African American work-song singer, died 1944 · recorded the song first at Sugar Land, Texas, December 1933
Baker was serving time at the Central State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Texas, when John Lomax — refused access to Huntsville Penitentiary — was allowed to record him and Moses “Clear Rock” Platt in 1933. He recorded for the Lomaxes across several sessions, in July and December 1933 and again in 1934, and it is the December 1933 session that produced the earliest known version of this song. Even his birth year is unsettled: Lomax described him as 63 in 1933, which puts his birth around 1870, while Wikipedia’s article on him gives 18 March 1884. He died on 23 February 1944, having never made a commercial record of the song that made other men famous.