Fixin' to Die

About Fixin' to Die

"Fixin' to Die Blues" is song by American blues musician Bukka White. It is performed in the Delta blues style with White's vocal and guitar accompanied by washboard rhythm. White recorded it in Chicago on May 8, 1940, for record producer Lester Melrose. The song was written just days before, along with eleven others, at Melrose's urging. White was resuming his recording career, which had been interrupted by his incarceration for two and one-half years at the infamous Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi. While there, White witnessed the death of a friend and "got to wondering how a man feels when he dies". His lyrics reflect his thoughts about his children and wife: White provides the vocal and acoustic slide guitar (which was borrowed from Big Bill Broonzy) with backing by Washboard Sam. Despite the somber lyrics, "the music throbs with a restless energy" with White's "bottleneck guitar crying in urgent counterpoint to his imagery". Music historian Ted Gioia notes that these recordings of White "come as close to art song as traditional blues has ever dared to go, but without losing any of the essential qualities of the Delta heritage". However, as with his other songs from the session, "Fixin' to Die Blues" did not capture the record buying public's interest. As a result, White largely retired from performing music, until a resurgence of interest in the early 1960s and the American folk music revival. more »

Year:

1962

2:52

71 Views

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I'm lookin' funny in my eyes and I believe I'm fixin' to die, believe I'm fixin' to die 
I'm lookin' funny in my eyes and I believe I'm fixin' to die 
I know I was born to die but I hate to leave my children cryin' 
Just as sho' as we livin', just as sho' we born to die, sho' we born to die 
Just as sho' as we livin', sho' we born to die 
I know I was born to die but I hate to leave my children cryin' 
Your mother treated me, children, like I was her baby child, was her baby child 
Your mother treated me like I was her baby child 
That's why's I find it so hard to come back home to die 
So many nights at the fireside, how my children's mother would cry, 
How my children's mother would cry 
So many nights at the fireside, how my children's mother would cry 
Cause I told the mother I had to say goodbye 
Look over yonder, on the burying ground, on the burying ground 
Look over yonder, on the burying ground 
Yon' stand ten thousand, standin' still to let me down 
Mother take my children back, before they let me down, before they let me down 
Mother take my children back, 'fore they let me down 
I don't need for them to screamin' and cryin' on the graveyard ground

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Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" . more »

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