Jesus, Won't You Come By Here? A Song History

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The bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins recorded "Jesus Won't You Come By Here," singing and playing piano, at Sierra Sound in Berkeley, California, on November 26, 1961.[1] In 1995 notes, his producer Chris Strachwitz traced Hopkins's keyboard playing to his youth, when he took up both piano and organ in church in Centerville, Texas, the town where he was born.[2] Barbara Dane, a singer who visited that session, harmonizes on the take Arhoolie released on a 1966 LP pairing Hopkins with his brothers and with Dane.[3][1] A performance from that session that Arhoolie lists as previously unreleased, titled "Jesus Will You Come By Here," appeared much later on its Po' Lightnin' collection.[2]

Pen-and-ink drawing of a bearded man kneeling in prayer at an open window while two men watch from a doorway

William Holman Hunt, Daniel Praying, graphite, pen and black and brown ink and grey wash, 1849. Shown for its subject, Daniel at prayer; it has no connection to the song.

Arhoolie credits the arrangement to Hopkins, and the sources consulted here do not say who first sang the song or where he learned it.[1][2] Maureen Sellers includes it in Simply Duets, a collection of melody and harmony parts in DAD tuning for two mountain dulcimers, published by Fingers Of Steel.[4]

Our books that contain the song "Jesus, Won't You Come By Here?"

Sources

  1. Smithsonian Folkways: "Barbara Dane & Lightning Hopkins, Sometimes I Believe She Loves Me (Arhoolie CD 451), liner notes".
  2. Smithsonian Folkways: "Lightning Hopkins, Po' Lightnin' (Arhoolie CD 403), liner notes".
  3. Smithsonian Folkways: "Lightning Hopkins with His Brothers Joel & John Henry and with Barbara Dane (Arhoolie F1022), liner notes".
  4. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Duets".
  5. Image: William Holman Hunt, Daniel Praying, graphite, pen and black and brown ink and grey wash, 1849. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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