Songfacts®:

• Patti Smith closes her Trampin' album with this title track, which is a traditional folk song written in the gospel tradition. It is a collaboration between Smith's daughter Jesse Lee Smith's piano and Patti's voice. She explained to Uncut magazine October 2004: "I like Marion Anderson and I have a little space where I paint and take photographs and I often listen to gospel records and spirituals. That little song, for the past couple of years, has always attracted me, and I asked my daughter if she would learn it on piano. That's my daughter playing and it's live, we just did it a couple of times and took one that was honest. And that's what we did. I'm very proud of her, I think she did a beautiful job. And I intentionally wanted it to have a modest approach, because it is a spiritual and I'm certainly not Marion Anderson. I intentionally wanted the song to have a very reflective, modest feel."
• Smith said that she was attracted to the song as, "it does have a weary quality but it's optimistic." She added: "This person is trampin' trying to find Heaven, they're not just trying to get to the corner store, or just trying to get to a soup kitchen, they're going for the highest place. I like the little song, and there's a lot of miles tramped in this album, and I think it was a good way to end it." >>>

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