I'm Working On A Building: A Song History
"I'm Working On A Building" is a traditional sacred song, and the earliest version found in the sources consulted here is "I Work on Building Too," printed in Old Songs Hymnal (1929), a book of words and melodies from Georgia collected by Dorothy G. Bolton with music arranged by Harry T. Burleigh.[1] The book's foreword says these old church songs were in danger of being lost as the older singers died, and it calls them spirituals.[1] Folklore collectors also recorded the song in the late 1930s: on July 9, 1937, Pearson's Funeral Home Choir sang "Working On the Building" at a session catalogued as "Columbia 7/37" among John A. Lomax's South Carolina field recordings.[2][3][4] In January 1938, John Hensley and a group of girls sang it, with guitar, in Pineville, Kentucky, for a recording in the Mary Elizabeth Barnicle Kentucky Collection at the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center.[5]
Levin C. Handy, Builders at work above the second level of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building during its construction, cyanotype, 1891. Shown in fun for the song's title; it has no connection to the song.
The Carter Family (A. P., Sara and Maybelle Carter) recorded the song for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, on May 8, 1934.[6] It was issued on Bluebird B-5716 and on Montgomery Ward M-4541, with the disc label naming A. P. Carter as arranger.[6] Twenty years later, on January 14, 1954, Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys recorded it in Nashville with Jimmy Martin, Charlie Cline and Milton Estes singing alongside him, and Decca issued it as number 29348.[7]
Elwood Donnelly includes it in Such Singing You Will Hear: 35 Songs Of The Carter Family, a book of instructions and notes for mountain dulcimer, backup and voice, which Donnelly publishes.[8]
Sources
- Internet Archive: "Old Songs Hymnal" (Dorothy G. Bolton and Harry T. Burleigh, 1929).
- Association for Cultural Equity: "Columbia 7/37".
- Association for Cultural Equity: "Working On the Building".
- Association for Cultural Equity: "South Carolina 1934-1940".
- Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "I'm Working On A Building".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-83142. I'm working on a building / Carter Family".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Decca matrix NA 3236. I'm working on a building / Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys".
- Elwood Donnelly: "Such Singing You Will Hear: 35 Songs Of The Carter Family".
- Image: Levin C. Handy, Builders at work above the second level of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building during its construction, cyanotype, 1891. Library of Congress.