Times Gettin' Hard, Boys
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-08-17

Day 154 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Sandburg writes: "When Rebecca Taylor sang her spirituals for us in Columbia, South Carolina, she was asked if she knew other songs, not spirituals. "When you were a girl wasn't there something that boys  and girls would sing at each other for fun, for mischief?" Her eyes lighted, she gave a soprano chuckle, and sang this verse out of the years when she was young. The "pretty boy" amid the  black girls made an impression; it started a song."

Pete Seeger recorded the song with a couple of variations. The "pretty boy" phrase was replaced and a "good-bye" added, the implication that the singer was headed to California in hopes of better times. The migration hinted at in the song is the main focus of the astounding non-fiction work by Isabel Wilkerson, "The Warmth of Other Suns".