large-group singing, like you would in a classroom or a sing-along. But the fluidity of this small group performance is one of the things that make it beautiful. The musical lesson here is that the spectrum of ways to phrase this is worth becoming good at.
other recordings:
Leon Bibb, Hootenanny Tonight!, Smithsonian Folkways. D minor. This is performed unaccompanied and more in the style of spirituals as sung by professional singers; that is, more like classical music than like the blues. Think Paul Robeson or Marian Anderson.
Josh White, Hard Time Blues, Horgi Music. E blues. Vocal ensemble. Much more harmonically complex, sometimes with minor tonic, sometimes with a major tonic, like the Belafonte version.
Josh White, Folk Legends of Greenwich Village, Warner Music. E major blues. (between E and Eb) Uses a more traditional blues progression, with a subdominant chord.
Joan Baez, In San Francisco, Fantasy Records. E. Similarly mixes major and minor tonics, but is less bluesy.
Harry Belafonte, Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites, RCA Victor. Bb blues.
Apparently, Leadbelly also used pseudonyms and collected royalties from them, so thankfully not everyone got shafted? I guess?
This song really does not fit in a hootenanny, so I'm curious what inspired that call.