Lead Belly advised "It's best to stay woke, keep the eyes open." Original quote transcribed here

I found the 60 second quote and transcribed it, because the word woke has taken on a new historic significance- especially as my long time Facebook friend T-D said:

"WOKE" is the premier current example of stealing a positive, relevant term from your adversary -- and turning it into an insult & instrument of hate.

The Lead Belly quote that ends with "So I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through, it's best to stay woke, keep the eyes open" starts at the end of an interview with Lead Belly after he sings the song “Scottsboro Boys” at 03:22 on the Smithsonian video below.  I used my retired transcriber skills to capture it.  

Here is what Lead Belly said that introduced the word “woke” to the American vernacular, while today those who are rewriting American history have transformed the word into – an Alice in Wonderland on coke right wing warp the listeners’ brain word.

TRANSCRIPT:

03:22

Q         :           What did the Scottsboro Boys do anyway to get in all this trouble?

LB        :           Well they was down there and they supposedly been riding in a- on a freight train. And they was riding in the boxcar and they run up on some white women.  And they had on pants and they was riding too, all  [SOUNDS LIKE of the soldiers had been beaten away] up to coming this way.  And so down in Alabama I guess the train stopped in the yard down there somewhere.  Well and some of them found all the boys and girls in the same boxcar, some were different cars. 

03:52

And so I guess that some of the people down there they just said, well, they've seen them boys going out there with them white women and that’s what was trouble about it.  Then they went out and made some loud cry about the boys being there with the women, you see. That was all there was to it and they just saw the women, they didn't seem nothing else wrong.  But anyhow they put the boys in jail and then that's six long years, right.  The states all the whole United States got together and they got out for them, and they come to New York.  And the lawyer that got them out, I know him pretty good, I've met them.  And he showed me the Scottsboro Boys and I shook hands with them.  So I made this little song about it down there.  So I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through, it's best to stay woke, keep the eyes open.

 

Or watch on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrXfkPViFIE  

Video features Lead Belly's "Scottsboro Boys" from the 2015 box set 'Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection'. For more information about this album, click here: http://www.folkways.si.edu/leadbelly and for more information about Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the national museum, click here: http://folkways.si.edu/index.aspx.

"So I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through, it's best to stay woke, keep the eyes open." 

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Rings true today 

Posted by Kay Ebeling