Trouble Won't Last Always
Trouble Won’t Last Always was a daily song series launched in 2020 in the early months of the pandemic, featuring recordings from the Lomax collections that spoke to themes of loneliness, isolation, optimism, endurance, transcendence. The selections, spanning from between 1933 and 1983, draw on a diversity of Lomax recordings of American traditional music: sacred and secular, ironic and straightforward, humorous and grave, with topics spanning the occupational, political, romantic, domestic and existential. Originally posted on Instagram and YouTube, these performances are now gathered here in a more permanent home to comprise the inaugural exhibit of the Lomax Digital Archive. Selected and annotated by LDA curator Nathan Salsburg; introduction by Dom Flemons, the American Songster; and image research and lyric transcription assistance by Matt Gold.
-April 2021
Sometimes you'll be helpless,
Sometimes you'll be restless,
Well, keep on strugglin'
So long as you're not breathless
Because life is like that—well, that’s what you got to do
Well, if you don’t understand, peoples, I’m sorry for you.
The poetry of “Life Is Like That” by Memphis Slim is all the more poignant now that we are living through a worldwide pandemic. Not only has every part of modern life been affected by COVID-19 but the cultural and social movements surrounding Black Lives Matter have caused people to rethink the systems that created racial oppression and injustice. What can be said in these hard times that have no clear end in sight? Over the millenia, human beings have used music to move each other to action. Sometimes the music is a voice; other times it's an instrument that takes the lead. There are moments when the voice of the singer is only a means to convey the lyric, not bothering to sound “good” by classical standards. Other times, especially in situations where the listener is NOT a fluent speaker, the voice can serve as the most robust expression a single individual can offer to another through song.
Messages of love, work, politics, faith, social advocacy and life’s basic experiences of ups and downs can dictate everything that a song can mean to a singer. The audience is also actively participating as well, confirming and reassuring the singer to present certain songs and aesthetics that define their culture. In just a few minutes, “Life is Like That,” presents a complex portrait of blues and its cultural role in the Mississippi Delta.
On March 2, 1947, after a concert performed at New York City’s Town Hall, folklorist Alan Lomax sat down with professional blues singers, Memphis Slim, Big Big Broonzy and John Lee “Sonny Boy” WIlliamson and asked them about the origins of the blues. The recording technology and location, a Presto Disc Recording Machine in the Decca Records studios, proved to be an easy environment for Alan to document the songs and stories of these icons. The environment proved so comfortable that as they began to record their low-down blues they began to expound upon the situations in which the blues was born.
While it may be hard to imagine in the modern era, it was forbidden for a black person to speak out about the oppression of segregation. To do so would put yourself as well as anyone connected to your community at risk if the news through the grapevine said that you were causing “trouble.” Boldly, each singer played, sang and spoke about this issue despite the consequences. In their own ways, each spoke with razor sharp commentary of racial oppression, economic suppression and cultural erasure. All three men had grown up in the Deep South and they all pursued a career in music mostly as a means of escaping the rural environment of their birth. Residing in Chicago, their down-home flavor gave voice to a displaced community running from the hard aches of the Jim Crow laws and looking for a better life. Now in the 1940s, each was much more well-known and still in peak form. Their commentary, as issued on the album “Blues In the Mississippi Night” in 1959, provided context for people outside of the culture as told by the singers themselves. That album was deemed so controversial by all parties that it was originally issued with anonymous crediting even though anyone remotely familiar with these popular blues singers will recognize their distinct voices and playing styles.
The harsh reality of being helpless, restless and possibly in danger runs across all of the songs on this playlist, because whether it is 2020 (or any year in the future or the past), these feelings expressed through songs are universal ways to cope with the world around us. It’s a joyous, sorrowful, and soul-building series of recordings that remind us that truly “Trouble Don't Last Always.”
- Dom Flemons, The American Songster
Life Is Like That
You got to cry a little, sigh a little
Well, and sometimes you got to lie a little
Life is like that—well, that's what you got to do
Well, and if you don't understand, peoples, I'm sorry for you.
Sometimes you'll be held up, sometimes held down,
Well, and sometimes your best friends don't even want you around...
You know, life is like that—people, that’s what you’ve got to do
Well, and if you don’t understand, peoples, I’m sorry for you
There's some things you got to keep,
Some things you gotta repeat
People, happiness, well, is never complete
You know, life is like that—well, that’s what you’ve got to do
Well, and if you don’t understand, people, I’m sorry for you
[Spoken:] Play it, Sonny Boy. Lay on that guitar, Big Bill.
Sometimes you'll be helpless,
Sometimes you'll be restless,
Well, keep on strugglin'
So long as you're not breathless
Because life is like that—well, that’s what you got to do
Well, if you don’t understand, peoples, I’m sorry for you.

