Louis Armstrong - "Shadrach" And Brook Benton - "Shadrach" (YouTube examples & comments)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part IV of a four part pancocojams series on the Gospel, Pop, and Jazz song "Shadrach". This song is also known as "Shadrack" and as "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego".

Part IV of this series showcases a video of Louis Armstrong performing "Shadrach" as well as a sound file of Brook Benton performing that same song.

Selected comments from these YouTube examples are included in this post.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/11/shadrach-shadrach-meshack-and-abendego.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. Part I 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.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-golden-gate-quartet-shadrach.html for Part II of this series. Part II provides information about the song "Shadrack". This post also showcases two YouTube sound files of this song as performed by The Golden Gate Quartet.

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.

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

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Robert MacGimsey, the composer of this song. Thanks also to Louis Armstrong and to Brook Benton for their musical legacies. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post. In addition, thanks to the publishers of these examples on YouTube.

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SHOWCASE EXAMPLE - Louis Armstrong - Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego



BibleOrTraditions, Published on Jun 22, 2008

Louis Armstrong, 1952

There was three children from the land of Israel
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

Took a trip to the land of Babylon
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

He took a lot of gold and made an idol
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

And he told everybody when you hear the music of the trumpet
And he told everybody when you hear the music of the flute
And he told everybody when you hear the music of the horn
You must fall down and worship the idol
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

But the children of Israel would not bow down
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

So the king put the children in a fiery furnace
He heaped on coal and red-hot brimestone
Seven times hotter, hotter than it oughta be
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

Well they couldn't even burn a hair on the head of Shadrach
Laughing and talking while the fire is jumping around

Old Nebuchadnezzar called "Hey there!" when he saw the power of the Lord

And they had a big time in the house of Babylon
. . Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego
-snip-
Here are some comments from this video's discussion thread (with numbers assigned for referencing purposes only)
1. FToniS, 2008
"WOW! My father was a fan. :-{
Jazz and Soul originated in Gospel music. Someone once said that the devil has all the best music - well, that's only because he stole it!"

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2. valambiguous, 2008
"Love those old black and whites, when television showed black and whites gettin' it on "together", in the musical world. Nice song, all jazzed up in a Biblical story. Thanks, for sending this one!!"

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3. captainron, 2008
"This is from the movie "The Strip", 1951."

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REPLY
4. BibleOrTraditions, 2008
"Ah! Thanks. We recognized Mickey Rooney right off the bat."

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REPLY
5. memecine, 2011
"As I recall, Mickey Rooney plays a drummer who gets accused of murder. Lot of music in this little corker: Louis Armstrong (with Jack Teagarden, etc), Vic Damone. My mother loved this song, played it all the time. We got a pointer puppy, and named it Shadrach, Then we got a stray mutt, that was literally starving, and named it Jackal. I like the way this is shot, almost entirely with one camera."

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6. Hedgehog's Right of Passage, 2010
"There was Mickey Rooney looking around and David Nelson the older brother of the great Ricky Nelson,and son of musicians of great fame ozzie and harriet. I'm mad for this song!Total entertainment and art"

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7. Jim Brown, 2015
"Yes, the trombonist is Jack Teagarten."

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8. Nature Oliver, 2017
"Only Jazz could creatively re-invent this gospel song: Awesome creativity:)"

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9. G Kelly, 2017
"Only thing integrated is the band...."

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SHOWCASE EXAMPLE: Brook Benton - Shadrack.



Johnny Brown, Published on Mar 11, 2012

Brook Benton. Shadrack.
Taken from the Album,
Brook Benton,For My Baby: The Brook Benton Collection,
Released 2006.
-snip-
Here are some comments from this video's discussion thread (with numbers assigned for referencing purposes only)
1. GERARD BURKE, 2014
"Who are the singers backing up Brook? Sounds like a full church choir."

