I Hope I'll Join the Band (Soon in the Morning)

DESCRIPTION: Sundry verses about the pleasures of heaven ("Goin' to see my Jesus," "Meet our fathers there," "Lookin' over Jordan," etc.). Usual internal refrain is "Soon in the morning"; final chorus, "And I hope I'll join the band."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1874 (Dett/Fenner/Rathbun/Cleveland-ReligiousFolkSongsOfTheNegro-HamptonInstitute); probably 1867 (Allen/Ware/Garrison-SlaveSongsUnitedStates)
KEYWORDS: music religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE,So)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Randolph 266, "I Hope I'll J'ine the Band" (3 texts, 1 tune)
Randolph/Cohen-OzarkFolksongs-Abridged, pp. 227-228, "I Hope I'll J'ine the Band" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 266A)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 598, "I Wanter Jine de Ban'" (1 text)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 598, "I Wanter Jine de Ban'" (1 tune plus a text excerpt)
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, pp. 16-17, (no title) (1 text); also. p. 198, "Bullfrog" (1 text, 1 tune, with the chorus from here though the verses are about the frog)
Allen/Ware/Garrison-SlaveSongsUnitedStates, p. 95, "I Want to Join the Band" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Work-FolkSongOfTheAmericanNegro, p. 47, "Some of these Mornings" (1 text); pp. 63-64, "I Hope I'll Join the Band" (1 text)
Barton-OldPlantationHymns, p. 6, "Soon in de Morning"; p. 28, "Gwine Ter Jine de Band" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Dett/Fenner/Rathbun/Cleveland-ReligiousFolkSongsOfTheNegro-HamptonInstitute, pp. 46-48, "Look Away (Some o' Dese Mornin's)" (1 text, 1 tune; pp. 190-192 in the 1874 edition)
Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd, #13, "Going to Ride Up in the Chariot" (1 text)
ST R266 (Partial)
Roud #7816
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "I'm Going to Ride in Pharaoh's Chariot" (lyrics, theme)
cf. "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" (lyrics)
NOTES [87 words]: This is one of those songs with extreme variations, especially between the Brown and Randolph versions (Brown's text has stanzas without repeats and doesn't use the "Soon in the morning" refrain). But the similarities are too great to split them.
The Allen/Ware/Garrison-SlaveSongsUnitedStates text, which is the earliest, is perhaps even more problematic, since it's really just the chorus, and even that is slightly different from the others. But with so little text to go on, we can hardly split it from the others. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.0
File: R266

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