Blues in the Mississippi Night LP cover, 1957.
We Shall Not Be Moved
The Union is our leader, we shall not be moved
The Union is our leader, we shall not be moved
Just like the tree that's planted by the water, we shall not be moved
Black and white together, we shall not be moved
Black and white together, we shall not be moved
Just like the tree that's planted by the water, we shall not be moved
We're fighting for our freedom, we shall not be moved
We're fighting for our freedom, we shall not be moved
Just like the tree that's planted by the water, we shall not be moved
Katherine Trusty, a teenage daughter of miner and labor activist Brother Elihu Trusty, sings the protest version of the spiritual "I Shall Not Be Moved," which originated with the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union in Arkansas in the early '30s. (Rev. A.B. Brookins, a Black preacher from Marked Tree, Ark., has been credited with the spiritual's introduction to the STFU.)

Sharecroppers in Marked Tree, Arkansas. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Cotton choppers on northwest part of the Mississippi Delta land near Lula, Mississippi. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Sorry, Sorry for to Leave You
[Chorus:] Sorry, sorry for to leave you
Sorry, sorry to my heart
Sorry, sorry for to leave you
The best of friends have to part
Get on board that ship of Zion
Be in haste, make up your mind
Vessel now is at the landing
Don’t mind you be left behind
[Chorus]
God have made me one promise
After I’m dead and gone
God have made me one promise
Heaven is my home
[Chorus]
Oh Lord, please do forgive me
Lord I know what I’ve done wrong
Oh Lord, please do forgive me
Heaven is my home
[Chorus]
We are out on the ocean
This is the year of Jubilee
We are out on the ocean
What is [be]come [?] of poor me
[Chorus]
Nothing is known of Ms. Threadgill or Ms. Johnson beyond their powerful sanctified performances documented by Lomax and Jones at the Mohead Plantation on Moon Lake, toward the end of the Fisk University/Library of Congress survey of life and culture in the Mississippi Delta. (See here for the complete collection and its background.) Our organization visited the Mohead Plantation in 2013 and hoped to find the church-house still standing; all but two of the former tenant residences and other buildings had, however, long been razed.
Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community (U. of South Carolina Press, 2008) provides this detail of Maybank’s biography: “According to the 1910 census, Maybank was a literate carpenter who owned his own home. The 1930 census lists Maybank’s age as 56 and his wife’s [Celia] as 44.”
Aaron McCollough offers further context for the song:
Mike Maybank led the crew that paved Highway 17 through Murrells Inlet in 1934 and also the Works Progress Administration ditching crew responsible for excavating a network of ditches to drain the inland swamps of Waccamaw Neck. Draining the formidable Mission Swamp of Murrells Inlet was one of the ditchers’ primary tasks. The ditches Maybank’s crew dug for the W.P.A. are still in use, draining into the creek. (From the liner notes to Deep River of Song: South Carolina, Rounder Records, 2002.)
Right Down Here
Right down here,
Oh, right down here.
Oh, we got this work to do
Right down here.
Fellas,
Right down here.
Oh sisters,
Right down here.
Oh, we got this work to do,
Right down here.
Tell the truth,
Right down here.
Oh yes,
Right down here.
Oh yes,
We got this work to do,
Right down here.
Do right,
Right down here.
All right,
Right down here.
Oh yes,
We got this work to do,
Right down here.
Pray right,
Right down here.
Oh yes,
Right down here.
Oh yes,
We got this work to do,
Right down here.
On the cross,
Right down here.
On the cross,
Right down here.
Oh, we got this work to do,
Right down here.
Take me down,
Right down here.
Oh, take me,
Right down here.
Oh, we got this work to do,
Right down here.
Charlie and David,
Right down here.
Oh, yes,
Right down here,
We got this work to do,
Right down here.
My mother,
Right down here.
She’s gone,
Right down here.
Oh, yes,
We got this work to do,
Right down here.
Down Here
Down here, down here
There is no hiding place down here
You run to the rock to hide your face
The rock cried out—no hiding place
No hiding place down here
Down here, down here
Lord there’s no hiding place down here
Well you run to the rock to hide your face
The rock cried out—there’s no hiding place
No hiding place down here
Sinner man, you better run
Oh sinner man, you better run
Oh sinner man, you better run
Wait for some morning, judgement is coming
No hiding place down here
Down here, down here
Lord, There’s no hiding place down here
You may run to the rock to hide your face
The rock cried out—no hiding place
No hiding place down here
Run to the sea
And the sea cried out
You run to the mountain
And the mountain cried
You run to the ocean
The ocean said, Lord
There’s no hiding place down here
Down here, down here
Lord, there’s no hiding place down here
You may run to the rock to hide your face
The rock cried out—no hiding place
No hiding place down here
Gambling man, you better run
Oh gambling man, you’d better run
Oh gambling man, you better run
Wait for some morning, judgement is coming
No hiding place down here
Down here, down here
Lord, there’s no hiding place down here
You may run to the rock to hide your face
The rock cried out—no hiding place
No hiding place down here
Bessie Jones was one of the most popular performers on the 1960s and '70s folk circuit, appearing either solo or at the helm of the Georgia Sea Island Singers at colleges, festivals, community centers, the Poor People's March on Washington, and Jimmy Carter's inauguration. Alan Lomax first visited the Georgia Sea Island of St. Simons in June of 1935 with folklorist Mary Elizabeth Barnicle and author Zora Neale Hurston. There they met the remarkable Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia, as the group was then called, and recorded several hours of their songs and dances for the Library of Congress. Returning 25 years later, Lomax found that the Singers were still active, and had been enriched by the addition of Bessie Jones, a South Georgia native with a massive collection of songs going back to the slavery era. He invited her to New York City in 1961 to record her “oral biography,” carried out over three months and some 50 hours of tape. (Lomax’s then-wife Antoinette Marchand can be heard as interviewer in many segments.)