**
2. Brunon Paul Bielinski, 2016
"+GERARD BURKE Arranged and conducted by Malcolm Dodds with his singers. MD has you tube listings."

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3. sauquoit13456, 2016
"On this day in 1962 {February 4th} Brook Benton performed "Shadrack" on the CBS-TV program 'The Ed Sullivan Show'...
At the time the song was in its second of two weeks at #22 on Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart; one week later on February 11th it would peak at #19 {for 1 week} and it stayed on the chart for 9 weeks...
The record's B-side, "The Lost Penny", also made the Top 100, it debut on the chart on January 7th at #80, and the following week it rose three positions to #77, that would be its last week on the chart...
Between 1958 and 1970 he had forty seven Top 100 records; five made the Top 10, "So Many Ways" {#6 in 1959}, "Kiddo" {#7 in 1960}, "The Boll Weevil Song" {#2 for 3 weeks in 1961}, "Hotel Happiness" {#3 in 1963}, and "Rainy Night in Georgia" {#4 in 1970}...
Sadly, Brook Benton passed away on April 9th, 1988 at the young age of 56 {pneumonia}...
May he R.I.P."

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4. Brunon Paul Bielinski, 2017
"Later on it was included on the "For My Baby" album--and other albums. BUT the original album was "If You Believe."

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This concludes this pancocojams series on the song "Shadrach".

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Visitor comments are welcome.

"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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Gospel & Jazz Examples Of "When The Saints Go Marching In"

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides information about the song "When The Saints Go Marching In" and showcases two examples of Gospel versions and five examples of New Orleans Jazz versions of this song. This post also features an example of "When The Saints Go Marching In" as sung by R&B great James Brown.

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

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the composer/s of this song and thanks to all singers and musicians who are featured in these examples. Thanks also to the publishers of these examples on YouTube.

This post honors the fiftieth anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" March in Selma, Alabama.
Click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches for information about that 1965 civil rights march.

Also, click http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/07/barack-obama-selma-anniversary_n_6823060.html amd http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/08/bloody-sunday-selma-march_n_6826932.html for information about the fiftieth anniversary march which was held March 7, 2015.

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE SONG "WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Saints_Go_Marching_In
"When the Saints Go Marching In", often referred to as "The Saints", is an American gospel hymn. The precise origins of the song are not known. Though it originated as a Christian hymn, it is often played by jazz bands. This song was first recorded on May 13, 1938 by Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra.[1] The song is sometimes confused with a similarly titled composition "When the Saints are Marching In" from 1896 by Katharine Purvis (lyrics) and James Milton Black (music). Luther G. Presley,[3] who wrote the lyrics, and Virgil Oliver Stamps, who wrote the music, popularized the tune as a gospel song.[4] A similar version was copyrighted by R.E. Winsett.[5]

Although the song is still heard as a slow spiritual number, since the mid 20th century it has been more commonly performed as a "hot" number. The tune is particularly associated with the city of New Orleans. A jazz standard, it has been recorded by a great many jazz and pop artists.

Both vocal and instrumental renditions of the song abound. Louis Armstrong was one of the first to make the tune into a nationally known pop tune in the 1930s. Armstrong wrote that his sister told him she thought the secular performance style of the traditional church tune was inappropriate and irreligious. Armstrong was in a New Orleans tradition of turning church numbers into brass band and dance numbers that went back at least to Buddy Bolden's band at the start of the 20th century.

In New Orleans, the song is traditionally used as a funeral march at "jazz funerals". While accompanying the coffin to the cemetery, a band plays the tune as a dirge. Returning from the interment, the band switches to the familiar upbeat "hot" or "Dixieland" style of play.”...

Lyrics
As with many numbers with long traditional folk use, there is no one "official" version of the song or its lyrics...As for the lyrics themselves, their very simplicity makes it easy to generate new verses. Since the first, second, and fourth lines of a verse are exactly the same, and the third standard throughout, the creation of one suitable line in iambic tetrameter generates an entire verse.”
-snip-
Read the statements that I posted in the comment section below about the meaning of "iambic tetrameter".

