DOWN ON THE BANKS OF THE O-HI-O
Created on 02/02/2002Latest update on 05/10/2023
Artist: Red Patterson's Piedmont Log Rollers
Author: traditional
Label: Victor
Year: 1927
On a 1847 poster announcing a Minstrel Show in Philadelphia, The Nightingale Serenaders promise to bring De Banks Ob De Ohio. Louis Lindsay surely sang it in the 1860s.
Covers:
- 1927:
Grayson & Whitter [as I'll Never Be Yours]
- 1928:
Ernest V. Stoneman [Stoneman Family elder]
- 1928:
Andrew Jenkins & Carson Robison [as On The Banks Of The Old Omaha]
- 1935:
- 1936:
- 1936:
- 1956:
- 1959:
Ruby Vass [Lomax recording on Southern Journey series]
- 1971:
- 1971:
- 1985:
- 1999:
Snakefarm [with Anna Domino]
- 2003:
With a similar melody line as in On My Way To Canaan's Land (see I'm On My Way To The Kingdom Land) this could be a symbolic song for blacks on the Underground Railway reaching the Ohio side of the Ohio River, for they just left the slave states behind. Still, mostly sung among whites. See also: O-Hi-O.