Flloyd Batts, on Parchman Farm.
Dangerous Blues
Whoa, everybody talkin’, ah ha, Lord, ‘bout ol’ dangerous blue[s]
The peoples talkin’, Lordy, Lord, ‘bout ol’ dangerous blue[s]
If I had my special, oh ho— Lord I’d be danger too
A .32-20, a .20, ah ha— Lord do very well
A .32-20, a .20, ah ha— Lord I do very well
A .45 mattie, ah ha— Lord, is a burning hell
Just don’t know, Lordy Just don’t know, uh huh,
Lord, I believe I will Gonna make my home,
Lord, man, ‘way in Jacksonville
(Mud.*)
*Said when a task, and thus a song, are finished.
Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary) prisoner Floyd Batts sings a variation on "Dangerous Blues," or "Danger Blue," a theme sung by Black inmates throughout the Southern prison-farm system. Nothing is known of Floyd Batts’ origins, the circumstances of his incarceration, or when (or) if he was released from Parchman.

Image from John Frye’s The Men all Singing: the Story of Menhaden Fishing (Donning, Norfolk/Virginia Beach, 1978), which is in turn from the E.C. Ford collection; via William & Mary ScholarWorks).
The Bright Light Quartet worked hauling nets aboard the fishing packets that plied the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic, from Long Island to the Gulf of Mexico. Menhaden, a bony, inedible fish processed for its oil and its use in livestock feed, provided well-paying work to African American men in the Northern Neck of Virginia and the Outer Banks of North Carolina—the industry's two centers of production being in Reedville, VA, and Beaufort, NC. When the Quartet weren't singing net-pulling chanties at work aboard the trawlers, they gave performances in churches throughout the region, and occasionally as far away as New York City.
Menhaden fishermen's chantey medley
Oh, Evalina (oh well then)
She’s got a money accumulator
(Come on back!)
I said, Oh, Evalina (oh well then)
She’s got a money accumulator
(Back up, back up)
Right ‘tween her legs, boy (by Lordy)
Lord, lord, between her legs
(Come on back, come on back)
Well I can get it (by Lordy)
Any old time I want it
(Come on back, come on)
Said I can get it (by Lordy)
Any old time I want it
(How many times you want it? How many times?)
Three times a day, boy (by Lordy)
Lord, lord, three times a day
(Somebody start another song, somebody start another one—we gotta get these… sun going down)
I got a mother in the promised land
(Come on back here, boy)
I never expect to meet ‘em tell to shake her hand
(Come on back here one more time)
All of my ways do seem so hard
Two white horses, side by side
(Come on, back up)
One of those horses I’m going to ride
All of my ways do seem so hard
(Come on back, sun going down)
Well captain don’t you know (oh Lordy)
Know your crew is going to leave you
(Back up, back up)
I said, oh captain don’t you know (by Lordy)
Know your crew is going to leave you
(When, man, when?)
They’re going the next payday, now (by Lordy)
Lord, lord—next payday
(Somebody help that man, somebody help that man)
Well, captain don’t you see (by Lord that)
Dark cloud rising over yonder
(Come on, come on, back up)
I said, captain, don’t you see (by Lord that)
Dark cloud rising over yonder
(Come on, let’s go, where’s that sign at)
Well the sign of rain
Lord, lord—sign of rain
(Come on, back up)
Well, if I can make it (by Lordy)
June, July and August
(Back up, back up)
Well, if I can make it (by Lordy)
June, July and August
(What you going to do? Where you going?)
I’m going back home, boy (my Lordy)
Lord, lord—I’m going back home
Oh, biting spider (don’t you know he’s)
Going round, biting everybody
(Don’t let him bite you, boy, don’t let him bite you)
Oh, biting spider (my Lordy)
Going round, biting everybody
(Come on, come back)
It didn’t bite me, Lord (my Lordy)
Lord, lord—didn’t bite me
I left my baby (hey Lordy)
Standing in the back door crying
I left my baby (oh Lordy)
Standing in the back door crying
(What did she say? Come on back)
Said, “Daddy don’t go” (oh Lordy)
Lord, lord—Daddy don’t go
(Try to get one more, boy, try to get one more)
Jack of diamonds (I hear you)
They right dead on the bottom
That old Jack of diamonds (by Lord well)
They right dead on the bottom
(Back up, back up)
I said The deal going down, boy (my Lordy)
Lord, lord—the deal going down
(What you say now…)
Wondrous Love
