Artist:
Paul Robeson, 1898 - 1976

Description:

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by Avery Robinson

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African American convicts working with axes and singing in woodyard, Reed Camp, South Carolina. Photo: Alan Lomax, 1934. Click for pop-up: Chain gang prisoners and guards, Thomasville, Georgia. Photo: Joseph John, c 1890. Pictures courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Avery Robinson composed Water Boy, "a Negro convict song," in 1922.

Folklorist Alan Lomax wrote in 1939 "that portions of "Water Boy" were sung before 1922.... Robinson wove together material from different sources to make the song. "Water Boy," as it stands, is not a folk-song in the opinion of either my father [John A. Lomax] or myself, but if its popularity continues, it may, of course, become one."

Robinson originally wrote it for Roland Hayes, a lyric tenor, the first African American male concert artist to receive wide international acclaim. Later, Robinson worked with Paul Robeson, a deep bass.

The irony of beautiful music arising from prisoners in horrific conditions is astounding.

Paul Robeson, Jr., says of the song:

[N]ot all of the songs included in the programs of [Paul Robeson's] earliest concerts were spirituals. Throughout his concert career, one of his favorite songs was “Water Boy,” a black secular song written by the well-known white composer, Avery Robinson. Some years ago, I found an interesting reference to that song in my father's 1929 diary: “Of course, technique might help me grow... but that might not make me a greater artist. 'Water Boy' is my best record-[made] when I was untrained.

1922 sheet music.
Wikipedia

Seventeen years later, in 1946, his intuitive affinity for the song was confirmed when he received a letter, accompanied by an African battle axe, from a member of an anthropological expedition to a remote village in southern Angola. Several records had been played on a portable gramophone for the assembled villagers, and one of the songs was my father's rendition of “Water Boy.” As the song ended, the village chief rose, went to his hut, and brought back a ceremonial battle axe which he laid before the gramophone as a gift to "the great chief across the water.

One might wonder how Paul Robeson could speak to the heart of an African chief through a song written by a white composer, but my father was not surprised. By then his search for his African cultural heritage had led him to research the origins of "Water Boy." He discovered that Robinson had heard the song sung by a black Alabama chain gang in a particular county of Alabama where the culture of rural blacks had its origins in southern Angola.

Later versions are by Fats Waller, Earl Hines, John Payne, John Lee Hooker, Odetta, Harry Belafonte, and the Kingston Trio.

Water Boy

Paul Robeson.

Water boy, where are you hiding?
Now if you don't come
I'm gonna tell your daddy.
There ain't no hammer
That's on this mountain
That rings like mine boy,
That rings like mine.
I'm gonna bust this rock boy
From here to the Macon
All the way to the jail boy
Yes back to the jail

You jack of diamonds
Now you jack of diamonds
Well I know you of old,
Yes I know you of old.
You rob my pocket,
Yes you robbed my pocket,
You done robbed my pocket
Of silver and gold.

Water boy where are you hiding
Now you don't come I'm gonna tell you daddy.
Oh, water boy.

Personnel: Paul Robeson, solo; Milt Okum choral conductor; Robert DeCormier, arranger; James Frey, disk compiler; Jeff Zaraya, engineer.

Thanks to Joe Hickerson for assistance with the liner notes.

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