Swing low, sweet chariot

I. Published Origins

This spiritual, one of the best known spirituals in circulation, was first printed in Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University (1872 | Fig. 1). The Jubilee Singers were students at Fisk, most of whom had been former slaves. George Leonard White (1838–1895), Fisk’s treasurer and music professor, gathered the group and took them on tour to help raise money for the school, leaving Nashville, Tennessee on 6 October 1871. During a successful campaign stop in New York City, they established a connection with publisher Biglow & Main. The task of transcribing the group’s songs fell to Theodore Seward (1835–1902), a prominent musician and music editor at the time. This first collection published for Fisk contained 24 songs. In the preface, Seward declared his confidence in his ability to capture the songs in standard music notation:

The public may feel assured that the music herein given is entirely correct. It was taken down from the singing of the band, during repeated interviews held for the purpose, and no line or phrase was introduced that did not receive full endorsement from the singers. Some of the phrases and turns in the melodies are so peculiar that the listener might not unreasonably suppose them to be incapable of exact representation by ordinary musical characters. It is found, however, that they all submit to the laws of musical language, and if they are sung or played exactly as written, all the characteristic effects will be reproduced.[1]

From this collection, “Swing low, sweet chariot” was reprinted in The Christian Weekly, 4 May 1872, with a brief story about the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The writer of the article felt very differently about the ability of the written score to convey the full experience of hearing the group sing:

Their voices, though very sweet, could never enchain and thrill as they do by the simple power of concordant sounds. They are nature’s rendering of the great miserere of humanity. They are not mere slave songs; nor yet the songs of the emancipated. They are still more, the songs of the ransomed children of God. In every one is the deep undertone of a tender and true Christian experience.

We give, with this article, one of their most characteristic melodies, but the type cannot interpret its full meaning. Our readers may, by the aid of the piano or the melodeon, get a glimpse of the quaint, weird music, but only those who in earth’s sorrow have longed for the coming of the chariot of the Lord can comprehend the song as it is sung by the Jubilee Singers themselves.[2]

II. Authorship

Two stories have arisen as to the possible author/originator of this song, both involving the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

John Wesley Work Jr. (1873–1925), in his book Folk Song of the American Negro (Nashville: Fisk University, 1915), pp. 78–82, relayed a story involving a young slave mother in Tennessee, Sarah Hannah Sheppard, who in a bout of despair had intended to kill herself and her newborn baby rather than allow it to be raised into a life of slavery. On her way to throw herself and the child into the Cumberland River, muttering, “Before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave,” an older slave woman stopped her:

In love, she laid her dear old hand upon the shoulder of the distressed mother and said, “Don’t you do it, honey; wait, let de chariot of de Lord swing low, and let me take one of de Lord’s scrolls an’ read it to you.” Then, making a motion as reaching for something, and unrolling it, she read, “God’s got a great work for dis baby to do; she’s goin’ to stand befo’ kings and queens. Don’t you do it, honey.” The mother was so impressed with the words of the old “mammy” she gave up her fell design and allowed herself to be taken off [sold] down into Mississippi, leaving her baby behind. These two songs [“Before I’d be a slave,” “Swing low”] grew by degrees, as they passed from mouth to mouth, until they reached their present state. That prophecy of the old “mammy” was literally fulfilled. After the war, the baby girl [Ella Sheppard] entered Fisk University and was a member of the Original Fisk Jubilee Singers, who stood before kings and queens.[3]

The other purported originator of the song is Wallace Willis, a former slave who worked for the family of Allen Wright, a prominent administrative member of the Choctaw Nation, near Doaksville, Oklahoma. Prior to the Civil War, Willis and his wife, Minerva, had also worked at the nearby Spencer Academy, a school for Choctaws, where they became acquainted with the school’s superintendent, Rev. Alexander Reid. According to this account, Willis had learned the song as a child in Mississippi:

Uncle Wallace and Aunt Minerva were two of the colored workers that were employed at Spencer Academy, before the war. They lived together in a little cabin near it. In the summer evenings they would often sit at the door of the cabin and sing their favorite plantation songs, learned in Mississippi in their early youth.