What wondrous love is this—oh my soul, oh my soul
What wondrous love is this, oh my soul
What wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse—for my soul, for my soul
To bear the dreadful curse, for my soul
When I was sinking down—sinking down, sinking down
When I was sinking down, sinking down
When I was sinking down, beneath God’s righteous frown
Christ laid aside his crown—for my soul, for my soul
Christ laid aside his crown, for my soul
To God and to the Lamb—I will sing, I will sing
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing
To God and to the Lamb, who is the great I am
While millions join the theme—I will sing, I will sing
While millions join the theme, I will sing

Working cowboy. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Sitting At My Window, Sad and Lonely
[Spoken:]
This is Dick Devall, the cowboy singer, from Reed, Oklahoma—I’m going to sing you a little ditty, look out, here she comes.
Sitting at my window sad and lonely
Thinking of thee
I think of you little girl and wonder
If you ever think of me
Don’t forget me, little darling
Don’t forget me of the past
Don’t forget me little darling
I’m the one that loves you best
You may meet much brighter faces
They may tell you I’m not true
But remember, little darling
None can love you as I do
You may meet with brighter faces
They may tell you I’m not true
But remember, little darling
None can love you as I do
You may meet with brighter faces
Floating down love’s rugged stream
But remember little darling
You are always in my dreams
The 18 songs Devall sung for Lomax were the last recordings John would contribute to the Library of Congress’ Archive of Folk Song. Devall had cut two earlier unaccompanied sides in Dallas in 1929.
Family Circle
I wonder will the family circle be together once again
Over there on heaven’s shining shore
And no more to separate, we’ll sing around the throne
I wonder will the family circle be at home
Memories of my childhood days, I recall them now and then
When at home with all the family there
But it’s not the same anymore, the circle has been broken
But I pray we’ll meet again some morning fast
I wonder will the family circle be together once again
Over there on heaven’s shining shore
And no more to separate, we’ll sing around throne
I wonder will the family circle be at home
Will daddy be there waiting when I cross the chilly tide
Will momma be there standing by his side
I pray that oh the family circle will be present by and by
In a land where the the soul shall never, ever die
I wonder will the family circle be together once again
Over there on heaven’s shining shore
And no more to separate, we’ll sing around throne
I wonder will the family circle be at home
Turner Junior Johnson was a blind singer and harmonica player whom Lomax and Lewis Jones met performing on the streets of Clarksdale. Lomax describes meeting him in his diary:
I met him Sat. night [July 18] on the street in the Negro section, blowing his harp and shaking a little tin can for his collection of nickles. He has been blind since he was 16 years old when he had the swimming in the head and the wagon ran across the back of my head—both wheels—took me a solid week to loose your sight [sic]. “I suffered with a swimmin’ in my head when I was comin’ up. When I first lost my sight, I didn’t eat nothin’. My sister come and help me—my baby brother helped mama. My father was dead.” He’s the only musician in the family.
Johnson gave his place of birth as “round Senatobia,” in the Mississippi Hill Country and, upon finishing this piece, credits multi-instrumentalist Sid Hemphill (who was also blind) as his source, thus bringing this great performer and composer to Lomax and Jones’ attention. (The disc cuts out with Johnson giving the two directions to Hemphill’s home.) They would record Hemphill and his band several weeks later at a picnic in Quitman Co., Mississippi.
Sitting On Top of the World
Worked all the summer and all the fall
I’m trying to take it as easy as I can
Well, when you got money, baby, you’ve got friends
Ain’t got no money—ain’t got no friends
Well I went to the station, down in the yard
Gonna catch me a freight train, ‘fore the work gets hard
I know she’s gone, baby I don’t worry
Well I went to the depot, looked up at the board
If this train don’t hurry, be some walking done

