Bid You Goodnight

50% of the fee goes to supporting Black musicians and music.

In Amidons’ book ‘Fifty-five Anthems for the Small Church Choir‘. Mary Alice singing solo with Friends-of-the-Amidons-Singers.  This harmonization is a transcription of our family: Sam, Stefan, Mary Alice and me, singing the song with improvised harmonies. Our version is inspired by the Yorkshire England based Waterson family’s performance of this performance of this joyful funeral spiritual which they, in turn, learned from the singing of the Pindar Family from the Bahamas (see below).  We sang this for years at concerts and group singing events before we discovered, in our Guilford Community Church, what a powerful funeral song it is when sung for a funeral.  You can have one singer learn the solo part and teach the rest of the singers the chorus quickly from music or by ear.  Our Hallowell hospice choir has found this a powerful song for a vigil hospice sing: we sing only the chorus slowly and quietly. Here is the Amidon arrangement followed, the original Pindar family version, and three more interpretations of the spiritual

• The Amidon arrangement sung by Starry Mountain Singers, Emily Miller soloist
• Pindar family from the Bahamas
• Particia Bazard, and the cast of “Music of the Bahamas”
• Aaron Neville
• Grateful Dead

LYRICS

Bid You Goodnight
traditional Bahamas spiritual

CHORUS
Lay down my dear brother (sister)
Lay down and take your rest
Won’t you lay your head down
On your savior’s breast
I love you, oh but
Jesus loves you the best,
And I bid you goodnight,
Goodnight, goodnight.

A for the Ark the wonderful boat
Goodnight, goodnight….
She’s ridden over land getting water to float
Goodnight, goodnight…
‘B for the beast the ending of the world…
Eat all the children that would not be good…
Remember right well, remember right well….
Good lord I go walking in the valley of the shadow of death…
Goodness and mercy shall follow me…
Bread and stones shall comfort me…