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Earlier I had posted a video of Peter Paul and Mary singing this song. Here is the man that they learned it from. Reverend Gary Davis, born in Laurens South Carolina in 1896, went blind early in his childhood. Davis was encouraged to become a musician in order to earn a living. It may seem odd now, but blind children were often taught to play a musical instrument and sing and sent out to become street performers at that time.

Davis moved to Durham North Carolina in the 1920s and became a part of the thriving Piedmont blues scene. He made his first recordings in Durham in 1935. In the 40s Davis moved to New York and began playing on the streets of Harlem. He became known as a patient, if demanding guitar teacher in New York. Some of his students, during the 60s, were David Bromberg, Roy Book Binder, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Weir, Stephan Grossman and my own guitar teacher, Rolly Brown.

Davis also became the pastor of the Missionary Baptist Church in Harlem. Most of his songs, that we know, are Gospel music but he was known to teach his students some of his older blues material when his wife was out of the house.

The way I heard it was that Mary Travers’ family, when she was young, lived in an apartment building in New York and the tenant downstairs from them was a blind itinerant street preacher and musician named Rev. Gary Davis. Supposedly Travers learned this song from Davis, hanging around the apartment. I don’t know about this. Certainly by the time Travers was a member of Peter Paul and Mary, Gary Davis was well known in folk music circles in New York and there was plenty of opportunity for PP&M to learn the song from him.

Davis’ arrangement of the song depended on a complex finger picked guitar accompaniment. I used to be able to play it, but not sing at the same time. PP&M simplified the guitar part and added three part harmony. Their version of the song is much like a gospel choir in an AME or African American Baptist church.

Born in Chester Pennsylvania in 1896, the child of a 13 year old rape victim, Ethel Waters rose to stardom on her own talent,intelligence and effort. She left her job as a aid in Philadelphia to work in vaudeville, at the Lincoln Theater in Baltimore at the age of 17 after being heard singing at a Halloween party. After Baltimore Waters sang in honkey tonks, traveled with a carnival to Chicago, and worked in a club, opening for Bessie Smith. By 1919 Waters was living in New York where she was part of the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of music, art and literature among the African American population of New York - really all over the country - which lasted through the 1930s. Waters sang and recorded with band leader Fletcher Henderson in the 1920s.

Waters appeared n Broadway and in films during the 1930s in addition to nightclub appearances. “Stormy Weather” was one of her signature songs, although she was passed over for the film role in favor of the younger Lena Horne when the song was used as the basis of a film in 1943.

This is a clip from a 1934 short film “Bubbling Over” in which Ethel Waters starred. The song expresses a fatalistic, yet hopeful attitude toward life as an early twentieth century African American. Faith in a better life to come (in heaven) is the focus of the song, which descries the hard and thankless never ending toil that is her fate. The song also uses the Stephen Foster-esque term “darkies,” so be prepared. This song presents, with a smile and a sigh, the meaning behind the, rather more forceful, remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which are causing such a stir this week.

Bubbling over is a comedy, set in a Harlem apartment, using every stereotype available to a 1930s filmmaker. In order to watch one has to remember that this was a far distant time. I was able to find a digitization of the entire film at Veoh.com. You are cautioned that you may find it offensive.