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Bye And Bye I'm Going To See The King/A Mother’s Last Word To Her Daughter
Bye and Bye We're Going to See the King
Tradtional Old-Time, Spiritual; Adapted as String Band song
ARTIST: from 1929 recording by Washington Phillips (A Mother's Last Word To Her Daughter)
CATEGORY: Traditional and Public Domain Gospel;
DATE: 1800s; 1926 Arizona Dranes; 1929 Recording Washington Phillips (A Mother's Last Word To Her Daughter), 1929 Willie Johnson recording
RECORDING INFO: Bye and Bye I'm Gonna See the King - Phillips, Washington
Cohen, Andy; and Joe LaRose. Tuxedo Blues, Green Linnet SIF 1033, LP (1981), trk# 11
Washington Phillips album on Yazoo records was released on CD.
Critton Hollow (String Band). By and By, Flying Fish FF 355, LP (1985), trk# B.06 (Mother's Parting Words to her Daughter)
Johnson, Blind Willie. Complete Blind Willie Johnson, Columbia Legacy C2K 52835, CD (1993), trk# 1.13 [1929/12/10]
Dranes, Arizona/ with Rev. FW McGee and Jubilee Singers Chicago, November 15, 1926 9877-A Bye and Bye We're Going to See the King; OK 8438
OTHER NAMES: “Bye And Bye I'm Going To See The King,” "A Mother’s Last Word To Her Daughter" "Bye and Bye We're Going to See the King"
RELATED TO: "Wouldn't Mind Dying If Dying was all"
SOURCES: from 1909 Howard W. Odum, "Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes" (American Journal of Psychology and Education, vol. iii, p. 356).
NOTES: “A Mother’s Last Word To Her Daughter” or “Bye And Bye I'm Going To See The King” is from (George) Washington Phillips 1929 recording which uses the same chorus as Blind Willie Johnson's “Bye And Bye, I’m Going To See The King.”
It had been recorded first by another Texan, the great Arizona Dranes, in 1926 under the title 'Bye and Bye We're Going to See the King'. Evidently, it was a great favorite with vocal groups and recorded by many, including the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet and the Dunham Jubilee Singers.
A version by Flora Molton And The Truth Band Living, with Phil Wiggins on blues harp, was recorded in Washington, D.C., October 1980 and appears on Country Blues USA Vol.3. Critton Hollow Stringband did and old-time/bluegrass version on their album "By and By", Flying Fish records, 1985.
There is a relationship with the various "By and By/Bye and Bye" songs and especially the "Wouldn't Mind Dying" songs. A.P. Carter collected a version from African-American sources and The Carter Family's record was titled, "I Wouldn't Mind Dying":
I Wouldn't Mind Dying- Carter Family
Bye and bye we're going to see the King
Bye and bye we're going to see the King
Bye and bye we're going to see the King
Well I wouldn't mind dying, if dying was all,
Wouldn't mind dying but I got to go myself
Wouldn't mind dying but I got to go myself
Wouldn't mind dying but I got to go myself
Well I wouldn't mind dying if dying was all
"Wouldn't mind dying if dying was all" was also recorded by A C Forehand & Blind Mamie
George Washington Phillips- BIOGRAPHY Michael Corcoran, a music writer for the ‘American Statesman’, of Austin, Texas, published his findings regarding George Washington Phillips. His search revealed that the singer, more familiarly known as "Wash", was born somewhere in Texas on 11 January 1880, the son of Texan, Nancy Cooper and Tim Phillips from Mississippi. However, according to the 1920 and 1930 census data, Phillips places his birth at the later date of c. 1892.
His occupation was listed as “Farmer, General Farm” with property sited in Freestone County, Texas, and his wife, Electra, was recorded as having been born in Texas in 1900. In December 1927 a mobile recording unit of Columbia Records, under the direction of Frank B. Walker, was set up in a makeshift studio in Dallas, Texas. The object was to record local artists who had been traced via advertising articles in the local press. Phillips first recorded track was 'Mother’s Last Word To Her Son', which produced a companion piece, 'A Mother’s Last Word To Her Daughter', during his final session in 1929. The gently swinging sixteen bar song with its “aabb” rhyming-scheme is his own composition, while 'Take Your Burden To The Lord' was composed by Charles Albert Tindley. 'Paul And Silas In Jail' retells the Biblical story and balances “the place they call heaven” against “Sugarland”, the notorious Texas state penitentiary. On 'Lift Him Up That’s All', which retells the story of the woman at Jacob’s well, the lead-in and the coda both differ from the melody of the song itself. 'Denomination Blues' is Phillips’ most impressive recording; in Part One six different black denominations are mockingly criticized, while Part Two ridicules their preachers.
