Those Bones Gonna Rise Again: A Song History
The Traditional Ballad Index describes "Dese Bones Gwine to Rise Again" as a humorous take on the Genesis tale of Adam and Eve, closing with their expulsion from Eden.[1] According to the Index, the Eden details follow the second creation account in Genesis, while the refrain's rising bones come from Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones.[1] It catalogs the song as Laws I18 and Roud 4184 and keeps it separate from "Dem Bones" and the other dry-bones songs, which it links to this one only by theme.[1]
Unknown artist, Leaf from a Beatus Manuscript: The Fourth Angel Sounds the Trumpet and an Eagle Cries Woe, tempera, gold and ink on parchment, ca. 1180. An angel sounding a trumpet, from a Spanish manuscript of about 1180, shown for the trumpet in the verses Barton printed; the leaf has no connection to the song.
The earliest date the Index gives is 1899, from William E. Barton's Old Plantation Hymns.[1] Barton introduces his version as a song of the resurrection and remarks that singers sometimes worked family names into it; the verses he prints dwell on heaven, grace and Gabriel's trumpet rather than on Eden.[2] Carl Sandburg printed the Adam and Eve version in The American Songbag (1927), likening its imagery to James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones and noting that he had heard it sung in both town and country, including at work.[3] Sandburg thanked Lloyd Lewis for help with the text and credited the harmonization to Hilbert G. Stewart, a young Black composer from Chicago.[3]
Frank and James McCravy recorded it for Victor in New York on July 8, 1927, singing as a duet over violin, banjo, guitar and piano under Nathaniel Shilkret, with the arrangement credited to the pair.[4] They cut it again for Brunswick that December.[5] The Ballad Index adds a 1929 Conqueror record by Rutherford & Foster and follows the song into later camp songbooks and collections of children's rhymes.[1] Dulcimer players can find it in DAD tuning among the 28 songs of Larry Conger's American Spirituals Tab Book, a Fingers Of Steel download whose ZIP holds the full book, a separate file for each song and an MP3 recording of every piece.[6]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Dese Bones Gwine to Rise Again [Laws I18]".
- Internet Archive: "Old Plantation Hymns" (William E. Barton, 1899).
- Internet Archive: "The American Songbag" (Carl Sandburg, 1927).
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-39639. These bones g'wina rise again / Frank McCravy ; James McCravy".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Brunswick 3778 (10-in. double-faced)".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, American Spirituals Tab Book".
- Image: Unknown artist, Leaf from a Beatus Manuscript: The Fourth Angel Sounds the Trumpet and an Eagle Cries Woe, tempera, gold and ink on parchment, ca. 1180. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.