{"id":3821,"date":"2018-07-07T01:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3821"},"modified":"2018-07-07T15:19:38","modified_gmt":"2018-07-07T19:19:38","slug":"samson-and-delilah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/samson-and-delilah\/","title":{"rendered":"Samson and Delilah (Rev. Gary Davis)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Samson and Delilah\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EOd_fkVqzrc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always named the Reverend Gary Davis as one of my main influences on guitar and loved playing his instrumental showpieces (like &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/\">Cincinnati Flow Rag<\/a>&#8220;), but although I learned a bunch of his superb gospel arrangements I rarely performed them because I couldn&#8217;t get behind the lyrics.\u00a0 <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3824 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Gary-Davis.jpg?resize=265%2C348&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"265\" height=\"348\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Gary-Davis.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Gary-Davis.jpg?resize=228%2C300&amp;ssl=1 228w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 265px) 100vw, 265px\" \/>This was the great exception because it tells a Bible story rather than exhorting anyone to believe, and it&#8217;s a great lyric with a great accompaniment.<\/p>\n<p>When I first learned this I sang Davis&#8217;s lyric, but then I heard the Staple Singers&#8217; version, which extended the story to the moment when Samson pulls the building down. So I learned that, and it&#8217;s the one I play here&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; and that got me interested in whether there were even more verses. So I began doing some research, which led into a larger project on the African American tradition of rapping or singing Bible stories. That&#8217;s an ongoing effort, part of a still larger project to explore the deep roots of rap, which so far has produced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/dozens.html\">my book on the dozens<\/a>. Meanwhile I turned up quite a lot of additional information on &#8220;Samson and Delilah,&#8221; which seems to have been uniquely popular and spread across the South in multiple versions in the first decades of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n<p>The first solid evidence of this song is three verses in &#8220;Wasn&#8217;t that a Witness for My Lord,&#8221; a sort of musical compendium of Bible stories, which included three verses about Samson, two of which are close to what Davis sang. Howard Odum <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3826\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Samson-wrestling-with-the-lions-00.jpg?resize=300%2C267&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Samson-wrestling-with-the-lions-00.jpg?resize=300%2C267&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Samson-wrestling-with-the-lions-00.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>published a version of this song in 1909 as part of an article on recent African American spirituals in <em>The American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education<\/em>, and it remained popular with jubilee quartets through the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next two decades several authors published excerpts from longer versions of the Samson and Delilah ballad, and in 1927 the first three recordings of it appeared within a few months of each other, by Blind Willie Johnson in Dallas,\u00a0 Rev. T. T. Rose in Chicago, and Rev. T. E. Weems in Atlanta. All three were clearly based on the same source, though each performer had edited the lyric somewhat differently to fit a three-minute 78 rpm disc. I guessed the source must have been a published broadside (a printed song sheet with lyrics but no music), and eventually found a copy of that broadside in John Lomax&#8217;s papers at the University of Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the version recorded in 1927 is quite different from what Davis and the Staples sang, and their lyric is closer to the verses collected by Odum twenty years earlier&#8230; which leads me to think it was already around, certainly in oral tradition and likely in print &#8212; but there has been virtually no research on African American religious broadsides, so I&#8217;m still kind of stumbling in the dark. (If anyone has suggestions of archives or libraries that have collected this sort of material, please pass them along.)<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, here&#8217;s a compendium of verses from the versions I&#8217;ve found extant by the 1920s, suggesting how long and impressive some early performances may have been:<\/p>\n<p>Delilah was a woman that was fine and fair.