Genevieve Willcox Chandler - Come by Here, Lord

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
Charles Joyner published a fragment of “Come by Here” in his study of Gullah culture along the Waccamaw River of South Carolina. [1]  It had been collected by Genevieve Willcox Chandler while she was working for the 1930s’ Federal Writers Project to collect memoirs of African Americans who were born into slavery.

The first two verses follow a logical progression: a request for the Lord to “come by here,” and a rationale for the plea (“need your power”).  The meaning of the third depends on the interpretation of “sinners moanin’.”  It could be a simple presentation of Methodist conversion theology that demanded probationers abase themselves to be saved, or it could refer to older methods for addressing the spirit world.

The Carolina Coast College professor provided no more information about the song.  It is possible there were more than three verses, but he only reprinted those that showed African Americans living on the Waccamaw neck “called upon the Lord for strength to face the burdens of the present.” [2]

Performers
Not indicated

Credits
WPA Mss. [3]

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: terminal G’s dropped; no other attempt at pronunciation given
 

Verses: come by here, need your power, sinners moanin’
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lordy
Basic Form: three-verse song as presented
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: use of “power” and “moan”

Notes on Performance
Chandler was hired in May of 1936, [4] and John Lomax came to her home in Murrells Inlet in August of that year to record two churches and some local singers. [5]  If Chandler’s experience was anything like that of Ruby Pickens Tartt, discussed in the post for 23 January 2019, her first assignment was collecting spirituals. [6]  Eric Crawford suggests the woman who would have received those first notes, Mabel Montgomery, was responsible for Lomax’s appearance in South Carolina. [7]

These details potentially limit the possible sources of “Come by Here” to those recorded by Lomax: individuals associated with Jerusalem Baptist Church, including Hagar Doctor Brown; members of the Heavens’ Gate Methodist Church, including Lillie Cowdell Knox and Aaron Pinnacle; Mrs Joseph A. Gaines, Frances Godson, and Janie Pyatt.

The three interviewed by Chandler represented three different cultural traditions.  Brown was born during the Civil War, and raised on a Georgetown County plantation that had grown rice with flood irrigation before the war.  Knox’s ancestors had lived on a plantation in Horry County which was beyond the area that could utilize the tides.  Pinnacle’s parents were from Charleston.

What is known about the three Black worlds comes from interviews conducted by Chandler after Lomax left.

Notes on Performers
Chandler was from the outer coastal plain that grew cotton; her family bought property on the Waccamaw neck in 1904, and moved there in 1908. [8]  There is little evidence she had any interest in music, or many contacts with African Americans before she began working for the Writers Project.  Her primary qualifications were that she needed money, was educated, had attempted writing short stories, and was from the same hometown as the woman doing the hiring. [9]

Chandler did already know the two women in 1936.  Knox worked for her, and Brown was in a material and emotionally dependent relationship.  Chandler’s husband had saved her son from drowning when his raft flipped on the Waccamaw. [10]  By 1936, Brown was in her late 70s and living alone.  She made it a habit to stop by Chandler’s house where Knox would fill her bag with produce from the garden. [11]

The number of contacts Chandler had with the local Black community increased when she was hired by the Writers Project.  Her husband had just died, and she had no resources.  Her brothers had told her to place her children in an orphanage. [12]  Knox realized her own livelihood depended upon Chandler’s success, [13] and she began contacting people she knew.  She, or members of her extended family, were present at many of the later interviews. [14]

The Writers Project published material from thirteen people in its four volumes of slave narratives related to South Carolina. [15]  It also included material Chandler collected in its South Carolina Folk Tales. [16]

During this period, Chandler published two stories based on her interviews in Scribners magazine: “De Wind an’ de Tide” [17] and “O’ Precious.” [18]  She stopped writing in the 1940s when the Saturday Evening Post rejected her work about illiterate, rural African Americans as “demeaning.” [19]

Later, Chandler’s daughter, Genevieve Chandler Peterkin, worked with two men to publish more of the folklore collected by Chandler.  They added material from thirty-six individuals, most of whom were born after the end of the Civil War.  The editors did not include the song, but promised another “volume of song and spirituals” that did not materialize. [20]

Some of this work may have been inspired by Lomax, who returned to Murrells Inlet in 1937.  In January he recorded four people interviewed by Chandler, and five others, some of whom may have been kin. [21]  In July, he met five individuals known by Chandler from 1936, and eleven others. [22]  He met Knox and members of her extended family both times.  On his final trip in 1939, Lomax recorded five white singers.  He never saved a version of “Come by Here.”