Lomax describes meeting Turner Junior Johnson in his diary.
Oh Death
Oh death, oh death
Spare me over for another year
What is that, that I can’t see
Icy hands got a hold on me
I am death, come after your soul
Gonna leave your old body and leave it cold
Oh death, oh death
Spare me over for another year
Death, oh death, consider my age
Please don’t take me in the stage
I am death, come after your soul
Gonna leave your body and leave it cold
Oh death, oh death
Spare me over for another year
Job, Job
Adele "Vera" Ward Hall, despite her exquisite singing abilities and her extensive repertoire, worked all of her life as a washerwoman, nursemaid, and cook. She first came to the attention of John A. Lomax in 1937, when Ruby Pickens Tartt, folklorist and chair of the Federal Writers' Project of Sumter County, Alabama, introduced them; Lomax recorded Hall during three separate sessions in 1937, 1939, and 1940, writing that she had "the loveliest voice I have ever recorded." She sang Baptist hymns with her cousin Dock Reed and other Livingston friends like Jesse Allison, but she was also willing to record blues, ballads, hollers, and "worldly songs" such as "Stagolee” and "John Henry” learned from her friend Rich Amerson (and forbidden by her family).

Doc Reed; John A. Lomax, Sr.; and Richard Amerson at the home of Mrs. Ruby Pickens Tartt, Livingston, Alabama. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
I’ll Get A Break Someday
Now you’re riding around
Baby in your V8 Ford
Thinking about you mama
Lord, when you drove me from your door
But I’ll get a break
Yeah, somewhere
Baby, before long
I bought you stockings
And I bought you shoes to wear
Now you’re out big-timing
Baby you’re going everywhere
But I’ll get a break
Yeah, somewhere
Baby, before long
The woman I was loving
Had great long curly hair
I would go to see her
Her man would not allow me there
But I’ll get a break
Yeah, somewhere
Before long
When I was sick, baby
Lord, lord, down in my bed
T.B. and all
I could hear the people say
But I’ll get a break
Yeah, somewhere
Baby, before long
I worked all that winter
Lord, lord, I worked all that fall
Well I’ve been working
[?] in my overhauls
But I’ll get a break
Yeah, somewhere
Baby, before long
This last recorded iteration of the Memphis Jug Band (who had made their first records in 1927) featured original members Charlie Burse and Will Shade, performing here a song first cut by Tampa Red in 1934. Personnel was given as Shade, vocal and acoustic guitar; Burse, guitar; Robert Carter, electric guitar; and Dewey Corley, bass/kazoo, along with Eugene Smith, who was either nicknamed “Whiskey” or brought it to the session. (Burse and Shade made later recordings in the 1960s but none of them featured a jug.)

Folk musical instruments including homemade horns, homemade drum, and washboard. From the Library of Congress.

