A traditional gospel blues best known from Blind Willie Johnson's 1927 recording, which Dylan sings with slide guitar on his first album.
The words
A dying man asks for the comfort of his faith and to be laid to rest in peace.
A deathbed song: the speaker faces his last hour and asks that heaven make his passing easy. It is built on repetition, the same plea returning as the verses circle the moment of death. Dylan sings it with a hoarse urgency far older than his years, over a sliding, moaning guitar line. Like much of the album, it shows a twenty-year-old singer drawn again and again to songs about dying.
A traditional song
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗Listen and watch
The words
A dying man asks for the comfort of his faith and to be laid to rest in peace.
A deathbed song: the speaker faces his last hour and asks that heaven make his passing easy. It is built on repetition, the same plea returning as the verses circle the moment of death. Dylan sings it with a hoarse urgency far older than his years, over a sliding, moaning guitar line. Like much of the album, it shows a twenty-year-old singer drawn again and again to songs about dying.
A traditional song
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗The same year · 1962
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