“Working on a Building” (also “I’m Working on a Building”) is a traditional gospel song with mixed African American spiritual and Southern gospel roots. The song’s earliest documented appearance is in Dorothy G. Bolton’s 1929 collection Old Songs Hymnal, where it was published as a traditional spiritual. The song has a calypso-like rhythmic feel that has led some scholars to suggest possible Florida or Caribbean origins, though the historical record is too thin to settle the question.
The song’s pivotal country-music recording was made by The Carter Family in 1934 for Bluebird Records. The Carters had learned the song from their African American musical contacts Lesley Riddle and Pauline Gray — the same transmission line through which much of the Carter Family’s repertoire crossed from the Black gospel and blues traditions of the Clinch Mountain region into the commercial country canon. Riddle in particular played a central role in carrying songs to the Carters that they then recorded under their own names or as traditional pieces.
“Working on a Building” has been recorded by Bill Monroe (whose version is the canonical bluegrass reading), Elvis Presley (on his 1960 gospel album His Hand In Mine with the Jordanaires), the Oak Ridge Boys, B.B. King, John Fogerty, and many others. The song remains one of the most reliably called bluegrass-gospel pieces at any jam session that includes a sacred set, with its driving rhythm and call-and-response harmony structure giving it strong working-band legibility.
