Warren Stitt - Kum Ba Ya

Topic: Religious Folk Music Revival
Young people stopped joining youth groups in the 1960s. Jon Pahl said many local Walther League groups languished. [1] Cub Scouts no longer were graduating into Boy Scouts. [2] Membership in the Girls Scouts began dropping. [3]

Churches responded to the decline of Youth for Christ by hiring specialists to manage in-house youth programs. [4] Sunday school superintendents were rendered redundant.

Pastors needed materials, which their denominations may or may not have provided. One of the first to fill the need was George Santa’s Christian Worker’s Service Bureau. [5] He had been active in the same Chicago church as the first presidents of Youth for Christ, Torrey Johnson and Robert Cook. [6]

The rise of church youth ministries obsoleted many of its functions, and Santa sold the company to Doug Ross. He had been a Youth for Christ rally director. The name was changed to Success with Youth. It provided more materials and training seminars for youth ministers. [7]

In 1969, Word issued a "songbook for Christian youth." Joel McCracken [8] said he got the idea from Russ Reid of Success for Life in 1968. [9] It obviously was inspired by the 1967 Moral Re-Armament conference. The title of the collection was Sing In, a phrase used on Mackinac Island before MRA settled on Pete Seeger’s Sing Out. [10]

McCracken turned the compilation of Sing In over to two men on his staff, Fred Bock and Warren Stitt. He also hired the man who had worked on the first two volumes of the Lutherans’ Hymns for Now to design the layout. There were no photographs, but Paul Firnhaber juxtaposed headlines from advertisements with each song.

"Kumbaya" shared spaced with Martin Luther’s "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." The advertisement that spread across the two pages read "Call the mover who can make it look easy. Quick."

The use of familiar words in new contexts was part of an aesthetic shared by people who treated language as a literal tool. The discovery of secondary meanings created a frisson, as if one were discovering the true meaning.

There was little new in Sing In. While McCracken said it included some "fun songs, camp songs, pop and folk tune" to "insure suitability for nearly any occasion," 62 of its 67 songs were religious. [11] Only three were hymns like "Mighty Fortress," and eight were from the gospel song tradition that developed after the Civil War. The best known was "Just a Closer Walk with Thee."

The largest number, 61%, were written after World War II. Not surprisingly, 45% of those were published by McCracken and 37% were written by men associated with Youth for Christ or Billy Graham. The most prolific composers were Ralph Carmichael and John W. Peterson. The latter edited collections for Singspiration, [12] which had been patronized by Graham. [13]

The other group of songs were variously identified as "traditional" or "traditional Negro spiritual." It was an intermediate area between the official songs of churches and those of American folk religion. It included the old standbys, "Jacob’s Ladder" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and ones introduced by popular singers like "Amen" [14] and "Go Tell It on the Mountain." [15]

Many of the 13 songs used the AAAB format of camp meeting songs like "Rocka My Soul" and "Standing in the Need of Prayer." The version of "Kumbaya" was unchanged from the original publication.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Traditional

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom-bah-yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying

Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: 4-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: not indicated
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar Chords: C F G⁷

Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for final "Lord"
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Cover: it showed the hands of one person strumming a guitar decorated with filigrees, and the back of the head of a person playing piccolo. The hair on the piccolo player was below the ears, and could have been on a boy or girl. The size of the knee of the guitar player suggested he was a man.

Audience Perceptions
One person who owned the copy of Sing In that I bought from Amazon lived in Wesleyville, Pennsylvania. The individual marked eight songs including three by Carmichael ("He’s Everything to Me") and three by Peterson ("Jesus Is Coming Again").

Notes on Performers
Bock was born in Great Neck, New York, [16] in 1939. [17] He learned to play piano when he was 6 years old, started on organ when he as 12, [18] and and studied music education at Ithaca College. [18] Bock then moved to California for graduate work in church music at the University of Southern California. [19]

McCracken hired him in 1963. [20] The same year, Brock set up a legal entity to copyright his own material. [21] He supplemented his income by directing the choir at Bel Air Presbyterian church [22] and working as a studio or free-lance musician. In 1966, he was responsible for introducing Elva Miller to Capitol Records. [23] Her first album had some success as a novelty item. [24]

Less is known about Warren Stitt. His named appeared as a record and video producer for Sandi Patty [25] and The Oak Ridge Boys. [26] She began working with Bill Gaither, [27] who was mentioned in the post for 17 December 2017. Later she appeared at some Graham events. [28]

Firnhaber was discussed in the post for 28 June 2020.

Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Ya." Sing In. Edited by Warren G. Stitt and Fred Bock. Waco, Texas: Sacred Songs, 1969. 7.

End Notes
1. Jon Pahl. Hopes and Dreams of All. Chicago: Wheat Ridge Ministries, 1993. 261.
2. Wikipedia. "History of the Boy Scouts of America."

3. James Barron. "Girl Scouts Lower Membership Age." The New York Times. 28 October 1984.

4. Mark Houston Senter III. "The Youth for Christ Movement as an Educational Agency and Its Impact upon Protestant Churches, 1931-1979." PhD dissertation. Loyola University of Chicago, March 1989. 319–320.

5. Senter. 322.

6. Senter. 321. The origins of Youth For Christ were discussed in the post for 15 December 2017.

7. Senter. 322.
8. McCracken and Word were discussed in the post for 5 July 2020.

9. Jarrell McCracken. "Introduction." Sing In. Reid was vice-president of Word Records in 1963. [29] He later founded his own marketing company in Waco in 1964. [30]

10. MRA and Sing In were discussed in the post for 23 February 2020.

11. The folk songs were "Shenandoah" and "On Top of Old Smokey," which had been recorded together by The Weavers in 1951. [31] The popular song was the theme from the 1966 film Born Free. [32] The others were the patriotic "This Is My Country" and the Doxology, which served many uses, including as a grace in camps.

12. Wikipedia. "John W. Peterson." He and Singspiration is discussed in the post for 2 August 2020.

13. Singspiration is discussed in the post for 2 August 2020.

14. "Amen" was introduced in the film Lilies of the Field. [33] The Impressions’ 1964 version [34] made the Billboard charts. [35]

15. Peter, Paul And Mary. "Tell It On The Mountain." In The Wind. Warner Brothers W1507. Released October 1963. [Discogs entry.]

16. Deborah Evans Price. Word: The Story. Word Music, 2011. 10.
17. "Fred Bock." Hope Publishing website.
18. "Fred Bock." Hymnary website.
19. Hope.
20. Price.

21. Nancy Gower. "Collection of Original Manuscripts by Fred Bock, 1953-1998." David Allan Hubbard Library, Fuller Theological Seminary. Last updated July 2018 by Andrew Wong. Date based on contents.

22. Item in American Guild of Organists. Las Vegas [Nevada] Sun. 15 January 1976. 19.

23. Skip Heller. "Searching for Mrs. Miller." Cool and Strange Music Magazine. 1999. Reprinted on Dana Countryman’s website. As mentioned in the post for 15 December 2017, Sacred Songs rented Capital Records facilities for its recording sessions.

24. Mrs. Elva Miller. Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits. Capitol Records ST-2494, 1966. [Discogs entry.]

25. "Sandi Patty: Christmas Live." Letterboxd website.
26. Wikipedia. "42nd GMA Dove Awards."
28. Wikipedia. "Sandi Patty."

28. By the 1980s, Billy Graham called his performers guests. He has tapes of Patty performing in 1983, 1985, 1990 and 1991. [36] Dale Argot remembered her singing in Philadelphia in 1992. [37]

29. "Like Texas, Word Records Is Big, Big, Big." Billboard. 21 September 1963. 13, 16.
30. "Founder Of Russ Reid Dies." PR Newswire website. 17 December 2013.

31. The Weavers And Terry Gilkyson. "Across The Wide Missouri / On Top Of Old Smoky." Decca 27515. Released October 1951. [Discogs entry.]

32. Born Free. Columbia Pictures. Released 22 June 1966.
33. Lilies of the Field. United Artists. Released 1 October 1963.

34. The Impressions. "Amen." ABC-Paramount 45-10602. Released October 1964. [Discogs entry.]

35. Wikipedia. "Amen (Gospel Song)."

36. "Records of BGEA: Films and Video - Collection 113." 10 April 2018. Wheaton College website.

37. Dale Argot. "Billy Graham Has Died." His website. 21 February 21.