Roll, Jordan, Roll (I)

DESCRIPTION: "My brother sitting on the tree of life And he heard when Jordan roll, Roll, Jordan, Roll, Jordan, Roll, Jordan, Roll.""O preacher, you oughta been there." "My sister sitting on the tree of life." "He comes, he comes, the Judge severe." Etc.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1862 (Lucy McKim: see Notes)
KEYWORDS: river freedom religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE) West Indies(Trinidad)
REFERENCES (13 citations):
Allen/Ware/Garrison-SlaveSongsUnitedStates, p. 1, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dett/Fenner/Rathbun/Cleveland-ReligiousFolkSongsOfTheNegro-HamptonInstitute, pp. 52-52,App.I, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (2 texts, 2 tunes; p. 165 in the 1909 edition)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 631, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (2 short texts plus a fragment)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 631, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 tune, of the chorus only, plus a text excerpt)
Scott-TheBalladOfAmerica, pp.195-196 , "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 240, "Roll, Jordan, Roll"; 241, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Messerli-ListenToTheMockingbird, p. 48, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 369, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsNThings, p. 22, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text, 1 tune)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsPopularEdition, p. 15, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text)
BoyScoutSongbook1997, p. 95, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: H.G. Spaulding, "Under the Palmetto" in _The Continental Monthly_, Vol. 4, No. 11 (August 1863 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 198-199, ("Roll, Jordan") (1 text, 1 tune)
Henry Randall Waite, _College Songs: A Collection of New and Popular Songs of the American Colleges_, new and enlarged edition, Oliver Ditson & Co., 1887, p. 57, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (1 text, 1 tune) (pp. 128-129 in the 1876 edition)
Roud #6697
RECORDINGS:
Nathaniel Babb and Michael Williams, "Roll Jordan Roll" (on WITrinidadVillage01)
Elizabeth Bivens, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" (on HandMeDown2)
Fisk University Jubilee Quartet, "Roll Jordan Roll" (Victor 16453, 1910; rec. 1909); "Roll Jordon [sic] Roll" (CYL: Edison [Amb.] 980, rec. 1912)
Lt. Jim Europe's Singing Serenaders, "Roll Jordan Roll" (Pathe 22105, 1919) (Pathe 020851, 1923 [as Jim Europe's Singing Serenaders])
James Garfield Smalls, "Roll Jordan Roll" (on USSeaIsland03)
Tuskegee Institute Singers, "Roll, Jordan Roll" (Victor 18237, 1917; rec. 1915)
NOTES [659 words]: The texts of this piece differ significantly; the verse lines quoted above are typical but by no means universal. There seem to have been adaptions for particular situations. The line "Roll, Jordan, Roll" is, of course, characteristic. - RBW
"'Roll Jordan Roll' was collected by Lucy McKim during a three-week visit to the Union-occupied Port Royal, South Carolina, where Sea Island people sang it to her... McKim registered the song for copyright in District Court, Philadelphia, on December 27, 1862" (Donald R. Hill, Maureen Warner-Lewis, John Cowley and Lise Winer, liner notes to WITrinidadVillage01).
SCAFFOLDING OF BLACK SPIRITUALS, FIELD HOLLERS, BLUES AND R&B
SPECULATION ABOUT THE SOURCE OF A SPIRITUAL'S CHORUS: "ROLL JORDAN, ROLL"
Charles Carleton Coffin was a war-time correspondent for the Boston Journal. Early in 1863 he was in the Port Royal area, the Sea Island section of South Carolina captured by the Union troops in 1862. His notes include a few observations about "Roll Jordan, Roll." He makes the point so casually that it may have already been accepted as common knowledge.
Coffin visits a church used, separately, by whites and freedmen. On one Sunday morning he joins the white congregation. "The congregation were singing when we entered,--
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green,
So to the Jews fair Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between."
This is the third verse of Isaac Watts's "There is a land of pure delight" (Watts, #66 pp. 413-414).
Coffin writes, "It was the well-known tune "Jordan," sung by millions in times past and present" (Coffin, p. 226).
A few pages later, from a plantation under Northern control, staffed by freedmen, Coffin writes, "The people of the plantation gathered for worship in the large parlor of the house, .... A favorite song was 'Roll, Jordan, roll,' ...." (Coffin, pp. 232-235)
Coffin does not make the connection between Watts's hymn and "Roll Jordan, Roll" explicit, but Eileen Southern does:
"The black Methodists in early Philadelphia earned a wide-spread reputation for composing their own religious songs and singing them instead of the official hymns of the Methodist denomination, much to the discomfiture of the leading white clergymen of the denomination.... In composing their songs, the black Methodists used verses from the Bible, verses from favorite Protestant hymns, and verses of their own composition -- then added refrains and choruses to the resulting conglomeration of poetic materials. Thus, it appears, was born the Negro spiritual! We can easily reconstruct the process. Here for example is the text of a hymn from Allen's collection:
There is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign
Infinite day excludes the night
And pleasures banish pain
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dress'd in living green
So, to the Jews, old Canaan stood
While Jordan rolled between (Allen #27 p. 46)
This is a wonderful old hymn text, composed by the renowned English minister Isaac Watts. But its ideas are expressed in rather sophisticated terms, especially for a people newly freed from slavery who were, for the most part, illiterate. The black folk composers caught the spirit of the Watts hymn, but changed the words to suit their ideas about its basic meaning. Their version was more personal, more direct, more emotional, and easier to understand. All members of the congregation could join in the singing, even those who could not read. This is what they sang:
Oh, brothers, you ought to been there
Yes, my Lord
A sittin' in the kingdom
To hear Jordan roll.
Roll, Jordan, roll; roll, Jordan, roll
I want to go to heaven when I die
To hear Jordan roll.
We could point out similar relationships between other spirituals and the Protestant hymns or scriptures. Always the spirituals change the language of the source materials so that the words become the personal utterance of the singer." (Southern, pp. 27-28) - BS
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.7
File: SBoA195

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.