Recording

Merry Christmas Tonight The Isles of Rhythm

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Listen to a sample of Go Tell It On the Mountain

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Of the hundreds of spirituals and African-American folk songs collected and preserved by John Wesley Work and his family, surprisingly few are Christmas songs. Go Tell It On the Mountain and Mary Had A Baby are probably the two best known. Although it is not known for sure who wrote the song, John Wesley Work II, a folk singer, composer, and professor, attributed it to his uncle, Frederick Work. The song dates from the antebellum period and was no doubt sung by slaves. It was made popular by the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Fisk University, an African-American college in Nashville, who toured the country and Europe, performing for Queen Victoria in England and President Chester A. Arthur in the United States, to raise money for the college. They were instrumental in spreading African-American music to a large number of people. John Work and John Work II both taught at the college. In 1909, Go Tell It On the Mountain was published in Thomas P. Fenner’s book Religious Folk Songs of the Negro as Sung on the Plantations. The arrangement that is familiar today was published in 1940 in American Negro Songs and Spirituals by John Wesley Work III. This song is played here using a meringue rhythm for accompaniment.

See the notes to Winter Wonderland for a description of the meringue.

— Kevin Sanders, April, 2009