And that was before I knew it was originally a slave song that was "discovered" by white people during the Civil War and then published. Apparently it was pretty obscure for almost a hundred years until a friend of Pete Seeger rediscovered it.
The version that really gets me is by Joe and Eddie maybe because it was used during an important moment in the show "The Good Lord Bird."
The first version I heard, by the Highwaymen also affects me, but the Joe and Eddie version makes me cry. And that was before I read that Joe Gilbert of Joe and Eddie died at the age of 23 in a car crash.
After Joe’s tragic death, I worked as a single in L.A. and for a short while, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although I enjoyed performing, I found it frustrating to keep a band together and it was during this time I started writing, something I had never done before. Eventually I moved back to L.A., where I began to spend a lot of time in the studio, fortunately, with some of the greatest producers in popular music: Gene McDaniels, Louis Shelton, Richard Perry, Thom Bell, and Quincy Jones. I will be forever indebted to these wonderful, talented people. Because of them I found my next calling, writing and producing music.
I put the song in one of my plays, which will hopefully be produced one of these days.