In 1871, when the Jubilee singers first visited Newark, New Jersey, Rev. Alexander Reid happened to be there and heard them. The work of the Jubilee singers was new in the North and attracted considerable and very favorable attention. But when Prof. White, who had charge of them, announced several concerts to be given in different churches of the city he added, “We will have to repeat the Jubilee songs as we have no other.”

When Mr. Reid was asked how he liked them he remarked, “Very well, but I have heard better ones.” When he had committed to writing a half dozen of the plantation songs he had heard Wallace and Minerva sing with so much delight at old Spencer Academy, he met Mr. White and his company in Brooklyn, New York, and spent an entire day rehearsing them. These new songs included “Steal away to Jesus,” “The Angels are Coming,” “I’m a Rolling,” and “Swing Low.”[4]

Similarly, Willis’s granddaughter Frances Banks, in an interview in 1938, claimed Reid had helped to preserve some of her grandfather’s songs, except Banks believed Willis had composed them himself:

My grandfather, Uncle Wallace, was a slave of the Wright family when they lived near Doaksville, and he and my grandmother would pass the time by singing while they toiled away in the cotton fields. Grandfather was a sweet singer. He made up songs and sung ’em. He made up “Swing low sweet chariot,” and “Steal away to Jesus.” He made up lots more than them, but a Mr. Reid, a white man, liked them ones the best and he could play music and he helped grandfather to keep these two songs.[5]

III. Analysis

The chorus of the song alludes to the story of the prophet Elijah being taken into heaven by a chariot of fire in 2 Kings 2:1–12. In the first stanza, the description of looking over the Jordan River into heaven is possibly a reference to the crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land by the Israelites in Joshua 3, or to the river of life in Revelation 22:1–12. Even though the river of Revelation 22 is not named Jordan in the Bible, the name is often used as a shorthand allusion for that purpose (making the connection with Joshua 3) in other spirituals and gospel songs. The song might have carried other sentiments and meanings for American slaves, whether broadly, as a general desire for freedom, or more specifically, relating to being rescued by the Underground Railroad.

Musically, the song is relatively simple. The melody is pentatonic. It has a full chorus/refrain (“Swing low, sweet chariot”) and an interlinear refrain (“Coming for to carry me home”), making it suitable for a soloist to provide the verses, while a large group would respond with the repeated elements. The harmony, apparently sung only during the group response, always resolves to the tonic chord, with a penultimate dominant chord.

IV. Early Variants

A related version of this spiritual was published only a year after the Fisk version, this one in Spirituelles: (Unwritten Songs of South Carolina) Sung by the Carolina Singers (Philadelphia: Alfred Martien, 1873 | Fig. 3). As the cover reads, “They are students of the Fairfield Normal Institute, near Columbia, S.C. Their object is to raise funds to meet its pressing wants. They sing the weird songs of the colored people, as they learned them in the days of slavery. Written for the first time, from memory, by the Carolina Singers.” This printing of “Swing low, sweet chariot” did not contain music, only words, so the musical similarity is impossible to determine, but the text is mostly identical as what was being sung at Fisk. All four of the verses are the same, but the interlinear refrain, “coming for to carry me home,” changes as the song progresses.

The following year, a song called “Swing low, sweet chariot” appeared in the collection of spirituals appended to Hampton and Its Students (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1874 | Fig. 4), transcribed by Thomas P. Fenner (1829–1912) from the singers at the Hampton Normal Institute (later Hampton University). This version, although it carries the same opening words and a similar sentiment, has a very different melody, but it is pentatonic melodically and is limited to tonic and dominant harmonies, like the Fisk version.

These variants, found in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1873, and Hampton, Virginia, in 1874, would seem to undermine the claim of Wallace Willis as the song’s sole author. More likely, he learned a version of the song as a child in Mississippi, as reported by Robert Flickinger (1914). In spite of these regional variants, the Fisk version has endured in the broader popular culture.

