Mary Don't You Weep: A Song History
"Mary Don't You Weep," also sung as "O Mary Don't You Weep" and "Oh Mary Don't You Weep," is an African American spiritual whose maker is unknown; Jerry Zolten, in an essay published by the Library of Congress, calls it a song "born in the anonymity of slavery."[1][2] The Library of Congress places its beginnings before the Civil War, most likely among enslaved singers in the South.[3] Zolten traces its imagery to two biblical episodes: the drowning of Pharaoh's pursuing army in the Exodus story, and, from the Gospel of John, the sisters Mary and Martha of Bethany after the death of their brother Lazarus.[1] Folklorists catalog it as Roud 11823.[2]
Titian and Domenico dalle Greche, The Submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea, woodcut, 1514–15, printed 1549. Shown for its subject, a story the song recalls.
Zolten writes that the Fisk University Jubilee Singers of Nashville sang it on their tours after the Civil War and were the first to record it, in New York on October 23, 1915.[1] Columbia issued that recording as A1895, crediting it to the Fisk University Male Quartette.[4] According to Zolten, the folklorist John Work, whose father sang on that session, later printed the traditional song in American Negro Songs (1940).[1] Further recordings came from Black groups such as the Virginia Female Jubilee Singers, who recorded it for OKeh in 1921, and from white performers such as the Georgia Yellow Hammers, whose Victor record dates from 1927.[1][2]
The Swan Silvertones, led by Claude Jeter, remade it as a driving gospel-quartet number for Vee-Jay; sources differ on the date, since the Library of Congress gives 1959 while Zolten's essay says the group recorded it in 1958.[3][1] The Library added that recording to the National Recording Registry, crediting it with making the song "an anthem of the modern civil rights movement."[3] Zolten also credits a line Jeter sings on it with inspiring Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water."[1] Pete Seeger recorded the spiritual, and it appears in the Seeger songbook American Favorite Ballads.[2] Bruce Springsteen recorded it for We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an album of songs from Seeger's repertoire released in April 2006.[5][6] Lorinda Jones includes it in her Sacred Music Collection, a book of hymns, spirituals and gospel songs arranged for mountain dulcimer, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]
Sources
- Library of Congress: "'Oh Mary Don't You Weep'--The Swan Silvertones (1959)," essay by Jerry Zolten.
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep".
- Library of Congress: "National Recording Registry To 'Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive'".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 46147. O Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn / Fisk University Jubilee Singers".
- Bruce Springsteen: "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions".
- NPR: "Springsteen Speaks: The Music of Pete Seeger".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Lorinda Jones, Sacred Music Collection".
- Image: Titian and Domenico dalle Greche, The Submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea, woodcut, 1514–15, printed 1549. The Cleveland Museum of Art.