Topic: SOTM: Oct 28 - You Got To Move

[harriet]

My choice for Song of the Month is to visit the gospel song YOU GOT TO MOVE which has been recorded by a variety of country blues and/or gospel musicians:

T​his song ​was first recorded by the Two Gospel Keys​, street singers ​ in 1946​ and released on on Smithsonian recordings. ​ The Keys were Emma Daniels​, vocals and guitar and vocals and Mother Sally Jones on tambourine and vocals.​"​



​However, though the versions diffe,r it's also been co-credited as authors to both MIssissippi Fred Mcdowell and Reverend Gary Davis. Here's the Davis version:
REV GARY DAVIS:




​FRED MCDOWELL'S version became very well known ​and he performed it as a slow slide guitar Hill Country Blues ​which was popularized commercially, although Fred did​ ​not live long enough to enjoy the royalties​ fully.​

In the Live in New York  performance at the Gaslight, Oblivion recorded​ in​ 1971 ,​ his bass player​ Tom Pomposello,​ who is credited with the liner notes  shares the explanation ​Mcdowell gave the audience of the song​ to which he gave two meanings​​:

?A lot of people whoever hear me sing this song would ask me, ?What does it mean, you got to move?? Well, this is a true song and one that has two meanings. Now you know why I say that? Y?know a lot of people don?t own their own homes. So you pay so much a month for rent. Now when you get behind, well, maybe the landlord?ll allow you to skip the first month or​ ​so. But when the third one comes, if you ain?t paid up you come home one evening and you find your things sittin? out on the street. You see, you got to move... And not only that, but here is the more important meaning. We?re all sitting right here tonight. I?m sitting up here playin? for you all, and you?re all sitting back listenin?. When this is all over, maybe you plan to go out to next door. But you know, you may not live to walk out that door. If you fall down dead, if you happen to die, you done moved. That?s one debt you can?t dodge. When the Lord gets ready, you got to move.?

For this presentation I am posting the earlier acoustic version recorded in 1965 for Arhoolie by Chris Strachwitz.

FRED M​cDOWELL​ ​:


Moving on, so to speak, here's some versions of the song by some notable country blues or gospel players players over the years and I hope to hear from Weenies on the subject...

REVEREND ROBERT WILKINS


BROTHER JOE MAY with SISTER JAMES


SISTER ROSETTA THARP AND MARIE KNIGHT


RL BURNSIDE:


REVEREND PEARLY BROWN On Arhoolie from 1974:


Mean Old World was filmed by John English in 1975 - Here's Reverend Brown live at 1:54:


BOYD RIVERS:


LOUISIANA RED:


KENNY BROWN:


Moving out, so to speak, I hope to enjoy any versions that might be posted by other members.  This was my first slide song that I tried to play and it became  an ongoing study to revisit it to see if I could ever develop the understanding of it to play it and have it sound like music as opposed to a bunch of notes strung together.



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[Lignite]

Algia Mae Hinton. Recorded in Greenville, NC in 1985. From Audio Arts EP 009 Piedmont Folk Traditions. http://picosong.com/Hwc8

[Johnm]

Thanks very much, Harriet, for your selection of the Song of the Month, and for your research and tracking down all of the different versions of the song.  I look forward to familiarizing myself with them.
All best,
Johnm

[harriet]

Thanks for the Algia Mae Minton version, LIgnite - I like it quite alot.

I enjoyed tracking them down, John,  and tried to confine myself to cb players - I hope one or the other is of interest to you. Alot of mileage in the few notes of it IMHO.

Harriet

[Prof Scratchy]

What a great and varied set of performances! Thanks for posting these.

[harriet]

Thanks Professor

[alyoung]

Pardon my pedantry, but the Gospel Keys weren't the first to record You Got to Move. First might have been the Frazier Family in 1938 for the Library of Congress, or possibly even Rev C.F. Thornton, who recorded "We Got to Move (A Funeral Sermon) for Columbia in late 1927. But we'll never know for sure, as neither version was issued. Definitely ... the honors are split between the Rising Star Gospel Singers, who made You Got to Move for the Big Town label in late 1943 or early 1944, and the Willing Four, who made it for Regis/Manor c. February, 1944. The Two Gospel Keys recorded it for Moe Asch in December 1945 or January 1946; it was issued on Asch AA-1. From there it went mainsteam  with recordings b y the Soul Stirrers (1947) and the Blind Boys of Mississippi (1948). And from there it went viral ... my gospel music database (which covers a lot of ground but isn't exhaustive) shows 94 recordings of the song... make that 95; I just checked and I don't have the R.L. Burnside version.

[harriet]

Wow,I stand corrected then, thank you for that - I never knew there was an additional 94 per say.

[alyoung]

The thought crossed my mind after I made my last post that if the Frazier Family (Calvin, Lonnie et al) recorded You Got to Move for the Library of Congress in 1938, it was probably by then already a reasonably well-established song in the gospel/church repertoire. We have to remember that first appearance on record does not necessarily equate to first appearance of the song.

[harriet]

I am sure that's true Al, not much info as to the origins or existence in any kind of record prior to the recorded versions though. 

[Johnm]

Hi all,
Listening to the various versions of "You Got To Move" that Harriet and Lightnin' posted, a couple of things struck me:
   * With the exception of R. L. Burnside, I don't think I anybody sang the title phrase as "You Gotta Move".  Most sing "You got to move", and Rev. Wilkins and Rev. Pearly Brown sang, "You Gon' Move".
   * Hearing the different renditions, but especially Fred McDowell's, I found myself wondering if Walter Vinson stole the melody of "You Got To Move" for "Sitting On Top of The World".  The melodies to the two songs are virtually identical.  I suppose the opposite could be true, too--it all depends on how long "You Got To Move" was around prior to being recorded.
   * Fred McDowell played the song as a 7-bar form.  He's short at the back end, giving only one bar for instrumental response after the vocal concludes, rather than the more customary 2-bar fill at the end of the form.
All best,
Johnm

[harriet]

I could be wrong but I think its likely Mcdowell was familiar with "Sitting on Top of the World" and perhaps that influenced his solo version. I think he learned and developed some of the basics of his version "You Got to Move" in church though, where he played with the Hunter's Chapel Singers in Como and other churches in the area, according to  Alan Lomax's "First Recordings" notes.

Recently I studied Mcdowell's "Poor Boy" and the way I was able to figure it out is I studied a Willie Mctell song in vestapol and the progression is similar.  Lomax wrote that Mcdowell had listened to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Tommy Johnson as well as local musicians, travelled and was exposed to a variety of musicians. Besides Blind Willie Johnson material, he does a version of Patton's Peavine as well. He's quoted in the liner notes as saying ?I play most anything I hear anybody else sing.?

The entire notes by Lomax are here:
http://www.culturalequity.org/ce_images/features/McDowell/GJ1007_FredMcDowell_Booklet.pdf

[Pan]

Thank you Harriet for a great thread! And thanks for other posters as well.
I listened to all versions with interest.

Cheers

Pan