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Hear These Beautiful Sacred Selections
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2019
Extract
Few pioneering works on American culture are as significant as George Pullen Jackson's White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and “Buckwheat Notes” (1933). To this seminal book Jackson added four others, which fixed his name as the key interpreter of the Anglo-American religious folksong tradition within the United States. In White Spirituals Jackson set for himself a large and ambitious goal: to define and study a corpus not previously recognized as folksong by orthodox ballad scholars. In the process, he added to our understanding of the tune-family concept and helped to establish a multi-faceted model of folk society identified by geography, institutional structure, and philosophic belief.
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- Copyright © 1971 By the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
References
1 In these footnotes I shall refer to Jackson's books by initials: WSSU, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (1933); SFSEA, Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America (1937); DESO, Down-East Spirituals and Others (1939); WNS, White and Negro Spirituals (1943); ASWS, Another Sheaf of White Spirituals (1952).Google Scholar
2 Yoder, Don, “Introduction,” Folklore Associates reprint of WSSU (1964); Revitt, Paul J., The George Pullen Jackson Collection of Southern Hymnody: A Bibilography (1964), UCLA Library Occasional Papers, Number 13.Google Scholar
3 Lomax quote in Whitten, Norman E. Jr., and Szwed, John, Afro-American Anthropology (1970), p. 197.Google Scholar
4 WSSU, p. 390.Google Scholar
5 Ibid.Google Scholar
6 Library of Congress album brochure, Sacred Harp Singing (L 11). See also DESO, p. 239.Google Scholar
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8 Ibid., p. 2.Google Scholar
9 “Hicks’ Farewell,” WSSU, pp. 202–205; “Ten Blessings of Mary,” ASWS, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar
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11 Dusenberry, ASWS, pp. 5 and 9; Yoder, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar
12 I am indebted to Joe Hickerson of the Library of Congress and Dick Hulan of Vanderbilt University for bringing these letters to my attention.Google Scholar
13 “Titanic,” SFSEA, pp. 177–178, and WNS, pp. 210–211.Google Scholar
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17 The first edition of Blues and Gospel Records 1902–1942 was published in 1963 by Brian Rust of Middlesex, England. In 1969 a revised edition was issued by Hanover House, London.Google Scholar
18 Daniel, Harlan, “78 rpm Recordings of Sacred Harp Songs,” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly, VI (Spring, 1970).Google Scholar
19 All Okeh brochure quotes from Jim Walsh microfilm at John Edwards Memorial Foundation, UCLA.Google Scholar
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27 Lillian Crabtree in a George Peabody College master's thesis, “Songs and Ballads Sung in Overton County, Tennessee” (Nashville, 1936), p. 93, presented an eight-stanza Holy Roller song, “The Two Rulers,” which seems to be the source for Whitter's disc. On April 9, 1930, Frank and James McCravy from Laurens, South Carolina, secured a copyright (E unp 19950) on “The Dollar and the Devil.” Their text and tune is found in the Southern Music Publishing Company's folio, The Frank & Jim McCravy Album of Fireside Songs (New York, 1933).Google Scholar
28 Yoder, Don, Pennsylvania Spirituals (1961), pp. 434–447.Google Scholar
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32 I wish to thank Joe Boyd, Harlan Daniel, Ronald Foreman, Joe Hickerson, Dick Hulan, Bill Malone, Judith McCulloh, and Don Yoder for help in this article.Google Scholar