Hold The Wind: A Song History

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"Hold the Wind" is an African American spiritual, and the earliest printing of it found in the sources consulted here is in Frederick J. Work's Folk Songs of the American Negro, Number Two (Nashville: Work Bros. & Hart Co., 1907), where it carries the tempo marking Serioso.[1] Hymnary.org lists it as No. 36 in Plantation Melodies and Spiritual Songs, edited by John Nelson Clark Coggin and published by Hall-Mack Co. in Philadelphia in 1913.[2] Homer A. Rodeheaver included it in Rodeheaver's Plantation Melodies, published in Chicago and copyrighted in 1918; in that version every verse line is answered by a refrain built on the title words, and the verses turn on personal faith and the hope of heaven.[3] James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson later printed it in The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (Viking Press, 1926).[4]

Drypoint of a figure bent against a strong wind on an open plain

James McNeill Whistler, The Storm, drypoint, 1861. A walker bent against the wind, shown for the song's title.

On October 13, 1929, the Sparkling Four Quartette, an unaccompanied male quartet, recorded it for OKeh in Richmond, Virginia, and it was issued as OKeh 8741.[5] The Southern University Quartet, with J. O. B. Moseley as choral director, recorded it in New Orleans on January 22, 1935, for release on Bluebird B-5846.[6] Song of America describes the composer Margaret Bonds's setting, "Hold the Wind!", as an arrangement for the soprano Leontyne Price.[7]

A DAD-tuning arrangement appears in Larry Conger's American Spirituals Tab Book, a 29-page Fingers Of Steel download that can be printed or read on a tablet or computer.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Hold The Wind"

Sources

  1. Internet Archive: "Folk Songs of the American Negro, Number Two" (Frederick J. Work, 1907).
  2. Hymnary.org: "Plantation Melodies and Spiritual Songs".
  3. Internet Archive: "Rodeheaver's Plantation Melodies" (1918).
  4. Internet Archive: "The Second Book of Negro Spirituals" (James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, 1926).
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix W403103. Hold the wind / Sparkling Four Quartette".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-87690. Hold the wind / J. O. B. Moseley ; Southern University Quartet".
  7. Song of America: "Hold the Wind!".
  8. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, American Spirituals Tab Book".
  9. Image: James McNeill Whistler, The Storm, drypoint, 1861. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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