AIN'T NO GRAVE CAN HOLD MY BODY DOWN

Created on 23/02/2010
Latest update on 19/10/2023

Artist: Bozie Sturdivant
Author: traditional
Label: Library Of Congress
Year: 1942

Recorded by Alan Lomax and Lewis Jones in Clarksdale, MS. A five days older version by the Friendly Five from Friar's Point, MS, also recorded by Lomax & Jones, was shelved in the Archive of Folk Culture (L.o.C.). Sturdivant sang with the local Union Jubilee Quartet.

Covers:

1953:

Brother Claude Ely [as There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down in his own Free Pentecostal Church Of God in Cumberland, KY for King; Ely was King label's Gospel Ranger of the Appalachians and in some cases credited as the author]

1958:

Dave Van Ronk

1963:

Odetta [as Ain't No Grave]

2001:

Rory Block

2003:

Johnny Cash [as Ain't No Grave, title track posthumous American VI album; crediting Claude Ely]

2010:

Handsome Family

2010:

Dirtmusic

2010:

Tom Jones

2020:

Pretty Things

Sister Rosetta Tharpe did her own Can't No Grave Hold My Body Down, guitar solo and all, for Mercury in '49. So did both Marion Williams and Michelle David ('16). The Ain't No Grave by the North Mississippi Allstars (with Ry Cooder and in '16 with Mavis Staples) is Luther Dickinson's own song, apart from the line "Ain't no grave can hold his body down".

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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