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Ain't No Grave/ Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down/ There Ain't No Grave
Traditional Old-Time, Bluegrass Gospel and Spiritual;
ARTIST: As sung by Johnny Cash
CATEGORY: Traditional Bluegrass Gospel;
DATE: Early 1900s; First Recorded in 1942 by Lomax and Jones of Bozie Sturdivant in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942 for the Library of Congress
RECORDING INFO: Ain't No Grave
Us - Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down
Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down
Ball, E. C. (Estil C.). E. C. Ball, Rounder 0026, LP (1973), trk# 11
Caudill Family. Early Days of Bluegrass, Vol. 5 - The Rich-R-Tone Story, Rounder 1017, LP (1974), trk# 5 [1954]
Double Decker String Band. Evolution Girl, Marimac 9021, Cas (1988), trk# 16 (Ain't No Grave)
Hickerson, Joe. Drive Dull Care Away. Vol 1, Folk Legacy FSI 058, LP (1976), trk# 11
McElderry, Maureen. Fool Such As I, Train on the Island TI 9, LP (1981), trk# 3
Odetta. Odetta at Carnegie Hall, Vanguard VRS-9076, LP (1961), trk# B.08
Odetta. One Grain of Sand, Vanguard VSD 2153, LP (1963), trk# A.07 (Ain't No Grave)
Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold God's Body Down: Pinder Family & Joseph Spence. Real Bahamas. Volume II, Nonesuch H-72078, LP (1978), trk# B.07 [1965]
Another great version of 'Ain't No Grave' was recorded by the Cauldill Family of Whitesburg, Ky in 1954 for the Rich-R-Tone label.
First recorded version "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down" is the one recorded by Lomax and Jones of Bozie Sturdivant in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942 for the Library of Congress. His virtuoso rendition can be heard on a recent release: "A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings," selected and annotated by Stephen Wade, on Rouder CD 1500.
OTHER NAMES: "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down"; "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold God's Body Down"; "There Ain't No Grave"
SOURCES: Folk Index; Mudcat Discussion Forum; Wiki; Ivan Tribe
NOTES: There is little information available about the origin of this traditional gospel song found in both white and black traditions.
The first recorded version of "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down" was made by Lomax and Jones of Bozie Sturdivant in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942 for the Library of Congress. His virtuoso rendition can be heard online:
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=5024892&m=5025087
This traditional gospel song was popularized mainly by "Brother" Claude Ely (July 22, 1922 – May 7, 1978) a religious singer-songwriter and a Pentecostal Holiness preacher. Ely recorded the song for King records in 1953. Johnny Cash later covered Ely's version.
"Ain't No Grave" was a posthumous album by Johnny Cash. It was released on February 26, 2010, which would have been Cash's 78th birthday. Using Brother Claude Ely's song "Ain't No Grave" as the title track, the LA Times Reports that the song would have been Johnny Cash's last recorded song before his death.
The next section is on Claude Ely from Wiki, Ely's new book site and also historian Ivan Tribe: Brother Claude Daniel Ely, coined as the King Recording Label’s “Gospel Ranger” of the Appalachian Mountains, was born in Pucketts Creek, Virginia. He was the first Pentecostal Holiness recording artist to be signed to a major recording label for strictly sacred music and songs.
Receiving notoriety for his penned song, “There Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down),” Ely’s musical style and spiritual influence still exist today among both secular and sacred music enthusiasts. Many Hollywood entertainers and musical artists have acknowledged their admiration and fascination for Brother Claude Ely. Often music historians attest that other musical artists cite Brother Claude Ely as having been a positive influence on their works as well. Artists recording Brother Claude Ely's songs include Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and others. Robert Duvall's self-produced movie entitled The Apostle also integrated Brother Claude Ely's music on its soundtrack.
Ely pastored various churches in Kentucky, Virginia and the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Ely also hosted a radio program entitled "The Gospel Ranger Show" which aired across the southeastern portion of the United States. Many of Ely's religious followers and numerous admirers still exist today in the Appalachian mountains.
