{"id":5846,"date":"2025-07-12T10:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T14:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5846"},"modified":"2025-07-12T10:49:57","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T14:49:57","slug":"sit-down-on-the-banks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sit-down-on-the-banks\/","title":{"rendered":"Goin&#8217; to Sit Down on the Banks of the River (Rev. Gary Davis)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"I&#039;m Going to Sit Down on the Banks of the River (Rev. Gary Davis)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nQqwpg7reLk?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>This is another classic from the Reverend Gary Davis, with some interpolations of lyrics from Shirley Caesar and the Caravans. I&#8217;m not a Christian, but I love both recordings, and would love to see more attention paid to Davis&#8217;s connections with other Carolina gospel singers. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-5849 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/R-2200687-1561035842-7024-e1752163624665.jpg?resize=281%2C281&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"281\" height=\"281\" \/>He was, of course, one of the greatest blues and ragtime guitarists &#8212; and this post is headed into some guitar nerd stuff &#8212; but he was also a terrific gospel singer in a deep local tradition. His repertoire included songs that were famously performed and recorded by the region&#8217;s greatest gospel quartets; another striking example is the song he called &#8220;Get Right Church,&#8221; which was a major hit for the Sensational Nightingales as &#8220;Morning Train&#8221; &#8212; and that group&#8217;s lead singer, Julius Cheeks, was from Davis&#8217;s home area and may even have been a distant relation.<\/p>\n<p>The song itself is a bit of a mystery. Davis recorded it in 1960; the Caravans recorded it two years later, and their record credits it to James Herndon, who worked with them as an accompanist and composer &#8212; but although it surely is much older, I have so far found no trace of it before those recordings. If anyone knows more, please get in touch and let me know. (There&#8217;s an email contact link on my web page.)<\/p>\n<p>This song was Caesar&#8217;s first hit as a young member of the Caravans, one of the greatest female quartets, issued as &#8220;I Won&#8217;t Be Back&#8221; on an album of the same title. In Anthony Heilbut&#8217;s brilliant survey of<br \/>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-5847\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/R-8600930-1464881242-9317-e1752161043812.jpg?resize=296%2C296&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"296\" height=\"296\" \/>the music&#8217;s golden age, <em>The Gospel Sound<\/em>, he referred to it by an alternate title, &#8220;Sweeping Through the City,&#8221; and wrote that it remained the most popular number in her live shows, quoting her saying, &#8220;The new numbers are selling but the stick is still sweeping.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I learned Davis&#8217;s version in the 1990s, during a particularly deep period of immersion in his music &#8212; it was one of many, and I&#8217;ve already posted a bunch of pieces I worked up in that period, including &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/samson-and-delilah\/\">Samson and Delilah<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/you-got-to-move\/\">You Got to Move<\/a>,&#8221; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gary-davis-medley\/\">gospel guitar medley<\/a>, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/\">Cincinnati Flow Rag<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/boy-was-kissing\/\">The Boy Was Kissing the Girl and Playing Guitar at the Same Time<\/a>.&#8221; At that time, I got the rudiments, but I didn&#8217;t really understand his style until I spent a few months hanging out with Ernie Hawkins, who studied with Davis and knows his style more intimately than anyone on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Ernie pushed me to play with just the thumb and index finger of my right hand, showing me how to get Davis&#8217;s distinctive rolls, and pointing out the brilliant economy of his chording. I&#8217;ve gone into this subject before, and this piece uses the same basic chords I outlined in my post for &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/boy-was-kissing\/\">The Boy Was Kissing the Girl<\/a>,&#8221; as well as the elegantly simple move from a partially barred D shape to an A7 shape (in this case, with the partial barre on the 7th fret, so the chords are G and D7, followed by a G7 played in Davis&#8217;s trademark C7 shape with the thumb coming around the neck to fret the 5th and 6th strings).<\/p>\n<p>I got most of that from Ernie, and modified this a bit more in recent months, after noticing that Davis virtually always used his thumb to get the 6th string bass root of his G chord in first position, even when he was playing something simple like &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/\">Candyman<\/a>.&#8221; My post on that one uses a regular first position G chord, but I&#8217;ve kind of fallen in love with the idea of using the thumb there, which leaves you free to reach way up the neck &#8212; which, unsurprisingly,\u00a0 was a favorite move for Dave Van Ronk, another acolyte of the Reverend, who used it to fine effect in &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/st-louis-tickle\/\">St. Louis Tickle<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/midnight-hour-blues\/\">Midnight Hour Blues<\/a>,&#8221; and numerous other pieces. (Van Ronk used the thumb-bass G even more consistently in his many drop-D pieces, for example &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/blood-red-moon\/\">Blood Red Moon<\/a>.