Aunt Molly Jackson.
Roll On, Buddy
I been a working ten years on the L&N railroad
I can’t make enough money for to pay my board
I went to the boss, I asked him for my time
Oh, what do you think he told me—I owed him one dime
O,h roll on buddy, and make up your time
I’m so weak and hungry I can’t make mine
I looked at the sun, and the sun looked low
I looked at my woman, and she said “Don’t go”
Some of these days, you’ll look for me
And I’ll be gone, back to Tennessee
Yeah, some of these days, you’ll call my name
And I’ll be gone, on an old freight train
I looked at the sun, and the sun looked high
I looked at my woman, she began to cry
Roll on buddy, don’t roll so slow
I’m so weak and hungry, I can’t work no more
[“that was composed by white mountaineers, right?” “exactly, on the L and N railroad..years and years ago..” “you don’t known when?” “well, I don’t know exactly when, but I do know when it was when they was a putting that L and N railroad through.”]
The song and stories of Mary Magdalene Garland Mills Stewart Jackson, better known as Aunt Molly Jackson, were rooted in her life experiences in eastern Kentucky’s Clay, Laurel, Bell, and Harlan Counties. Born in 1880, she was a coal miner's daughter, married a miner (Bill Jackson) and became a mother, midwife, songwriter and labor activist agitating on behalf of the National Miners Union (NMU) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). She was once jailed in Harlan County for union organizing activities. She traveled to New York City in December 1931 to promote the cause of and raise money for striking Harlan County coal miners and stayed there throughout the 1930s, in part fearing reprisals back home. We are pleased to take this opportunity to present the entirety of Jackson’s Library of Congress recordings—she has recorded at various times by John Lomax, Alan Lomax, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, beginning in 1935 when Molly was 55 and extended over a four year period. (She also made a single phonograph record for the Columbia company in 1931, and was recorded by Alice McLerran at her last home in Sacramento, California, in 1959 and several months before she died in 1960.)
I Got Trouble
Well you know my little old baby
She’s going to jump and shout
When that old train rolls up I come walking out—
I got trouble
Well my mama told my papa
Just before I was born
You got a boy child coming
Gonna be a rolling stone
I got trouble, I got trouble all my life
And I just don’t feel satisfied
I just can’t keep from crying
Well if you’ll be my little old baby
I’m gonna be your brown
Think the good Lord made you
Angels brought you down
I have trouble, I have trouble
And I just don’t feel satisfied
I just can’t keep from crying
Oh, in my sleep
I hear my doorbell ring
Looking for my baby
Didn’t see a doggone thing
I got trouble, I got trouble
And I just don’t feel satisfied
I just can’t keep from crying
If you’ll be my little old baby
Tell you what I’ll do
I’m gonna rob and steal
Bring it back to you
I got trouble, I got trouble
And I just don’t feel satisfied
I just can’t keep from...
Belton Sutherland was born on Valentine’s Day, 1911, into a farming family in the Camden area of rural Madison County, Mississippi. In the 1930s he played guitar behind a popular local fiddler named Theodore Harris, “wasn’t no maybe-so about it: the best fiddle player that ever went through here,” as Belton told Lomax, Long, and Bishop, but their partnership ended when Sutherland followed the tens of thousands of his fellow Black Mississippians in the Great Migration north to Chicago. He’d stay there 37 years before moving back to Madison County, where he was able to buy himself 40 acres, twenty miles from those of his friends Clyde and Bea Maxwell—where the trio filmed him in 1978. Everything about Sutherland’s approach is jaw-dropping: his gravelled voice; his baldly aggressive lyricism (“Killed the old grey mule, burned down that white man’s barn”); and the relentless, propulsive rhythm his strumming thumb and tapping foot beat out in unison. “I definitely know sometimes if I take that notion, and have that feeling, I can play a guitar pretty good,” he confessed. It’s the cigarette hanging rakishly out of his mouth, though, that Worth Long calls attention to: a clue that Sutherland was foremost a drummer. When Long first met him, Belton was drumming in a trio—despairingly never documented—and is if that weren’t enough, Worth continues: “And he blew the shit out of the harmonica! But Alan was tired…” No evidence of these talents survive. In fact, the six pieces he recorded this September night constitute the entirety of Belton Sutherland’s recorded output.
Barres de la Prison

Original catalog card.
Working My Way Back Home
I am workin’ my way back home...
On that Gulf and Ship Island road...
Well that Gulf is a long railroad...
Most surely my mother must be dead...
Well I can’t get a letter from home...
Alberta let your bangs grow long...
Alberta she won’t write to me...