Ely's great nephew, Macel Ely II, wrote an official biography on Brother Claude Ely's life. The book is based upon oral history ascertained from over 1,000 personal interviews Macel Ely II conducted with musical artists, ministers, and Appalachian residents who remembered the singer/preacher. The book will be a "set" consisting of the earlier mentioned book and a music CD with songs performed by Brother Claude Ely himself. The set is entitled Ain't No Grave: The Life & Legacy of Brother Claude Ely and is set to be released on July 1, 2010 by Dust-to-Digital out of Atlanta, Georgia.
Eddie Dean, writer for The Washington Post stated:
...and Holiness preachers such as Brother Claude Ely rave on like renegade rockabilly cats ... You have Brother Claude Ely doing radio broadcasts that sound like a tent revival ... I think his material is as strong as anything Sun Studio did. Even the wildest rockabilly rarely reached the unhinged delirium of "There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down," ... A Holiness preacher from Kentucky, Ely was a faith healer and a terrific guitarist, judging from the ferocious rockabilly rhythms on "Grave," a country hit in 1953. Ely and many others ... foreshadow the rock-and-soul explosion, when church-reared performers such as Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin fused sanctified and secular style to revoltionize pop music.
A new book, “Ain’t No Grave: The Life & Legacy of Brother Claude Ely,” by Macel Ely II, the great nephew to Reverend Claude Ely, has been published. Here is some info from the book website:
Give Name: Claude Ely
Date of Birth: July 21, 1922
Place of Birth: Lee County, Virginia
Date of Death: May 7, 1978
Marital Status: Rosey
Children: Sonny, Roger, Claudette, Claude, Jr.
"Brother Claude Ely recorded some of the most powerful and emotional Gospel songs ever made. Known sometimes as the Gospel Ranger, Ely spent nearly thirty years as a minister in the Appalachian heartland of eastern Kentucky, east Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, and eventually to a migrant community in suburban Cincinnati.
His early efforts on the King label-recorded during Kentucky mountain religious services-preserve some excellent and spontaneous music from the white Holiness and Pentecostal traditions. Claude Ely was born in a mountain homestead some five miles from Pennington Gap, Virginia in a hollow called Pucketts Creek, VA.
At 12, physicians diagnosed him as suffering from tuberculosis, which they believed terminal, but he subsequently recovered. However, during his illness, he began to play musical instruments, although he had no prior experience. Ely subsequently worked as a coal miner and served in the U.S. Army during WWII. Afterwards, he returned home, had a conversion experience and worked in the mines until 1949, when he received a call to preach.
For the next sixteen years Brother Claude conducted numerous revivals and pastored churches in such mountain towns as Grundy, Virginia and Cumberland, Kentucky. During his pastorate at the Free Pentecostal Church of God in Cumberland, he recorded two sessions for King Records, the first apparently taken from a remote broadcast in the church to a radio station in Whitesburg, Kentucky, on October 12, 1953 and the second from a recording made at a revival meeting in the local Letcher County Courthouse the following June.
According to J.D. Jarvis, who was present, Ely initially had some reservations about commercially recording in a studio, but finally decided to permit cutting the material in an actual service and put them on disc. A total of fifteen numbers were recorded at both services although only eight appeared on single releases, but their uniqueness has long impressed folklorists and students of Appalachian religious traditions.
Brother Claude’s rendition of songs like Holy, Holy, Holy (That’s All Right), There’s A Leak In This Old Building and especially There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down are outstanding and the latter number went on to become something of a standard in the Gospel field.
Claude Ely continued not only to conduct revivals and Gospel sings, but also to minister churches. In 1962 and in 1968, he again recorded for King, but this time in a more conventional studio setting. Meanwhile his pastorate took him to Charity Tabernacle in Newport, Kentucky-within the Cincinnati metropolitan area-where he spent the last thirteen years of his life.
