By Dai Bando
The haunting Christmas hymn “I Wonder as I Wander” was written in 1933 by John Jacob Niles. Niles grew up on a farm in Louisville during the Great Depression. His dad was a square dance caller and his mother, of German descent and the intellectual of the family, would read her son the poems of Shelly and Keats at bedside.
As a young man, Niles began collecting songs and stories, in the tradition of Alan Lomax. In his biography Niles admitted that he “derived the germ of the song” (aka, “swiped”) from the young daughter of a traveling evangelist in the hills of Kentucky. He later composed the complete folk song that he performed while accompanying himself on dulcimer.
Niles recorded the song in an eerily high-pitched, dramatic style (a turn-off to many listeners, but not Bob Dylan who was a big fan of Niles). There are several other excellent versions, notably Joan Baez, Julie Andrews, The Cambridge Singers, and Bobbie Gentry, who performed it live on the Ed Sullivan Show. I love Burl Ives version best. His pure yet folksy vocal is probably closest to the song’s Appalachian roots.
Burl Ives sang with Woody Guthrie with The Almanac Singers, had a number of Country/Folk hit songs, and enjoyed a long career in Hollywood. He has the rare distinction co-starring with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor (in “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof” 1958), as well as that bearded method actor Yukon Cornelius (in “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” 1964). Ives provided the voice the snowman narrator of that Christmas animated classic.
I love the profound Sorrow and even Doubt both the music and lyric evokes. “I Wonder as I Wander”
“I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die.
For poor on’ry people like you and like I…
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.”
To Poor on,ry people, like you and like I …. Merry Christmas from The Hobbledehoy!