Take Your Shoes Off Moses: A Song History
"Take Your Shoes Off Moses" is the title of a song by the Kentucky-born songwriter John Dill "J.D." Jarvis, who was born in Clay County on April 21, 1924, and died on the last day of 2010.[1] A profile in the Dayton Daily News says he went on to make some 45 albums, most of them with Jimmy Skinner and Rusty York.[2] The title comes from the third chapter of Exodus, where God, speaking from the burning bush, tells Moses to remove his shoes because he is standing on holy ground.[3] In a 2020 essay on the song, Victoria Emily Jones notes that its first verse and chorus draw on that passage, while the later verses turn to the water given to the Israelites in the wilderness and to the events at the Red Sea.[4]
Gerard Hoet, Moses and the Burning Bush, pen and ink with gray wash, heightened with white. Moses removing his sandals, the scene in Exodus behind the song's title.
Jarvis came to know Ralph Stanley through Jimmy Skinner, and the Dayton Daily News describes Stanley as a good friend who recorded several of his songs.[2] According to a Stanley discography, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys recorded "Take Your Shoes Off Moses" on February 22, 1971, at Roy Homer's basement studio in Clinton, Maryland, for the album Cry From The Cross.[5] That gospel album was Stanley's first for Rebel Records.[6] The band on the record included Roy Lee Centers, Curly Ray Cline, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley.[5] Jones credits Stanley's band with popularizing the song in the early 1970s, and the discography counts it as probably the best known of several Jarvis songs taken up by bluegrass bands.[4][1]
For a more recent performance, Jones's essay features a 2014 recording by the Texas country singer Courtney Patton, made for Modern Trade's Southern Gospel Revival project.[4] Dana Gruber's Grace, a collection of hymns and reflective songs tabbed for mountain dulcimer, with guitar chords, published by Fingers Of Steel, includes a piece listed under this title; the book's listing does not name its composer.[7]
Browse more tunes like this: Hymns & Gospel Dulcimer Tab
Sources
- Clinch Mountain Echo (Ralph Stanley discography): "J.D. Jarvis, More Bluegrass Gospel Songs (Rural Rhythm RRJD-224) 1969".
- Dayton Daily News: "Stateside in 1946, J.D. Jarvis embarks on bluegrass career".
- Bible Gateway: "Exodus 3:1-6 (King James Version)".
- Art & Theology: "Take Your Shoes Off (Artful Devotion)" (Victoria Emily Jones).
- Clinch Mountain Echo (Ralph Stanley discography): "Cry From The Cross (Rebel SLP 1499) 1971".
- Rebel Records: "Ralph Stanley".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Grace".
- Image: Gerard Hoet, Moses and the Burning Bush, pen and ink with gray wash, heightened with white. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.