Jesus Is a Dying Bedmaker (Charlie Patton)

This is an instrumental arrangement of Charlie Patton's 1929 spiritual. Patton is primarily known as a bluesman, but he was comfortable playing in a variety of styles and genres including the gospel idiom, as evidenced by this piece. The song is commonly presented with lyrics as "In My Time of Dying", and has been covered extensively by the likes of Josh White, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin. The song's lyric asks Jesus "to make up my dying bed... so I can die easy", which implies that a more appropriate title would be "Jesus is a Dying-Bed Maker". Apparently, the fault lies with Patton's record company, Paramount, who mistitled the song on their records. Taken literally, the Paramount title conjures a rather bizarre image.

The arrangement used here is by John Fahey, who aside from being a great composer, arranger, and guitarist, was an expert on the work of Charlie Patton, having written his master's thesis on the subject. The tone of this arrangement, which Fahey used as the opening to his early 70's album, "America", vacillates from relaxed to frenzied. Fahey's variations of tempo, tone, and dynamics never cease to amaze. I play it here in open G (i.e., DGDGBD) tuning, which is the tuning that John used on his recording.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• John
• Fahey
• solo
• fingerstyle
• acoustic
• guitar
• music
• open
• tuning
• country
• folk
• blues
• gospel
• spiritual
• Charlie
• Patton

[Arsenal123456123]

Nice! And I don't think there's anyone else who's posted "Jesus Is a Dying Bedmaker" on the 'Tube. I was the first to post "Requiem for Mississippi John Hurt." Welcome to the club! (You'll be receiving your green jacket in the mail shortly.)

[specialrider54]

@Arsenal123456123

Thanks for the kind words. I've seen your video of "Requiem" - nicely done! I have knocked that one around a bit myself, but my version's not quite ready for prime time. As you can probably tell by my video, you better make that green jacket an extra large!

Dave

[DrBirendraJha]

nice performance!

Thumbs up!

[fngrpkn06]

Nice!

[thelittlepicker]

I really enjoyed this tune... Nice guitar work!