This week's lectionary relates the story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well. The choir is hard at work, preparing an anthem based on this story, helping to reinforce at least part of the message of the morning. Congregants at the 10:30 service will hear the piece.
Now, we've sung a number of masterworks over the last several years, including Renaissance motets and mass movements, excerpts from oratorios by Handel and Mendelssohn, Bach chorales, a portion of the Brahms Requiem, sublime sacred music from Russia and major works of more recent vintage.
This will not be one of them. But I think we'll still have a good time.
The anthem for this Sunday is Jesus Met the Woman at the Well. Readers of a certain age may remember the tune from recordings by Peter, Paul and Mary. Readers of another certain age may remember performances of it by the Pilgrim Travelers, or by Mahalia Jackson, Rev. Gary Davis or Bob Dylan.
It's difficult to ascertain just where the song came from - it's invariably listed as "Traditional" on record labels. It seems to have been a big Gospel hit during the 1940s and 50s, moving more into a folk idiom with the 1964 PP&M release, which seems to be based more on Mahalia Jackson's 1954 recording than on Bob Dylan's performances of the song in 1961 and 1963.
Regardless of the style, one element runs true throughout: this is a blues song. It may not have strict blues musical structure, but it's the blues.
You can tell this from two things.
First, the structure of the lyrics. The first verse is:
Jesus met the woman at the well,
Jesus met the woman at the well,
Jesus met the woman at the well,
and he told her everything she'd ever done.
This AAAB configuration is common in blues lyrics (as is AAB, which Dylan used). Every verse has the same structure - AAAB, and there's no chorus. Repetition is a hallmark of the blues, and this song nails it.
Secondly, the chord structure suggests the blues. It's not exactly the standard 12-bar blues one might expect, which would look something like this:
A-A-A-A7
D-D7-A-A7
E7-D7-A-A
Jesus Met the Woman uses 16-bar phrases. It looks something like this:
A-A-A-A7
D-D-A-A7
D-D-C#7-F#m
B-B7-E-E9
Even with their differences there's a great similarity between the two progressions, with them being virtually identical in the first 2 phrases of the song.
So, we'll be singing the blues this Sunday. Wear your toe-tapping shoes.