Mountain people carrying a homemade coffin up creek bed to the family plot on the hillside where it will be buried. This section is too isolated to hold any formal funeral services immediately. Up South Fork of the Kentucky River near Jackson, Kentucky. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
And Must This Body Die?
And must this body die,
This mortal frame decay?
And must these active limbs of mine
Lie moldering in the clay?
God, my Redeemer lives,
And ever from the skies
Looks down and watches all my dust,
Till He shall bid it rise.
Arrayed in glorious grace
Shall these vile bodies shine,
And every shape, and every face,
Look heavenly and divine.
These lively hopes we owe
To Jesus' dying love:
We would adore His grace below
And sing His power above.
Dear Lord, accept the praise
Of these our humble songs,
Till tunes of nobler sound we raise
With our immortal tongues.
You must be born again,
Without a change you can't be saved
You must be born again.
The somber lined-out hymnody of the Old Regular Baptists—in which a leader "lines out" a verse for the congregants to sing back, in their own fashion and their own time—is a rare hold-over of a once-widespread singing style that’s only getting rarer. Dating to the middle of the seventeenth century, lining was practiced throughout the British Isles and New England, but by 1959, they were being sung in just a handful of remote locales: in Presbyterian churches of Scotland’s Gaelic-speaking Western Isles; among more traditionally minded African-American Baptist (and, occasionally, Methodist) churches in the deep South; and in the Old Regular Baptist meeting-houses of the Central Appalachians.
Trouble In My Way
Trouble is in my way
I have to mourn sometime
Jesus, he will take me
By and by…
I have a bleeding heart
I have to mourn sometime
And I know Jesus, he will take me
By and by…
Blessed are the pure in heart
All I know is they trust in God
The holy bible said it’s true
My god died—Jesus died for me and you
I know Jesus died upon the cross
For the sad, sick, and the lost
Trouble in my way
And I know—Jesus, he will take me…
He said if I walk right, said If I talk right, said If I live right
Said he will take me…
And I believe he will.
And that ain’t all
Jesus, he will take me
Said, he’s gonna rock me…
Blessed are the pure in heart
All I know is they trust in God
The holy bible said it’s true
My god died—Jesus died for me and you
I know Jesus died upon the cross…
For the sad, sick, and the lost.
Trouble in my way
And I know—Jesus, he will take me…
He said if I walk right, said If I talk right, said If I live right
Said he will take me
I know, I know, I know…
By and by.

Possibly the Peerless Four from the recording.
Members of this Tidewater Virginia gospel group unidentified at the time of the recording, in May of 1960. (A Norfolk group under this name made some records later in the '60s, which included the names of the following singers: Clyde Burston, Percy Griffin, Jake Chambers, and Charles Russell. If anyone can confirm their involvement in Lomax's session, please let us know. Photo is culled from the group's Discogs entry, as Lomax took no pictures during the session.)
Alan Lomax later recalled: "I made this record in a little Baptist church in the slums of Norfolk, inviting a group of neighborhood girls to listen. When they began to clap and stomp out an accompanying rhythm, the Peerless Four took off and flew. Somewhere in the middle you can hear the two leaders swapping their rhythmic parts with every phrase, a feat I have [sic] never before heard quite equaled at this tempo."
Jean Thomas, who called herself "The Traipsin' Woman," was, among other pursuits, a song collector and the founder of the American Folk Song Festival. She arranged this 1937 session for John Lomax, featuring some of her Eastern Kentucky "discoveries," which included Day. Thomas worked as Day's manager, rechristening him "Jilson Setters" and calling him "The Singin' Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow." Day recorded several records of Kentucky fiddle tunes for the Victor company in the late '20s, and was the subject of two of Thomas' books. Their partnership is a fascinating case study in the ethical complications involved in presenting and promoting "authenticity." (Although Thomas credits Day with this song’s composition, it seems likely to have been written by a moralizing Victorian-era songster.)
For more on Thomas and Day, visit appalachianhistory.net.
The Blind Man's Lament
Mid sorrow and sadness I’m destined to roam
Forlorn and forsaken I wander alone
All the works of nature are hidden from my view
The pleasures of life I must bid them adieu
I hear the merry songs of the birds at dawn
Singing praises to God for the new day that’s dawned
How I long to behold them in their plumage so gay
But alas it is all dark—for me there is no day.
I feel the gentle breeze as it sweeps over the field
Bearing the fragrance in flowers they doth yield
Their sweet fragrant odors how delicious to me
But the bright and gay colors I never more shall see.
I hear the gurgling stream as it rolls on its way
Reflecting its shade in the sun’s bright array [sic]
The sweet gentle murmurs how pleasant to me
But the bright, sparkling waters I never more shall see.
I hear the merry laugh of the gay busy throng
While friends greet friends as they hurry along
While I grope on my way some shelter to find
Oh God what an affliction it is to be blind
God, I beseech thee, bestow on me grace
To help to support to me in Death’s cold embrace
How I long to depart, set my captive soul free
In that bright spirit land where the blind can all see.
Cold Mountains
Cold mountains, they are here around me
Cold waters gliding down the stream
Oh, in my sleep I think I find him
But when I wake it’s all a dream
True when I wake and cannot find him
All on my bed I weep and moan
Just like the rain drops without numbering
It’s all because I’m left alone
I hate the time when I must leave you
I hate the time when we must part
Although I’ve loved you without measuring
I’ll give my hand, you can have my heart

