Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

Ruth Star Rose’s Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child is based on a traditional African American spiritual of the same name. The song is a sorrowful one, possibly based on the sorrow and pain felt by mothers who were separated from their children on plantations. As with many spirituals, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” has several versions. The version below contains a very simplistic version of the song, with a couple verses of repeating phrases:

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child (x3)
A long way from home (x2)
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost done (x3)
A long way from home (x2)”

Another version is recorded by William E. Barton, D.D. in his 1899 book, Old Plantation Hymns. In his book, he recalls going to older people, such as a woman he met named Aunt Dinah, who introduced him to another woman named Sister Bernaugh, to record these spirituals. Dr. Barton tells a story about listening to Aunt Dinah and Sister Bernaugh singing various songs to him and how he compared a version of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” that Aunt Dinah sang to a concert performed by a troupe of jubilee singers. Dr. Barton writes, “Toward the end of the programme he announced that a recently arrived singer in his troupe from Mississippi had brought a song that her grandparents sang in the slave times, which he counted the saddest and most beautiful of the songs of slavery. It was a mutilated version of Aunt Dinah’s song; and it lacked the climax of the hymn as I have it.” Aunt Dinah’s version starts with a deep sorrow until it “rises with a sustained, clear faith.” The first verse of this version, as recorded by Dr. Barton, is as follows:

“O, sometimes I feel like a motherless child!
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child!
O my Lord!
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child!
Den I git down on my knees and pray, pray!
O, I wonder where my mother’s done gone,
Wonder where my mother’s done gone,
I wonder where my mother’s done gone.
Den I git down on my knees and pray, pray!
Git down on my knees and pray!”

In a historical performance, Richie Havens opened the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and, as he closed out his set list, he played a song featuring lyrics from a spiritual he knew, “Motherless Child,” retitling the improvised song “Freedom (Motherless Child).” After Havens and an invocation, the band Sweetwater took the stage. They had been set to open the festival, however they were late due to traffic and Havens was moved to the opening slot, eventually filling time so that bands could arrive with his improvised “Freedom (Motherless Child).” A 6:15 pm that night, roughly 15-30 minutes after Haven’s performance, Sweetwater opened with their own rendition of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, one of their most well known songs.