Roll Jordan Roll: A Song History
"Roll, Jordan, Roll" is an African American spiritual that stands as No. 1 in Slave Songs of the United States (1867), compiled by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison.[1] The book credits its main version to Ware, from the Port Royal Islands of South Carolina, and adds a variant from McKim Garrison.[1] The editors thought it was probably sung from South Carolina down to Florida and called it "one of the best known and noblest of the songs."[1] Allen's introduction names it the favorite of all the songs, noting that it was sung in Florida but, as far as he knew, not in North Carolina.[1]
Samuel A. Cooley, Water view of Quartermaster’s Office at Beaufort, South Carolina, albumen silver print, 1862–65. Beaufort, South Carolina, in the Port Royal Islands, where the main version in Slave Songs of the United States came from; the Civil War photograph has no connection to the song.
Allen believed that the first public attention to these songs came from a letter by Lucy McKim printed in Dwight's Journal of Music on November 8, 1862, and he wrote that around the same time she arranged and published this song and "Poor Rosy."[1] McKim, a Philadelphian with training in piano and violin, set out from New York on June 2, 1862, with her father, the abolitionist James Miller McKim, and spent about three weeks in the Union-held Sea Islands.[2] Her settings, for solo voice with a plain piano part, drew little public notice when they appeared.[2]
A quartet of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers that included the tenor John Wesley Work recorded the spiritual for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, and the take made on December 21, 1909, was issued as Victor 16466.[3] Fisk University Jubilee Singers recorded it again for Columbia in New York on December 26, 1919.[4] Larry Conger includes it in his American Spirituals Tab Book, a 29-page Fingers Of Steel book whose songs are all in DAD tuning and which its listing describes as fairly easy to play.[5]
Sources
- Internet Archive: "Slave Songs of the United States" (Allen, Ware and Garrison, 1867).
- No Depression: "Roll Jordan, Roll: The Slave Song Lucy McKim Taught the World".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix B-8452. Roll Jordan roll / Fisk University Jubilee Singers".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 78893. Roll, Jordan, roll / Fisk University Jubilee Singers".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, American Spirituals Tab Book".
- Image: Samuel A. Cooley, Water view of Quartermaster’s Office at Beaufort, South Carolina, albumen silver print, 1862–65. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.