Texas Gladden.
Alan Lomax considered Texas Gladden one of the three best ballad singers he ever recorded (the others being Almeda Riddle of Arkansas and Scotland’s Jeannie Robertson). He wasn’t alone in admiring her—several folklorists had collected her songs in the 1930s, and, two years after hearing her sing at the White Top Festival in 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt invited Texas and her brother Hobart Smith to perform at the White House. Although her singing had been diminished by ill-health, she recorded a number of shorter pieces for Lomax in 1959: love songs, some ballad verses, and lullabies sung to her granddaughter Cynthia Tuttle, whom Texas called “Baby Cindy.” Despite her popularity, she was never much inclined to travel for the concerts folk revivalists were putting on in the mid-’60s. Besides, when Lomax wondered why she’d never made much “professional use” of her singing, she replied that she’d “been too busy raising babies! When you bring up nine, you have your hands full. All I could sing was lullabies.” Texas died in 1967.
Moses Don't Get Lost
Oh Moses, Moses, don’t get lost—in that Red Sea
Smite your rod and come across—in that Red Sea
Talkin' about the host got lost, got lost, got lost
Talkin' about the host got lost, got lost, in that Red Sea
Ol’ Pharoah and the host got lost, got lost
Ol’ Pharoah and the host got lost -– in that Red Sea
Among the members of the Spiritual Singers of Coastal Georgia that Lomax met in 1935 (see Bessie Jones’ track above) were fisherman Henry Morrison and Big John Davis, a former sailor and stevedore, and a singer with an extensive repertoire of chanties, roustabout songs, slavery-era ring-plays, and religious material. Davis told Lomax then that he knew six separate songs concerning Moses but joked that "if I give them all to you now, you won't come back." And Alan recalled that when he did return, "twenty-five years later with a stereo rig adequate to record this multipart music, I was greeted as an old friend." This spiritual, exhorting Moses not to lose heart as Pharaoh pursues him, was one of two Moses-related songs Lomax recorded in 1959 and is of obvious slavery-era origins.

Members of the Georgia Sea Island Singers, including Willis Proctor (left), John Davis (second to left), and Bessie Jones (right).

Napa Valley, California. More than twenty-five years a bindle-stiff. Walks from the mines to the lumber camps to the farms. The type that formed the backbone of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in California before the war. Subject of Carleton Parker's "Studies on IWW". From the Library of Congress.
When A Fellow Is Out of A Job
Oh, nature is sick from her heels to her hair
When a fellow is out of a job
She is all out of kilter, beyond all repair
When a fellow is out of a job
Ain’t no juice in the earth, no salt in the sea
No ginger in life in this land of the free
And the universe ain’t what it’s cracked up to be
When a fellow is out of a job
What’s the good of blue skies, blossoming trees
When a fellow is out of a job?
And your kids have big patches all over their knees
And a fellow is out of a job?
Them patches you see, they will cover the sky
They blot out the landscape and cover the sky
And the sun can’t shine through, well the best it may try
When a fellow is out of a job
When a man has no part of the work on this earth
And a fellow is out of a job
He starts into cussin’ the land of his birth
When a fellow is out of a job
He feels he’s no share in whole of the plan
He’s got the old mitten from nature’s own hand
And he’s truly rejected, a leftover man
When a fellow is out of a job
Every man that’s a man like to help push the world
But he can’t if he’s out of a job
He is left out behind, on a shelf he has curled?
When a fellow is out of a job
Ain’t no juice in the earth, no salt in the sea
No ginger in life in this land of the free
And the universe ain’t what it’s cracked up to be
When a fellow is out of a job
A song performed by quarryman, lumberman, fiddler, and folk-singer Grant Rogers, who reported that the melody was his but the lyrics learned from a "colored gentleman" in New Jersey. Learn more about Rogers at the Grant Rogers Project, an initiative to preserve and promote the expressive culture of the Western Catskill region of New York State.
Selected and annotated by LDA curator Nathan Salsburg
Introduction by Dom Flemons, the American Songster
Additional research and transcriptions by Matt Gold
Made possible through a generous grant from the NEH.
See the full playlist, including additional selections by Dom Flemons, on YouTube
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A companion album was released in Spring 2020 - featuring songs regarding difficulties, worries, and troubles — and various approaches of enduring and/or transcending them — drawn from the Caribbean, Spain, Italy, Scotland, England, and around the USA.