She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain: A Song History
In The American Songbag (1927), Carl Sandburg traced the song to an old African American spiritual, "When the Chariot Comes," which he said mountaineers had reworked into the present song; by his account it then passed to Midwestern railroad work gangs in the 1890s.[1] He set the spiritual beside it, and in that version the "she" who is coming is the chariot, with King Jesus at the reins.[1] The spiritual had already been published in 1899 in William E. Barton's Old Plantation Hymns, a collection of songs of the enslaved and freedpeople.[2] The Traditional Ballad Index reports that James Fuld found essentially this tune printed there but knew of no printing of the "round the mountain" words before Sandburg; it adds that the Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina folklore instead calls the song a secularization of "The Old Ship of Zion," so sources differ on its exact parent.[3]
John C. H. Grabill, "Horse Shoe Curve." On B[urlington] and M[issouri River] R'y. Buckhorn Mountains in background, photographic print, 1891. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
Sandburg was not the first to put it before the public: the Discography of American Historical Recordings shows Henry Whitter singing it, as "She's Coming Around the Mountain," with guitar and harmonica in New York in February 1924, released on OKeh 40063.[4] The Ballad Index treats that disc as its earliest dated source and lists a run of later 1920s records, among them sides by Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, Uncle Dave Macon with John McGhee, and Al Hopkins and his Buckle Busters.[3] The same entry notes that it often picks up nonsense verses of the summer-camp sort, and that its tune has carried other texts, among them "Ye Cannae Shove Yer Granny Aff a Bus" and "Ding Dong Dollar."[3]
Maureen Sellers includes it in My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume Two, a 56-page instruction book for the mountain dulcimer that pairs playing basics with a selection of tunes, published by Fingers Of Steel.[5]
Sources
- Internet Archive: "The American Songbag" (Carl Sandburg, 1927).
- Internet Archive: "Old Plantation Hymns" (William E. Barton, 1899).
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix S-72344. She's coming around the mountain / Henry Whitter".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume Two".
- Image: John C. H. Grabill, "Horse Shoe Curve." On B[urlington] and M[issouri River] R'y. Buckhorn Mountains in background, photographic print, 1891. Library of Congress.