<br \/>\nPleasant looking with coal black hair.<br \/>\nDelilah she gained old Samson\u2019s mind,<br \/>\nWhen he first seen the woman of the Philistine.<\/p>\n<p>Why he went to Timothy [Timnath] I cannot tell<br \/>\nBut the daughter of Timothy she pleased him well.<br \/>\nHe asked his father to go and see<br \/>\nCan you get that beautiful woman for me?<\/p>\n<p>Sampson\u2019s mother she said to him,<br \/>\nCan\u2019t you find a wife among our kin;<br \/>\nShe said, O Sampson, it grieves your mother\u2019s mind<br \/>\nFor you to go and marry to a Philistine.<br \/>\n(Chorus)<br \/>\nIf I had my way,<br \/>\nO Lordy, Lordy,<br \/>\nIf I had my way;<br \/>\nIf I had my way,<br \/>\nI would tear this building down.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve read about Samson, from his birth<br \/>\nHe was the strongest man ever lived on earth<br \/>\nYou read way back in that ancient times<br \/>\nLord, he faced a thousand of the Philistines<\/p>\n<p>Let me tell you what Samson done.<br \/>\nHe broke at a lion, and the lion run.<br \/>\nOh, Samson was the man that the lion attack<br \/>\nLord, Samson jumped on that lion\u2019s back<\/p>\n<p>\u2019Twas written that the lion killed a man with his paw,<br \/>\nBut Sampson got his hand in the lion&#8217;s jaw.<br \/>\nLord, he broke that lion, killed him dead<br \/>\nAnd the bees made honey in the lion\u2019s head.<\/p>\n<p>Sampson gave a feast and there came a debate,<br \/>\nHe put forth a riddle to interpretate,<br \/>\nSo many garments he said he would give<br \/>\nIf they tell his riddle in seven days.<\/p>\n<p>Sampson\u2019s feast was almost through,<br \/>\nThe known of the riddle was not yet in view.<br \/>\nThey called his wife and instruct her what to do,<br \/>\n\u201cPlease ask your husband and he\u2019ll tell it to you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She says, \u201cWhat is the riddle, please tell it to me,<br \/>\nYou said \u2018Out of the eater came forth meat;\u2019<br \/>\nWhat is your riddle, please tell it to me,<br \/>\nYou said \u2018Out of the strong came forth the sweet.\u2019\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cI killed a lion, long after he was dead<br \/>\nThe bees made honey in the lion&#8217;s head.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sampson burned down a field of corn,<br \/>\nThey looked for Sampson but he was gone.<br \/>\nSo many thousands they formed a plot,<br \/>\nIt was not many days before he was caught.<\/p>\n<p>They bound his hands, while walking along<br \/>\nHe looked on the ground and saw an old jawbone<br \/>\nHe just moved his arms, the rope popped like thread,<br \/>\nWhen he got through slaying three thousand was dead.<\/p>\n<p>Sampson went to town and he stayed too late,<br \/>\nThey wanted to kill him and they laid in wait.<br \/>\nTell me, wasn\u2019t Sampson awfully strong?<br \/>\nHe pulled up the gate posts and he carried them along.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, Samson\u2019s hair went wandering about<br \/>\nLord, the strength of Samson was never found out<br \/>\nUntil his wife she sat upon his knees<br \/>\nSaid, \u201cTell me, Samson, where your strength lies, please\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lord, she looked so pretty, she talked so fair,<br \/>\nSamson said, \u201cWoman, it\u2019s in my hair.<br \/>\nYou shave my head just as clean as your hand<br \/>\nLord, my strength will become like a natural man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sampson was a man very large in size,<br \/>\nThey overpowered Samson and plucked out his eyes.<br \/>\nO Church, just listen to the tale,<br \/>\nThey caught poor Sampson and put him in jail.<\/p>\n<p>Church, let me tell you what the Philistines done,<br \/>\nThey brought Sampson to the building to have some fun.<br \/>\nBut now, O Church, ain\u2019t you glad<br \/>\nTo hear what Sampson said to the lad,<\/p>\n<p>These was the words that Sampson said,<br \/>\nShow me a pillar for to lean my head.<br \/>\nWe are told that the building was high from the ground,<br \/>\nSampson braced against the pillar and it tumbled down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always named the Reverend Gary Davis as one of my main influences on guitar and loved playing his instrumental showpieces (like &#8220;Cincinnati Flow Rag&#8220;), but although I learned a bunch of his superb gospel arrangements I rarely performed them because I couldn&#8217;t get behind the lyrics.\u00a0 This was the great exception because it tells &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/samson-and-delilah\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Samson and Delilah (Rev. Gary Davis)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Samson and Delilah - Elijah Wald - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A gospel guitar classic from Rev. 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