Called by nearly a dozen different names and with varying words, melodies and purpose but common themes, the song's history reflects many of the evolutionary changes and cross-currents of American music.
"Good Shepherd" originated in a very early 19th century hymn written by the Methodist minister Reverend John Adam Granade (1770–1807), "Let Thy Kingdom, Blessed Savior".
[1][2][3] Granade was a significant figure of the Great Revival in the American West during the 19th century's first decade, as the most important author of camp meeting hymns during that time.
[9] It then appeared in Joshua Leavitt's popular and influential 1833 tunebook The Christian Lyre[10] as "Let thy kingdom", associated to the tune "Good Shepherd" with an 8.7. metrical pattern.
[17] By the 1880s, "Let Thy Kingdom, Blessed Savior" could be found in Marshall W. Taylor's hymnal of African American religious songs, A Collection of Revival Hymns and Plantation Melodies.
[26] Coming from the Appalachian part of Virginia,[26] Strothers had lost his sight in a mine explosion and had made a living playing on street corners and in medicine shows.
[35] It also appears on the CD The Ballad Hunter, Parts VII and VIII from the Library of Congress,[25] originally issued as Archive of Folk Song, Recording Laboratory AFS L52 in 1941.
[31] Dartmouth College music professor Larry Polansky comments that in doing so, Ruth Crawford Seeger took the hard-edged gospel blues and "revoice[d] it as a beautiful, shape-note influenced hymn.
[39] We've Got Some Singing to Do and its accompanying songbook were distributed to a number of summer camps, and were responsible for the popularization of several freedom-longing African-American songs such as "Kum Ba Yah".
[39] The song was circulating in folk circles in other forms as well, and Pete Seeger published a variant with a more explicitly political message, called "If You Want To Go To Freedom", in the mimeographed-but-influential Broadside Magazine in 1963.
[44] "Blood-Stained Banders" was thus the proximate source[29][45] for what was taught to guitarist Jorma Kaukonen by folk singer Roger Perkins and friend Tom Hobson in the early 1960s.
[50] An evolving rendition of Kaukonen's imagining of the song is captured on a circulating recording of his May 21, 1968, performance at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco during a jam session of area musicians led by Jerry Garcia.
[47] "Good Shepherd" encompassed elements of both gospel and blues in its playing[46] and showed that folk roots were still quite present in the Airplane's mixture of sounds and influences that led to psychedelic rock.
The song's first live performance by Jefferson Airplane was on May 7, 1969, in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, but with Grace Slick singing lead and Kantner doing the backing vocal.
As Kaukonen and Airplane bassist Jack Casady focused on the offshoot group Hot Tuna beginning in the early 1970s, "Good Shepherd" became a regular entry in their performance repertoire.
[65] He continued to find meaning in performing "Good Shepherd" and other songs like it that celebrated religion in one context or another without preaching, saying such material gave him a doorway into scripture: "I guess you could say I loved the Bible without even knowing it.