‘Don’t Bury My Soul . . .’

Rhiannon Giddens is one of the most fascinating musicians I’ve come across in the last fifteen or so years. Banjo virtuoso, folk music scholar and more, Giddens was a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group devoted to resurrecting and renewing the Black string band music of the late 1800s and early 1900s. (Their five albums, recorded between 2006 and 2012, are all worth checking out.) 

Since then, she’s recorded in a number of collaborations, the most recent being two albums with her husband, Francesco Turrisi, and released two solo albums: Tomorrow Is My Turn in 2015 and Freedom Highway in 2017. It was on the first of those that I came across the song “Last Kind Words,” a version of which I featured last week. 

Here are the words as Giddens sings them: 

The last kind words I heard my daddy say
Lord, the last kind words I heard my daddy say
If I die, if I die in the German war
I want you to send my body, send it to my mother, Lord
If I get killed, if I get killed, please don’t bury my soul
I prefer, just leave me out, let the buzzards eat me whole

When you see me comin’, look ‘cross the rich man’s field
If I don’t bring you flour, I’ll bring you bolted meal
I went to the depot, I looked up at the stars
Cried, “some train don’t come, there'll be some walkin’ done”
Well my mama, she told me just before she died
Lord, my precious daughter, don’t you be so wild

The Mississippi River, you know it’s deep and wide
I can stand right here, see my babe from the other side
What you do to me, baby, it never gets out of me
I may not see you after I cross the deep blue sea 

The first-known version of the song was recorded in 1930 and released as “Last Kind Words Blues” on the Paramount label, credited to Geeshie Wiley. So who was Geeshie Wiley? We don’t know much about her, and we’ll dig into what we do know about her tale – collating a number of books and articles written in just the last ten years – next week. For now, here’s Giddens’ version of Wiley’s song:

– whiteray