Tryin' to Get Home

vocal and acoustic guitar by Andy Cohen

notes from Andy Cohen

This piece as Rev. Davis did it (and as I hear it) is made to feel more urgent by shifting the accent from the one beat to the two beat, isolating the bass note as an unaccented drone in the background. For what it’s worth, Rev. Davis did this a lot.

his song was recorded by Reverend Gary Davis, who most likely learned it from a local guitarist in Alabama in the 1920s. That is the story he told his management company

This song is by Reverend Gary Davis and appears on the album Harlem Street Singer (1961).

https://lyrics.fandom.com/wiki/Reverend_Gary_Davis:Tryin%27_To_Get_Home

This song was also collected and transcribed by the scholar and folklorist John Wesley Work III of Fisk University.