I’m Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad: A Song from the Great Depression
Download PDF Version of this Lesson Plan Here.
Introduction
The first known recording of this song is from 1923, sung by Henry Whitter, an Appalachian singer, under the title of “Lonesome Road Blues.” It became well-known during the Great Depression and was popularized by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. This variant, from 1940, is part of the Library of Congress’s Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Workers Collection.
The songs in this Migrant Workers Collection showcase the cultural influences brought to California in the 1930s by refugees from the Great Depression and the droughts that created the Dust Bowl. Displaced from their land, more than 300,000 people made the difficult journey to California to find work. They came not only from Oklahoma, where the drought had been most severe, but from Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona. This song is just one of the many they shared in their effort to create a new life together in the migrant camps.
Activity
Listen to the recording of “I’m Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad”
https://kodalycollection.org/song.cfm?id=1088
- • Has anyone heard this song before? (Perhaps by Guthrie, Dylan, Grateful Dead)
- • What is the song about? (Hardship, jail, lack of resources)
- • This song was recorded in California in 1940. What event(s) precipitated migration from many other states to California in the 1930s? (Dust Bowl, Great Depression)
Share photos from the Voices from the Dust Bowl collection
Migrant camp, wide shot.
https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000387/
Arkansas squatters. Three years in California.
https://www.loc.gov/item/2017759793/
Group of children posing under sign that reads "U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Security Administration Farm Workers Community." El Rio, California, 1941
https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000400/
- • Does this song feel sad? How might singing the song have helped people feel better during the depression?
Listen again for the number of verses and if the verses share any lyrics.
- • How many verses? (4) Are any of the words the same from one verse to the next?
- • What words are repeated? (And I ain’t a-gonna be treated this-a-way.)
Project the score to confirm their answer. When a line of lyrics is repeated at the end of each verse, that line is called a refrain. Invite the students to sing the refrain, as they listen again.
In this song, the first line of text repeats three times within each verse. This would be boring if it were spoken. How does the music make it more interesting? (different melodies for each line)
- • Do you hear any relationships between the lines? Listen again. What about line 2, is it related to line 1? (line 2 sounds like line 1, but it’s lower.) What about line 3? (it’s similar to line 2)
Because lines 2 and 3 are most similar, we could label the verse form ABB’C.
(More advanced form analysis: If we wanted to show that lines 2 and 3 are related to line 1, we could label it AA5A5’B. We use 5 to show that phrases 2 and 3 are a 5th lower than phrase 1.)
Students sing the first verse (with recording if helpful), to confirm the relationship of lines.
Extension
Students work alone or in small groups to create lyrics for a new verse, using the refrain from the recording. (This will require fitting their ideas into 8 beats to fit the length of the musical phrase.) The new verses can be performed in various ways:
1) The author(s) or the class as a whole sing the new verse together.
2) The author(s) perform the first line, then the class joins in on the remainder of the verse.
3) An individual improvises a line, and the class joins in singing the remainder of that verse.
Additional Songs
Visit https://kodalycollection.org/dust-bowl.cfm to learn more about the Library of Congress’s Voices from the Dust Bowl collection, along with links to ten other songs that we have transcribed from the collection, including “Jesse James” and “She’ll Be Coming around, the Mountain.” Students can choose another song in the collection and determine its form; or listen to several of the songs to see if any of them have the same form (verse with refrain).
Additional Resources
Students can research primary sources of the Depression-era beginnings of many government programs that continue to this day in this Library of Congress online collection: https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/great-depression-and-the-present-day/
Another Library of Congress resource which includes songs, newspapers, interviews, and photographs of migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression can be found at https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/grapes-of-wrath-voices-from-the-great-depression/
