They would lay Jesus Christ in his grave
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| Woody Guthrie |
Working Class Hero
Less graphically than “On a Hill Lone and Gray,” Woody Guthrie provides his own rendering of the Jesus story. In this one, the multitude is still implicated, but in a slightly different way; and, the Jesus depicted is decidedly human, a working man of the people, and a “carpenter by hand.”
“Jesus Christ,” by Woody Guthrie (Spotify) Lyrics
On an early dated version of the manuscript for this song, Woody wrote:
“I wrote this song looking out of a rooming house window in New York City in the winter of 1940. I saw how the poor folks lived, and then I saw how the rich folks lived, and the poor folks down and out and cold and hungry, and the rich ones out drinking good whiskey and celebrating and wasting handfuls of money at gambling and women, and I got to thinking about what Jesus said, and what if He was to walk into New York City and preach like he use to. They’d lock Him back in Jail as sure as you’re reading this. ‘Even as you’ve done it unto the least of these little ones, you have done it unto me.'”
Woody’s tale differs from “On a Hill Lone and Gray,” to the extent that it blames specific earthly powers–bankers, preachers, et al.– for Jesus’ death. There is not really even an implicit evocation of the multitude’s responsibility.
Unlike “On a Hill Lone and Gray,” Woody doesn’t really discuss the role the crucifixion plays in the metaphysical mechanics of salvation. By contrast, the mechanics of salvation are related to the issue of economic justice. The message comes through clearly in Merle Haggard’s version as well:
Strangely enough, there are relatively few commercially available covers of this song. On “Folkways: A Vision Shared,” the song was covered by a small band from Dublin with a smaller name. YouTube has a few overlays of this cover performance onto recent Occupy protest footage. How successful the parallels are there will depend a lot on what you think of those protests, but the implicit sanctification of the protesters (sanctified either by class identification or via imitatio christi) proved for me to be an interesting lens through which to evaluate the protesters and the protests. Frankly, I found that Occupy suffered by comparison. (This is year is the 100th anniversary of Guthrie’s birth, and The Christian Science Monitor recently published an article on the continuing importance of Guthrie’s protest music for the Occupy era.)
Sandburg’s American Songbag (1927), includes the song. Sandburg writes:
There is only one American bandit who is classical, who is to this country what Robin Hood or Dick Turpin is to England, whose exploits are so close to the mythical and apocryphal that to get a true picture of him we must read a stern inquiry such as Robertus Love’s book, “The Rise and Fall of Jesse James.” For the uninformed it should be stated that Jesse was living in St. Joseph, Missouri, under the name of Howard, when, unarmed, he was shot in the back of the head, and killed, by his supposed young friend, Robert Ford.
Here’s Pete Seeger’s recording:
“Jesse James,” by Pete Seeger (Spotify)
There are plenty of other recordings, including performances by Nick Cave (which I believe Pat cited at one point), and Johnny Cash. My interest at this point is not to dig into “Jesse James” so much, as to note that Guthrie’s “folk processing” of this slightly older ballad implicitly places Jesus for the listener into the context of the Robin Hood-like Jesse James myth–with aspects of both outlawry and a certain kind of redistributive economic justice. The Judas-like betrayal by Robert Ford is also a salient factor.
In essence, the dialogue between “Christ and Culture,” if you will–that is, between the influences of more contemporary narratives (Jesse James) and the Biblical (the Jesus/Judas story)–goes both ways. From a musical perspective, just as Ford’s betrayal is made to look Judas-like, Jesus’ death is related to the killing of a Western outlaw, who supposedly shared an interest in the wealth of the rich going to the poor.
Will Kaufman explains the implicit comparison pretty well below before performing his cover of “Jesus Christ”:
Coda: Jesus and Captain Kidd
A somewhat similar instance of pairing murder ballad music to sacred story is the setting of the text “Wondrous Love,” to a tune derived from the older folk song of the crimes, trial, and confession of the Captain Kidd, the pirate. The tie, however, is not quite as tight as the one above, as most versions of the song “Captain Kidd” bear little resemblance to the tune for “Wondrous Love.” Some sources say the tie between the two should be discounted. Nevertheless, we plunge merrily on. The songs share the same meter, but the same can be said, and often is, of “Amazing Grace” and the “Theme from Gilligan’s Island.” (Yes, you can find pretty much everything on the internet.)
Nevertheless, the dots might be connected through The Southern Harmony shape-note collection. Here’s “Wondrous Love,” performed by Blue Highway. The song, to my reading, is a meditation on salvation and the nature of Jesus’ sacrifice, very much like “On a Hill Lone and Gray,” but without the narrative. Most YouTube performances available now are festival recordings. It’s even tighter in the studio.
“Wondrous Love,” by Blue Highway (Spotify)
So, while The Southern Harmony has separate entries for “Wondrous Love,” and “Captain Kidd,” it’s not hard to hear the family resemblance in the shape note singing below (a slightly different Missouri Harmony version):
Unfortunately for me, I suppose, the resemblance mostly stops there, as you’ll see from the rather exuberant sea shanty performance of Newfoundland’s Great Big Sea.
Lyrics (If you have the tune of “Wondrous Love” in your head, it’s not too hard to put it together with these words).
A somewhat more subdued, perhaps stately, version can be found here, with a bit of the background as an introduction.:
“Captain Kidd,” by the Jolly Rogues (Spotify)
In any event, it’s perhaps merely a slight family resemblance, but as we go through our discussions looking at the pairings of tunes and text, it’s worth attending to how the same musical sources can move to both American sacred music in a folk tradition on the one hand, and jaunty, if murderous, sea shanties on the other. Sometimes the pairing is accidental, sometimes it’s not. Although “Captain Kidd” is more detailed in its wickedness, its tone is similarly confessional to “Wondrous Love.” One suspects that singers of each would take them up with comparable ends in mind.