I Got A Home In That Rock: A Song History

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"I Got A Home In That Rock" is a religious song whose refrain tells of a home in the rock, while its verses touch on what became of several biblical figures: Lazarus and the rich man Dives from the parable in Luke 16, David, Judas and Noah.[1] Howard W. Odum, then a fellow in psychology at Clark University, printed two related texts, one of them with the home-in-the-rock refrain and a verse on Judas, in his 1909 dissertation on Black religious song in the South.[2]

Painting of the beggar Lazarus lying on the ground near a dog while a rich man and his guests feast at a table

Jacopo Bassano, Lazarus and the Rich Man, oil on canvas, c. 1550. The parable of Lazarus and the rich man, which the song's verses touch on.

The anthology The Book of American Negro Spirituals, edited by James Weldon Johnson (Viking Press, 1925), includes it in an arrangement by Lawrence Brown, with verses on Lazarus and on Noah's rainbow sign.[3] The Traditional Ballad Index gives its earliest date as a 1920 Pathé record by the Biddle University Quartet and lists other 1920s discs, among them the Birmingham Jubilee Singers on Columbia in 1926.[1] That same year the Rigoletto Quartet, identified in one discography as from Morris Brown University, recorded it for OKeh in New York.[4] Paul Robeson cut it for Victor on May 10, 1927, and it was issued in February 1928 backed with "Witness," which he sang with Lawrence Brown.[5] The Ballad Index also files the Carter Family's 1929 Victor record "God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign" under this song.[1]

In January 1938 Willie M. Bledsoe and John Hensley sang it with guitar in Pineville, Kentucky, for a Library of Congress field recording now in the Mary Elizabeth Barnicle Kentucky Collection, where the original archive card heads it "God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign."[6] Larry Conger's American Spirituals Tab Book, published by Fingers Of Steel, includes it among 28 songs arranged in DAD tuning; the listing calls the pieces fairly easy to play and supplies an MP3 recording for each.[7]

Our book that contains the song "I Got A Home In That Rock"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Home in that Rock".
  2. Internet Archive (Smithsonian Libraries): "Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes" (Howard W. Odum, 1909).
  3. Internet Archive: "The Book of American Negro Spirituals" (James Weldon Johnson, 1925).
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "OKeh matrix 74299. I've got a home in that Rock / Rigoletto Quartet".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Victor 21109".
  6. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "I Got A Home In That Rock".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, American Spirituals Tab Book".
  8. Image: Jacopo Bassano, Lazarus and the Rich Man, oil on canvas, c. 1550. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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