"Shadrach" (Shadrach, Meshack, And Abendego) & "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" - Two Songs By Robert MacGimsey Which Are Mistakenly Thought To Have A Black Composer

Edited by Azizi Powell

This serves as Part I of a four part pancocojams series on the Gospel, Pop, and Jazz song "Shadrack".

This post is also the first post is an ongoing pancocojams series on songs that are mistakenly thought to have Black composers. Other posts in the pancocojams series about songs that are mistakenly thought to have Black composers can be found by clicking the link that is given below.

This pancocojams post provides information about Robert MacGimsey, the White American composer of the songs "Shadrach" (Shadrach, Meshack, And Abendego), "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" and some other songs.

A sound file of "Shadrach" as performed by Louis Armstrong and a video of "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" as performed by Mahalia Jackson are also included in Part I of this series. The arrangements and some of the lyrics for these renditions may differ from Robert MacGimsey's compositions.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-golden-gate-quartet-shadrach.html for Part II of this series.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-larks-black-gospel-group-on-ed.html for Part III of this series. Part III showcases a YouTube video of a 1952 clip of the Gospel group The Larks performing "Shadrach" on the Ed Sullivan show.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/12/louis-armstrong-shadrach-and-brook.html for Part IV of this series. Part IV showcases a video of Louis Armstrong performing "Shadrach".

The content of this post is presented for folkloric, cultural, and religious purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Robert MacGimsey for his musical legacy. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.

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INFORMATION ABOUT ROBERT MACGIMSEY
Excerpt #1:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_MacGimsey
"Robert MacGimsey (Pineville, Louisiana 1898 - Phoenix, Arizona 1979) was an American composer. His most famous song was "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" (1934), a well-known Christmas carol written in the style of an African-American spiritual. MacGimsey also composed "Shadrack," which was a 1962 hit for Brook Benton that was also recorded by Louis Armstrong and many others.

MacGimsey is also known for the song "How Do You Do?" which was originally written for the Walt Disney live-action musical drama Song of the South. The song is also featured in the theme-park attraction Splash Mountain located in Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland.

Born in Pineville, Louisiana, of white parents, Robert MacGimsey spent most of his formative years in the company of blacks who lived and worked for and with his family. Due to their influence he wrote in an "African American" style, and he is often mistakenly assumed to be a black composer."....

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Excerpt #2:
From https://dhcfellow2013asu.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/slave-songs-of-the-georgia-sea-islands-by-lydia-parrish/
Arizona State University Archive Project 2013
Rinna Rem's Fellowship
Processing the Robert MacGimsey Collection
Image | Posted on July 30, 2013 by Rinna
"Robert MacGimsey (1898-1979) was a lawyer, composer, whistler, radio performer, and in my eyes, an ethnomusicologist. He followed his father’s footsteps and practiced law, but MacGimsey’s passion was always music. His popular compositions include “Shadrack” and the Christmas song “Sweet Little Jesus Boy.” ...MacGimsey was so popular for his whistling that, at the time of the Depression, he was the highest paid performer ever. He was paid $100/minute to whistle on the radio!... What intrigues me the most, though, is MacGimsey’s lifelong project of documenting and preserving African American folk spirituals.

[...]

Robert MacGimsey was born in Pineville, Louisiana. African American folk spirituals were embedded in his life since birth. He grew up on a plantation and his parents employed African Americans, many former slaves, for help in their house and on the farm. MacGimsey’s nanny, whom he referred to as Aunt Becky, sang spirituals to him as a baby. Many of the hired help on his family’s property became mentors of Robert’s. They always taught him songs and he even attended Baptist church with his “uncles” to participate in singing spirituals. Thus, his passion in life was to learn, document, preserve, transcribe and make accessible to the public African American folk spirituals from the American South. The book pictured above, [Lydia Parrish's] “Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands”, includes music transcribed by MacGimsey. As a trained composer, MacGimsey transcribed these songs, previously transmitted via oral culture, onto paper. As a radio performer, he often sang folk spirituals on-air.

Again, keep in mind that MacGimsey performed pre-Civil Rights Movement, so although it would be best for the original singers to perform, the performers were probably barred from doing so. I believe MacGimsey was the best advocate for the singers as he could be in that pre-Civil Rights Movement era. For instance, on his 7″ tape reels, he labeled the singers individually. Often ethnomusicologists of that era didn’t treat their performers/informants as individuals, and thusly never gave credit where it was due. Instead, performers/singers/informants were just the “vehicles” of music, not recognized individuals of artistic expertise. MacGimsey, on the other hand, took great care to list the individual whom first taught him a song or the individual whom lent their voice to field recordings. Also, he aimed to maintain the dialect of singers in his transcriptions, while he considered other transcriptions as “white-washed.”

Now, what does ethnomusicology or African American folk spirituals have to do with dance? Personally, I see music and dance as imbricated and often dependent genres of performance. Turns out I’m not the only one, either! Check out the Society of Ethnomusicology’s section on Dance, Movement, and Gesture. African American folk spirituals were performed in multiple sites – while working outside, in private, and at church during the ring shout. A ring shout describes church worshippers shuffling and stomping in a circle together, often with ecstatic gestures. In an individual setting, folk spirituals might be sung while working outside on a plantation, the music providing rhythm (and solace) to the gestures of manual labor.

It was difficult to parse out MacGimsey’s transcriptions of folk spirituals from his original compositions (spirituals did influence his own song-writing), but I was able to identify transcriptions with the book Plantation Songbook: the Original Manuscript Collection of Robert MacGimsey. I highly recommend it to learn some songs, but it also includes short essays that reveal his personal relationship to folk spirituals and its performers and his passion for accurate documentation

[...]

Interesting fact: he was commissioned, as an “expert of Negro folk spirituals” by Disney to write music for the controversial movie “Song of the South.” He wrote many songs for the movie (I’ve seen the original manuscripts!) but only the song “How Do You Do?” made it into the movie.
-snip-
I reformatted this excerpt to enhance its readability.

The word "dance" that is given in italics was printed that way in that article. I added Lydia Parrish's name in brackets to this post.

Rinna Rem wrote "I’ll update when this collection is public"... However, I can't locate any update of that site.

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SHOWCASE EXAMPLES
Example #1: Louis Armstrong - Shadrack



Stra2M, Published on May 30, 2012

Louis and The Good Book

New York, February 6, 1958

MCA Records

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Example #2: Mahalia Jackson Sweet Little Jesus Boy



1joker88, Published on Aug 6, 2009

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