Not long after his last session at King, Brother Claude recorded an album at Rusty York’s Jewel studio, backed by local Gospel musicians such as Dennis Hensley, Phil Miles, Herschel Lively, J.D. Jarvis and Herman Crisp. He released it on his own Gold Star label. Ely suffered a heart attack in September 1977, but seemingly recovered. At that time, he began to tape many of his own unrecorded compositions for preservation. This proved to be a wise move because he suffered a fatal heart attack the following May and died during a service at his church.
His daughter assembled an album and a sermon from these home recordings and they were released on Dennis Hensley’s Jordan label in 1979. Several latter-day Appalachian Gospel singers trace varying influences to Brother Claude and his music, including Robert Akers, Tommy Crank, Joe Freeman and J.D. Jarvis.
Interest in his music persists and in 1993, the British label Ace released a compact disc containing his entire 1953 and 1954 sessions, including the talking, sermonettes and unreleased cuts, as well as a few of his numbers from 1962."
“Ain’t No Grave: the Life and Legacy of Brother Claude Ely” is the first book ever written as an oral, biographical history reference taken from the recorded interviews of over 1,000 persons in the Appalachian Mountains who personally knew Brother Claude Ely on various aspects of his life.
Brother Claude Ely, coined as the King Recording Label’s “Gospel Ranger” of the Appalachian Mountains, was well known and loved by many in the earlier part of twentieth century as both a religious, singer/songwriter and Pentecostal-holiness preacher. Few persons, however, knew the personal dimensions and aspects of his childhood, military service, and years of hard work in the coalfields of southwestern Virginia. Now thirty years after his legendary death, many fans still seem mesmerized and touched by this humble man’s quick wit and sincere desire to share the Gospel’s “Good News” to everyone who would listen to his message of hope and love.
Receiving notoriety for his song, “There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down,” Ely’s musical and spiritual influence can still be heard like a true mountain echo in and through those long, winding hollows and impoverished coal fields even today. Hollywood and the “King of Rock and Roll” would also later acknowledge their admiration and fascination with the late Brother Claude Ely. More importantly, however, Brother Ely’s own admirers and devoted, followers which many still exist today in the Appalachian mountains attest to the greatest message he taught them in not only his sermons and singing, but through his life and death as well: That those who remain in Christ will one day be taken from their earthly graves to meet Jesus and exchange their mortal bodies for immortal ones. Trading their sorrows and hard lives for ones that are free of cares, pain, and turmoil.
For these believers, when the trumpet of the Lord sounds they whole-heartily believe multitudes of bodies which have been buried deep within these Appalachian mountains will one day come out of the ground to meet their Savior and be reunited with their loved ones. These are persons that have lived hard and died hard in the coalmines and impoverished areas of Appalachia. This is the message of hope they have held on to and longed for, for decades. They’ve read it in their Holy Bibles, they’ve heard it preached in fiery sermons, and they have sung it as an anthem to be heralded among these dedicated body of believers within the Pentecostal-holiness ranks.
There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down
There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down
When I hear that trumpet sound, I’m gonna get up out of the ground.
Cause There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down.
This book chronicles the life and events of a single, mortal man that made an eternal impact in the lives of thousands of mountain people. His simple sermons and folkloric songs are still providing assurance, hope, and faith to its most devoted adherents.
FINAL NOTES: There are many vesions available on youtube including a version by Claude Ely. The song has become a popular gospel song through recent versions by artists like Johnny Cash.
AIN'T NO GRAVE- Johnny Cash
There ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
When I hear that trumpet sound
I'm gonna rise right out of the ground
Ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
Well, look way down the river
And what do you think I see
I see a band of angels
And they're coming after me
Ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
Well, look down yonder, Gabriel
Put your feet on the land and sea
But Gabriel, don't you blow your trumpet
Until you hear from me
There ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
Ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
Well meet me, Jesus, meet me
Meet me in the middle of the air
And if these wings don't fail me,
I will meet you anywhere
Ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
Well meet me, Mother and Father,
Meet me down the river road
And Mama, you know that I'll be there
When I check in my load
Ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain't no grave
Can hold my body down
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