'I Am Born To Preach The Gospel' illustrates the argument that “educated preachers are walkin’ around spiritually dead’ by recalling the story of the “educated fool” Nicodemus. 'Train Your Child' is a real oddity being a monologue about the education of children. The lesson is taken from Solomon’s Proverbs and is followed by a particularly interesting solo on Phillips’s “novelty instrument”. 'Jesus Is My Friend' is the plaintive nineteenth century hymn “What A Friend We Have In Jesus,” and is also preceded by a brief explanatory monologue. 'What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?' is another Tindley composition and the aforementioned “A Mother’s Last Word To Her Daughter” uses the chorus of “Bye And Bye, I’m Going To See The King”. The words do not fit the melody very well and the omission of the chorus after the last two verses further adds to the surprises of the arrangement. 'I’ve Got The Key To The Kingdom' is the story of Daniel in the lions’ den, the accompaniment consisting of one chord sometimes enriched by a sixth or ninth note. 'You Can’t Stop A Tattler - Part 1' remained un-issued for fifty years. The song has a humming chorus but the “novelty instrument” sounds less clear. While the first part of “You Can’t Stop A Tattler” condemns gossipers, the second part attacks adultery. 'I Had A Good Father And Mother' is remarkable because of its falsetto and its humming. 'The Church Needs Good Deacons' paraphrases Paul’s letter to Timothy to give an example of a “good deacon” should aspire to be. Especially noticeable in his last four recordings is the fact that the vocal and instrumental parts start simultaneously, proving that Phillips was very familiar with the pitch of his instrument. Although nominally favoring the sixteen bar scheme, Phillips often shortens his bars, which also indicates that he is accompanying himself.
Record sales dropped dramatically in the wake of the Wall Street Crash, and Phillips, like so many other artists was never recorded again, his 1929 records being the rarest of all his output. After his brief period of recording Phillips returned to farming in the black settlement of Simsboro, sixty miles east of Waco, where he owned thirty to forty acres of land. During the week Phillips looked like a farmhand, but on Sunday he donned his best suit, so people remembered both the farmer and the preacher. Virgil Keeton, who sang in a gospel quartet, reminisced: “He used to live in Simsboro with his mother, my aunt Nancy. He used to play this harplike instrument that he made himself. Sang like a bird, man.” Keeton, who was born in 1920, saw Phillips in the mid-thirties and visited him and his mother Nancy regularly. Ex Simsboro resident Doris Foreman Nealy said that Phillips was a “jack-leg preacher,” thereby confirming what Paul Oliver had suspected many years ago. When he wrote, “Jack-leg preachers were an important feature of religious life in the lower economic groups. Generally associated with the Sanctified Movement they sometimes attended regular services of the churches, seeking a chance to preach. More often they addressed spontaneous congregations in the streets or endeavoured to start small store-front churches of their own. Ordination was not important; the call to preach was. "Doris remembered that he didn't have a church, so he'd kinda roam the town looking for some place to preach. In Simsboro, we had a big picnic every June 19, and Mr. Wash would always start it off with a song. But none of us kids knew he ever made any records.”
He belonged to the Pleasant Hill Trinity Baptist Church in Simsboro, but May Nella Palmore, 82, of Teague recalled Phillips also preached and performed at the sanctified St. Paul Church Of God in Christ. “His singing really fit in with that crowd,” she said. “He had such a strong, powerful voice.” The Keetons said they last saw him doing the devotion at St. James Methodist Church in Teague. “I am born to preach the gospel,” he used to say, “and I sure do love my job.” Sixty-two-year old Durden Dixon is one of the few black people still living in Simsboro. From 1944 to 1954 Dixon lived down the road from the man he described as “kind of a hermit.” Sometimes the old man would bellow to drive neighbourhood boys away from his dewberry bushes, while at other time he’d invite them up to his porch, where he’d sing and strum a boxlike instrument Dixon said the man had made “from the insides of a piano.” When Corcoran played him “A Mother’s Last Word to Her Daughter” Dixon remembered Phillips used to sing the song. Phillips used to sing a secular song to Dixon’s mother, called “Won’t You Be My Tater Gal?” Dixon says Phillips was married to a light-skinned black woman named Marie at the time of his death. He kept on playing for neighbours and churchgoers until 20 September 1954 when he died at age 74 of head injuries suffered from a fall down the stairs at the welfare office in nearby Teague. The shack is now gone, but in the sand Corcoran still found Phillips’ old snuff bottle! Washington Phillips now lies in an unmarked grave in the Cotton Gin Cemetery in the countryside six miles west of Teague, an extremely racist community at the time where black history is virtually non-existent.Barbara and all, Still can't find my Washington Philips album, but here's a version from the Critton Hollow Stringband from their album "By and By", Flying Fish records, 1985.
A MOTHER'S PARTING WORDS TO HER DAUGHTER- (W. Phillips)
CHORUS: Bye and Bye, I'm going to see the King
Bye and Bye, I'm going to see the King
Bye and Bye, I'm going to see the King
Good Lord, I don't mind dyin' I'm a child of God
A mother called her daughter to her dyin' bed
She placed her hands upon her daughter's head
And grabbed her kindly in her arms
Said, I will not be with you very long
Oh daughter, Oh God is soon going to carry me home
But you must remember when I'm dead and gone
I must leave you now in this world alone
But you know that God will guide you safely home
Now you might do things that you don't consider no harm
But God in heaven knows when you've done wrong
So you better let dancing, card parties, all go by
So that you might be able to reach your home on high
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