Trials, Troubles, Tribulations: A Song History
"Trials, Troubles, Tribulations" is a gospel song with a known author: Estil Cortez "E.C." Ball, a Virginia guitarist and baritone singer who owned a service station and drove a school bus.[1] Ball had first been recorded for the Library of Congress by John A. Lomax at the Galax Fiddlers' Convention in 1937, and in the years that followed he turned to religion and wrote religious pieces of his own, this one among them.[1] The Lomax liner notes title it simply "Tribulations" and, tracing its vision of the last days to the Book of Revelation, call it "a stark and unsettling meditation on the end of days."[1]
William Blake, The Book of Job: Pl. 1, Thus did Job continually, engraving, 1825. Job and his family at prayer, the first of William Blake's 1825 engravings for the Book of Job, shown for the trials of the song's title; the engraving has no connection to the song.
Alan Lomax recorded the song at the home of E.C. and Orna Ball in Rugby, Grayson County, Virginia, on August 30, 1959, during his Southern Journey field recording of 1959-1960; the session log lists two takes along with a false start and a fragment.[1][2] On that recording Ball sings and plays guitar, with Lacey Richardson adding a harmony vocal and second guitar.[1] The performance was reissued in 2010 on I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die, a collection of Lomax's 1959-1960 Southern field recordings from the Association for Cultural Equity and Mississippi Records, and the Association has used it to open a podcast episode on songs about final things.[1][3] Under its longer title it is also the first track on Rounder's CD E C Ball with Orna Ball, an expanded reissue of an earlier Rounder album, made up largely of gospel songs, with added radio performances.[4]
Among dulcimer players, the song appears in DGD tuning as one of thirty pieces in Old-Time Sacred Music For Mountain Dulcimer, edited and published by Don Pedi and sold as a download with the full PDF book, separate song sheets and MP3 recordings.[5]
Sources
- Association for Cultural Equity: "I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die: Field Recordings from Alan Lomax's Southern Journey 1959-1960" (booklet).
- Association for Cultural Equity, Lomax Digital Archive: "Rugby 8/59".
- Association for Cultural Equity: "Trials, Troubles, Tribulations" (podcast episode 15).
- Musical Traditions: "E C and Orna Ball" (review by Frank Weston).
- Don Pedi: "Old-Time Sacred Music For Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: William Blake, The Book of Job: Pl. 1, Thus did Job continually, engraving, 1825. The Cleveland Museum of Art.