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have much more to add, except that I&#8217;ve undoubtedly revised the lyrics in all sorts of unintentional ways, and in keeping with an ongoing effort to sing in my own voice, intentionally switched from &#8220;I won&#8217;t be back no more&#8221; to &#8220;I won&#8217;t be back anymore.&#8221; Some people may think that&#8217;s silly, but that&#8217;s how I normally say the phrase and I&#8217;ve previously quoted Martin Carthy&#8217;s remark that if you believe in a lyric, you should sing it like you believe it, not like you&#8217;re &#8220;play-acting.&#8221; I don&#8217;t actually believe the Christian sentiment of this one, but it&#8217;s a moving and powerful image and I see no reason to undercut it by putting on a fake accent &#8212; especially a Southern Black accent that, when adopted by a norther white urbanite, has echoes of blackface mistrelsy. It isn&#8217;t just minstrelsy, of course; most of my favorite singers were from the South and I used to sing pretty much everything in that accent, just as many British rockers sing in American accents. Still, I&#8217;m trying to get closer to my own voice, and although I still hear some of that accent when I listen back, I&#8217;m working on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is another classic from the Reverend Gary Davis, with some interpolations of lyrics from Shirley Caesar and the Caravans. I&#8217;m not a Christian, but I love both recordings, and would love to see more attention paid to Davis&#8217;s connections with other Carolina gospel singers. He was, of course, one of the greatest blues and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sit-down-on-the-banks\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Goin&#8217; to Sit Down on the Banks of the River (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-5846","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>Goin&#039; to Sit Down on the Banks of the River (Rev. Gary Davis) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A gospel song from the Rev. 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Gary Davis, but he was one of my guitar heroes long before I could even think about playing his music. I loved the power and virtuosity of his playing, the soulful\u00a0 excitement of his singing, the dynamics, the dynamism... So by my\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Pure-Religion.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5336,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/you-got-to-move\/","url_meta":{"origin":5846,"position":1},"title":"You Got to Move (Rev. Gary Davis)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 1, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Reverend Gary Davis has always been at the top of my list of guitar heroes and influences, along with Mississippi John Hurt, Dave Van Ronk, Joseph Spence, and Jean-Bosco Mwenda. I've gone through a couple of periods of immersion in his playing, but don't tend to perform my favorite arrangements,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Gary-Davis-LP1-e1725053629451.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4129,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/boy-was-kissing\/","url_meta":{"origin":5846,"position":2},"title":"The Boy Was Kissing the Girl (Gary Davis)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I first heard this on a unique instrumental album, The Guitar and Banjo of Reverend Gary Davis, which was also my source for \"Cincinnati Flow Rag\" and various other guitar showpieces. As explained in earlier posts, I shied away from most of Davis's material because I was not interested in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Harlem.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":836,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hes-jailhouse-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":5846,"position":3},"title":"He&#8217;s In the Jailhouse Now (Pink Anderson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A popular ragtime song I learned from a wonderful record by Pink Anderson, with some cursory musings on politics and updated lyrics.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"American Street Singers","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/American-Street-Singers.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2408,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":5846,"position":4},"title":"Cincinnati Flow Rag (Rev. Gary Davis)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"January 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I always loved Gary Davis's guitar playing, but was into blues and ragtime a long time before I got into gospel music -- so for many years my favorite of his albums was The Guitar & Banjo of Reverend Gary Davis.\u00a0 As far as I know, this is the only\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Guitar-and-Banjo-of-Rev-Gary-Davis-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1151,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/","url_meta":{"origin":5846,"position":5},"title":"Candyman (Rev. Gary Davis\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A classic from Rev. Gary Davis, and then Dave Van Ronk, Jack Elliott, and the rest of us... with commentary on guitar technique and lyrical confusion","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Dave van ronk8","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Dave-van-ronk8.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5846"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5863,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846\/revisions\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}