V. Earliest Recordings

The oldest known recording of “Swing low, sweet chariot” is a wax cylinder from 1894, recovered and preserved by Archeophone Records in their box set Waxing the Gospel: Mass Evangelism and the Phonograph, 1890–1900 (2016 | Amazon | iTunes). The performance is by the Standard Quartette.

The Fisk Jubilee Quartet recorded this song on 1 December 1909 for Victor (16453-A, 78rpm) in Camden, NJ. This session has been digitized and preserved by Document Records (DOCD 5533, In Chronological Order, vol. 1 | Amazon | iTunes). This version of the song was chorally arranged for concert hall purposes, possibly by John Wesley Work Jr., who sang tenor in the group, or his brother, Frederick Jerome Work (1880–1942).

VI. Proliferation & Development

Like many spirituals, “Swing low, sweet chariot” has enjoyed success both via hymn-like settings in hymnals and songbooks, and via specialized arrangements for the concert hall. For example, this spiritual appeared in songbooks as early as 1890 in Rescue Songs, compiled by Henry Hadley (NY: S.T. Gordon & Son, 1890). One early, important performer and arranger of concert spirituals was Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949). Burleigh arranged “Swing low” for solo voice and piano accompaniment in 1917 for publisher G. Ricordi & Co. (Fig. 5).

In his notes to the arrangement, Burleigh offered his advice and insight into this repertoire:

Success in singing these Folk Songs is primarily dependent upon deep spiritual feeling. The voice is not nearly so important as the spirit; and then rhythm, for the Negro’s soul is linked with rhythm, and it is an essential characteristic of most all the Folk Songs. . . . Through all these songs there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man. The cadences of sorrow invariably turn to joy, and the message is ever manifest that eventually deliverance from all that hinders and oppresses the soul will come, and man—every man—will be free.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
26 September 2018
rev. 7 March 2022

Footnotes:

1. Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University (1872), p. 3: Archive.org

2. “The Jubilee Singers,” The Christian Weekly, vol. 2, no. 18 (4 May 1872), p. 210: PDF

3. John Wesley Work Jr., Folk Song of the American Negro (Nashville: Fisk University, 1915), pp. 78–82: Archive.org

4. Robert E. Flickinger, The Choctaw Freedmen and the Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy (1914), pp. 25–26: Archive.org

5. T. Lindsay Baker & Julie P. Baker, “Frances Banks,” The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996), p. 28: Archive.org

Related Resources:

Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University (NY: Biglow & Main, 1872): Archive.org

“The Jubilee Singers,” The Christian Weekly, vol. 2, no. 18 (4 May 1872), p. 210: PDF

Spirituelles: (Unwritten songs of South Carolina) Sung by the Carolina Singers (Philadelphia: Alfred Martien, 1873).

Thomas P. Fenner, Hampton and Its Students (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1874): Archive.org

Robert E. Flickinger, The Choctaw Freedmen and the Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy (Pittsburgh: Presbyterian Board of Missions, 1914), pp. 25–26: Archive.org

John Wesley Work Jr., Folk Song of the American Negro (Nashville: Fisk University, 1915), pp. 78–82: Archive.org

Harry T. Burleigh, “Swing low, sweet chariot” (G. Ricordi & Co., 1917): HathiTrust

T. Lindsay Baker & Julie P. Baker, “Frances Banks,” The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996), pp. 28ff: Archive.org

Waxing the Gospel: Mass Evangelism and the Phonograph, 1890–1900 (Archeophone Records, 2016): Amazon | iTunes

“Hear the Recently Discovered, Earliest Known Recording of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ (1894),” Open Culture (15 May 2018):
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/hear-the-recently-discovered-earliest-known-recording-of-swing-low-sweet-chariot-1894.html

“Swing low, sweet chariot,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/i_looked_over_jordan_and_what_did_i_see

J.R. Watson & Eileen Guenther, “Swing low, sweet chariot,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/s/swing-low,-sweet-chariot

The Fisk Jubilee Singers:
http://fiskjubileesingers.org/