SAADI HALIL

Saadi Halil doing his thing!

In My Time of Dyin' Saadi Halil (2013) www.saadihalil.com In my time of dyin' don't want nobody to mourn all i want for you to do is take my body home So I can die easy well, well, well so I can die easy Jesus' gonna make up Jesus' gonna make up Jesus' gonna make up my dyin' bed Meet me Jesus, meet me meet me in the middle of the air if these wings should fail me won't you meet me with another pair So I can die easy well, well, well so I can die easy Jesus' gonna make up Jesus' gonna make up Jesus' gonna make up my dyin' bed In my time of dyin' don't want no one to fall to their knees just take a closer walk with me and Second Line through New Orleans So I can die easy well, well, well so I can die easy Jesus' gonna make up Jesus' gonna make up Jesus' gonna make up my dyin' bed

Saadi Halil doing his thing in Portuguese!

The first time I heard this song, was when I was an archival cataloguer at Smithsonian Folkways. The recording by Dave Van Ronk was so haunting it stuck with me all day, and really, became one of my favorite discoveries of my time there. Unfortunately this is one of the songs that I have had a hard time finding much documentation about (typical of an oral tradition folk song). I read that “Carl Sandburg first heard this grim blues-ballad from Nancy Barnhart of St. Louis back in the 1920s. Ten years later, folklorist and singer Sam Hinton came across an African American farmer in Walker County, TX who sang another version. And in the late 1950s, Bob Gibson introduced "Tell Old Bill" to a wider audience when he recorded an interpretation of Sandburg's version.”

Wild World - Cat Stevens Cover 2014

The Farewell Concert (July 13, 2013)

As part of my Cover series, here is cover number 1! A beautiful song by one of my favorite groups of all time.