You Are My Sunshine

Jimmie Davis, the singer, film star, and governor from Beech City, Louisiana recorded “You Are My Sunshine” in 1940. This was around the time that his music career was taking off (1930s). His success with “You Are My Sunshine” didn’t conclude his fifteen minutes of fame as has also served two non-consecutive terms as Governor of Louisiana and still kept his musical identity by singing at the campaign stops. He lived a long life… to be about 101 years old! This is probably because of his deep roots in Louisiana that kept him nourished...

One precedent of “You Are My Sunshine” is “Heavenly Sunshine” by Laura Henton and an earlier Christian Hymn called “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Both of these have a more religious tone to them and show how Davis evolved them into a love-focused song of “You Are My Sunshine” by mixing together ideas about sunshine from Laura Henton and the famous melody from “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” was written in 1907 and was a popular gospel song, then in 1967 Bob Dylan sang and recorded it, maybe that is why he thinks “You Are My Sunshine” is one of the greatest songs… because he appreciated its history through its precedents. In “Heavenly Sunshine” (1927), the chorus goes “There is sunshine  in the shadows... there is sunshine in the rain… there is sunshine when we pray;” sunshine could mean love in this song because it seems to be a bonding element. For example, a group praying together in church, then since it also has a presence in shadows and in the rain, it must be a force that overcomes darker or sullen times, like love. Then in Jimmie’s version, his love is his “sunshine,” which is his driving force in life that he longs to keep. Of course, sunshine must go away and is never eternal. Maybe he is implying that love and sunshine are forces that have the power to maintain life but also limits it. Sunshine in the scientific sense for vitamin D and providing light for photosynthesis, then it is a correlate of love which propels people to want to achieve it, never lose it, and live on.

After listening to the precedents of “You Are My Sunshine” and the song sung by different artists, I came to find my own meaning of the song, which I expressed in my painting. The singer pleads to “please don’t take my sunshine away,” which is the loss of a loved one or a loved one leaving. I wanted to address that we can do everything we can to fight life’s changes with our relationships whether that is losing someone through the end of a relationship or through death but there is only so much we can fight the change. But just as we cannot control the sunsetting every evening, we cannot control the unpredictable force of love. My painting shows some of the cultural ties of Jimmie Davis with Louisiana in the depiction of a bayou at sunset. There is a woman riding her bicycle away and her shadow is the main focus that tells us the most about her. The shadow is created from the setting sun that is just as uncontrollable as a loved one’s fate of leaving. My mom was singing this song every now and then towards the end of this summer before I left to come back to Berkeley, now I know why.

Ollie Gilbert’s version of “You Are My Sunshine” is sung without instruments (in the recorded version) and her voice sounds more monotone, however, she expresses alot through her voice. Her voice is linked to the Great Depression and that part of her life is heard through her voice in the way she sings the song. In Jimmie Davis’ version, I feel that he is singing about love that himself AND other people have experienced, so he sings through shared experiences, whereas Ollie makes it her own. I found other recordings done by more contemporary singers like Johnny Cash and Jamey Johnson that put their own sound into the song but was unable to discover a version of the song covered by a black southern singer.

Now I will ask my first of three questions regarding the Lomax reading, which is why were blacks more usually found singing in groups while the whites usually sung solo or with just one other partner? My thoughts on this were that each party follows different roots that direct the way they express song. Lomax tells us that most of the American Negro slaves were familiar with singing as a “group activity” as most were from West Africa and found comfort in a cultural tradition (Lomax, xx).

My second question comes from Alan Lomax’s Preface where he recalls a time in his childhood where a black man would join them in their folk song singing. Lomax tells that the man would sit very near the fire where it would look as though it would “scorch him” and he would continue playing the fiddle. Did Alan Lomax believe in the superstition that fiddlers were sons of the devil and is this what he thought in this case? Lomax said that during this event his “hair would rise up on” his head (Lomax, x). Of course, in his introduction he discusses how the “Devil was generally held to be the king and principal instructor of fiddlers,” but this was regarding fiddlers and folk song, not specifically applying to blacks (Lomax, xxiv). Then that may lead to asking if he was somewhat weary of blacks… From reading Lomax’s introduction I do not detect this type of tone from him because it seems equal in the way he describes each culture and its role in folk music. The question rings on…

Lastly, I ask if the Lomaxs’ creation of their volume of folk songs takes away some of the songs’ authentic nature? He says that the songs are their “own versions of the songs” that combine the “best stanzas” they could find (Lomax, x). This brings much value to the songs they retraced and put together, but it makes me wonder because songs seem perfect in their original form. Maybe they found pieces of each song and sew them together. Or this could be a great contribution to the songs ever-changing history since it was common for the singer to “change an old song slightly to fit a new situation,” which in this case would be that of reconstructing the past through America’s folk songs (Lomax, vii).