Some common verses for Gospel & Jazz renditions of this song are:
1. When the saints go marching in...
2. When the sun refuse to shine...
3. When they crown Him Lord of Lords
-snip-
Him = Jesus

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WHAT "SAINTS" MEAN IN THE SONG
From http://www.academia.edu/678234/Songs_of_Pentecost_Experiencing_music_transcendence_and_identity_in_Jamaica_and_Haiti, p. xii
"Among Pentecostal congregations, the term “saints” denotes those “believers who have professed Christ as their personal savior, been saved by His holy power, and now walk the‘set apart’ path of sanctification” (Hinson 2000, 2)."

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FEATURED EXAMPLES
With the exception of the two traditional Gospel examples, these videos are presented in chronological order based on their publishing dates on YouTube with the examples with the oldest dates presented earliest.

Example #1: "When The Saints Go Marching In" (1959) Famous Ward Singers



Gospel Nostalgia, Published on Apr 12, 2014

This is track 6 from the 1959 album "At The Apollo Theatre".

Clara Ward's mother, Gertrude Ward (1901--1981), founded the Ward Singers in 1931 as a family group, then called, variously, The Consecrated Gospel Singers or The Ward Trio, consisting of herself, her youngest daughter Clara, and her elder daughter, Willarene ("Willa"). Clara Ward recorded her first solo song in 1940, and continued accompanying the Ward Gospel Trio, thereafter.

The Ward Singers began touring nationally in 1943, following a memorable appearance at the National Baptist Convention held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, earlier that year. Henrietta Waddy joined the group in 1947, after Willa Ward retired. Waddy brought to the group a "rougher" alto sound and the enthusiastic stage manners learned from her South Carolina church background. The group's performance style, such as the mimed packing of suitcases as part of the song "Packin' Up", condemned by some gospel music purists as "clowning", was wildly popular with their audiences.

The addition of Marion Williams, who arose of the Miami, Florida Pentecostal tradition brought to the group a powerful singer with a preternaturally broad range, able to reach the highest registers of the soprano range without losing either purity or volume, with the added ability to descend "growling low notes" in the style of a country preacher. Williams' singing style helped make the group nationally popular when they began recording in 1948."...

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Example #2: "When The Saints Go Marching In"- Clara Ward Singers



Rowoches. Published on Jul 25, 2012
*I don't have the copyrights to this video, but I have been given permission, by Willa Ward, to post.
The Clara Ward Singers in Antibes, France during the 1962 Antibes Jazz Festival. Clara Ward leads the group with "When The Saints Go Marching In."

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Example #3: New Orleans Traditional Jazz - When the Saints Go Marching In!



New Orleans Traditional Jazz Uploaded on Nov 22, 2009

New Orleans Traditional Jazz Band performs the Saints Go Marching In Compton

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Example #4: Fats Domino ( best of the bands ) Part 2 O when the Saints



thejazzsingers, Uploaded on Jan 1, 2011

Happy New Year Lets Party Fats and his Band !

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Example #5: When the saints go marching in - James Brown



Eric Cajundelyon Uploaded on Aug 12, 2011
Classic Gospel cover by the Godfather of Soul himself...

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Example #6: When The Saints Go Marching In - B.B. KIng



keithlee77, Uploaded on Sep 18, 2011
-snip-
female soloist-singer/actor Solange
male soloist - actor, singer Terrence Howard

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Example #7: Louis Armstrong When the Saints Go Marching In, 1961



Владимир Тишин, Published on Sep 20, 2012

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Example #8: When the saints go marching in - New Orleans street music



rumpustina, Published on Apr 1, 2013

that lady was GOOD
-snip-
Comment from that video's viewer comment thread identifying the female musician/singer:
Bui NYC, 2013
"Her name is Doreen Ketchens."

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