Ride On, King Jesus: A Song History
"Ride On, King Jesus" is an African American spiritual whose refrain pictures Jesus as a riding king whom nobody can stop, an image that William B. McClain, as cited by hymnologists C. Michael Hawn and Eileen Guenther, ties both to the prophets' "highway" passages and to the entry into Jerusalem.[1] Hawn and Guenther trace an early relative, "No Man Can Hinder Me," collected on Port Royal Island, South Carolina, in the early 1860s and printed in Slave Songs of the United States (1867), though that version tells of Jesus's miracles and lacks the refrain known today.[1] Hymnology Archive dates the song itself to Jubilee Songs Complete (Biglow & Main, 1872), where it appeared as a bare melody with three stanzas and refrain in Theodore Seward's transcription from the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the mostly formerly enslaved students George L. White took on tour from Nashville in October 1871 to raise money for Fisk University.[2] That writer reads the horse of the second stanza as either the triumphal entry or Christ's return in Revelation 19.[2] Hawn and Guenther also point to James Farley, a formerly enslaved man whose recollection in Fisk's 1945 Unwritten History of Slavery tells of slave patrols ordering worshippers to stop singing this very song.[1]
David Vinckboons, Christ Entering Jerusalem, engraving, 1634. Christ entering Jerusalem, one reading of the song's riding king; the engraving has no connection to the song.
It was a favorite on the Fisk singers' fundraising tours through the last quarter of the century, and it stayed in every edition of The Story of the Jubilee Singers through F. J. Loudin's of 1892.[1][2] Harry T. Burleigh included it in his Jubilee Songs of the United States of America (1916), and his solo setting remained a concert standby; James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson printed it in their two-volume Book of American Negro Spirituals (1925–26), and John W. Work III in American Negro Songs and Spirituals (1940), recasting the words from first person to third.[1][2] Marian Anderson recorded it for Victor on May 5, 1947, with Franz Rupp at the piano, in an arrangement the catalog record credits to Lawrence Brown; the disc came out in July 1948.[3] Accounts of its hymnal history differ: Hymnology Archive says no hymnal carried it before the African American Heritage Hymnal of 2001, while Hawn and Guenther list the early-1980s Songs of Zion and Lift Every Voice and Sing II (1993) and note that no single version is standard.[2][1] The 2001 hymnal uses an arrangement by Stephen Key, and Hymnary.org lists it in three more hymnals published between 2011 and 2018.[4][5]
For dulcimer players, it appears in Songs Of The Spirit, a sheet-music collection of African American spirituals published by Carol Crocker, which sets each song as a DAD-tuned mountain dulcimer solo and prints the words alongside.[6]
Sources
- Discipleship Ministries (C. Michael Hawn and Eileen Guenther): "History of Hymns: 'Ride On, King Jesus'".
- Hymnology Archive: "Ride on, King Jesus".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor 10-1428 (10-in. double-faced Red Seal). Marian Anderson sings spirituals (Album MO-1238)".
- Hymnary.org: "Ride On, King Jesus" (African American Heritage Hymnal, No. 225).
- Hymnary.org: "Ride on, King Jesus".
- Carol Crocker: "Songs Of The Spirit".
- Image: David Vinckboons, Christ Entering Jerusalem, engraving, 1634. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.