This year, me and Jonathan Wertheim are working up a bunch of songs found collected in Harry Smith's seminal 'Anthology of American Folk Music.' I know I've worked up odd versions of this song at least 3 times, trying to parse out the rollicking gallop of Bascom Lamar Lunsford's banjo playing into the sort of regular phrasing that helps underpin this old African American ring-shout sort of gospel song. The Lunsfords are a long-standing mountain family in Buncombe County, around and about Asheville, NC close to where I live in these Blue Ridge Appalachians. I love how matter-of-fact the commentary on biblical stories seems to be in this song, there is a dreamlike aspect to the song where strange fairy-tale occurrences become almost banal and commonplace. Lunsford's original recording was made in 1928, but released again in 1952 as part of Harry Smith's strange necromantic spell -- he really was trying to do occult music-magic by collecting and releasing all these lovely dark jewels of American folk, and he succeeded in at least turning a generation of hippies on to the oddness of our mutant cultural heritage.