We take it for granted that hymns and spirituals have a place in our repertoires. But they still occasionally take people by surprise. For example, some weeks ago, friends and I were playing in Oakham, a market town in Central England. One of our tunes was The Old Rugged Cross. An elderly gentleman came up afterwards to tell us how much he had enjoyed it. He said he had never realised that a hymn could work well when played by a jazz band.
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| Marla Dixon, with all-star support, singing 'Over in the Gloryland' |
You hardly ever hear a traditional jazz concert in which there is not at least one hymn or spiritual. Also, audiences no longer feel uncomfortable (as English people would have done a hundred years ago) about dancing to such religious music.
Among the most popular titles are:
Among the most popular titles are:
Amazing Grace
At The Cross
By and By
By and By
Does Jesus Care?
Down By The Riverside
God Will Take Care of Me
Higher Ground
Higher Ground
His Eye is on the Sparrow
How Great Thou Art
In the Garden
In the Sweet By and By
In the Upper Garden
It's Nobody's Fault But Mine
Just a Closer Walk With Thee
Just a Little While To Stay Here
Lead Me Saviour
Let the Light from the Lighthouse Shine on Me
Lily of the Valley
Lonesome Road
Lord, Lord, Lord, You Sure Been Good to Me
Man from Galilee
The Old Rugged Cross
This Little Light of Mine
Old-Time Religion
Only a Look
On Revival Day
On Revival Day
Over in the Gloryland
Precious Lord, Lead Me On
Pass Me Not, Oh Gentle Saviour
Peace in the Valley
Rock Me
Roll Jordan Roll
Royal Telephone
Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down
Sometimes My Burden is Too Hard to Bear
Walking With the King
We Shall Walk Through the Streets of the City
What a Friend We Have in Jesus
When I Move to the Sky
When the Saints Go Marching In
Where He Leads Me
Where He Leads Me
I began to wonder how it came about that such tunes have a place alongside the old pop songs, blues and rags in our repertoire.
It's easy to believe the myth that spirituals were sung in the cotton fields by toiling slaves in the mid-Nineteenth Century and that - when jazz bands came into being - they would have played them and from about 1910 would have 'jazzed them up'.
But I'm not sure it's that simple. I have found no evidence that this happened. For example, can somebody please let me know of any recordings of spirituals or hymns by jazz bands before 1927? I think there's nothing in the early recordings of the ODJB, King Oliver, Kid Ory and so on.
Until somebody does, I prefer the following explanation.
In 1927, Columbia Records twice recorded the great Sam Morgan Band in New Orleans. The recordings were made in the Godchaux Building, 527, Canal Street. Four tunes were recorded on each occasion. The resulting eight recordings are still considered a hugely important part of the history of traditional jazz and have influenced hundreds of bands over the decades.
The legend is that - like other jazz bands - the Sam Morgan Band played mostly for dancing and did not include religious music in its dance hall repertoire. However, one of the recording engineers was very keen on such tunes as Down By The Riverside and suggested that Sam's band should record them.
So the Band included three 'spirituals' in the eight recordings - and the rest is history: if Sam could do it, why not the rest of us?
Apparently trumpet-player Isaiah Morgan (Sam's brother) in a later interview made the point that jazz bands such as theirs might have played hymns and spirituals at funerals but would not have used religious music for dancing.
By 1940, it became commonplace for the most influential traditional jazz musicians to record spirituals. Think of George Lewis, Bunk Johnson, Louis Armstrong.
Quite a few spirituals we play - including some in my list above - were composed not in the days of slavery but in the days when jazz bands were already well established.
Here's a stirring modern example of a spiritual in a jazz band performance. In this video, we see two of the best bands in the world joining together to perform Over in the Gloryland - one of those spirituals made famous in 1927 by Sam Morgan: CLICK HERE.
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Footnote
My book Enjoying Traditional Jazz is available from Amazon.