Availability
Charles Joyner.  “Come by Here, Lord.”  In Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.  165-166.

End Notes
1.  Joyner.
2.  Joyner.  165.
3.  Joyner.  308, note 46: “‘Come by Here, Lord,’ WPA Mss.

4.  Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories Collected by Genevieve W. Chandler, edited by Kincaid Mills, Genevieve C. Peterkin, and Aaron McCollough.  Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008.  xxiv.

5.  “South Carolina 1934-1940.”  Cultural Equity website.

6.  Ruby Pickens Tartt.  Letter to Janie Long Allen, undated.  Ruby Pickens Tartt Collection, Julia Tutwiler Library, University of West Alabama University.  Reprinted by Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens.  Toting the Lead Row.  University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.  13.

7.  Eric Crawford.  “The Knoxes of Murrells Inlet.”  Oxford American website, 19 November 2019.

8.  Chandler’s background will be explored in a future post.

9.  Both Chandler and Montgomery were from Marion, South Carolina. [23]

10.  Genevieve C. Peterkin.  Heaven is a Beautiful Place, in conversation with William B. Baldwin.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000.  18.

11.  Peterkin.  Cited by Coming Through.  14.
12.  Peterkin, Heaven.  20.
13.  Peterkin.  Cited by Coming Through.  126.
14.  Coming Through.

15.  Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.

Volume 1: Welcome Bees, Hager Brown, Louisa Brown, Margaret Bryant, and Albert Carolina.

Volume 2: Ellen Godfrey, Mariah Heywood, Ben Horry, and Georgia Horry.
Volume 3: Gabe Lance and William Oliver.
Volume 4: Sam Rutledge and Willis Williams.

16.  South Carolina Writers’ Project.  South Carolina Folk Tales.  Columbia: South Carolina Education Association, 1941.  It has more tales than are reprinted in Coming Through, and the Gullah language is stronger.

The animal tales in both volumes are from Lillie Knox’s husband, Richard Knox; Matthew Grant, Zackie Knox, George Kato Singleton, and Lewis Small.

The supernatural tales in both volumes are from Lillie Knox, her husband Richard, and her husband’s mother, Addie Knox.  One other about Cindy Lance differs between the two books, and no source is given.

17.  Genevieve Chandler.  “De Wind an’ de Tide.”  Scribners 102(6)14-17:December 1937.

18.  Genevieve W. Chandler.  “O’ Precious.”  Scribners 103(5):47-49:May 1938.  This mentions Welcome Bees.

19.  Peterkin, Heaven.  29.  There may have been other stories that I could not locate on the internet.

20.  Coming Through.  73.

21.  Cultural Equity.  In January 1939, Lomax recorded Chandler’s daughter, June Chandler; Horry’s wife, Stella Horry; Pinnacle’s children George and Myrtle Pinncale; Lillie Knox and her husband’s sister, Minnie Knox; Albertine Keith, Mrs. Alex Sing, and Martha Wright.

22.  In July 1937, Lomax recorded Lillie Knox; her husband’s sister or step-sister, Thelma Knox; Zackie Knox; Pinnacle; Tina Russell, and a group of ditch-diggers led by Mike Maybank.  The last were working on a WPA project in Murrells inlet.

23.  robin pellicci moore.  “Mabel Montgomery.”  Find a Grave website, 8 May 2011.

Iowa 4-H - Come By Here Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Max Exner brought new skills to Lynn Rohrbough’s Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) when he began working as a consultant in 1956.  He released a songbook in late 1957 that contained “Kum Ba Yah.”  The date is a bit confusing, because the inside cover says The Bridge of Song was copyrighted in 1957, but in contained one song with a 1958 registration date. [1]

The plate for “Kum Ba Yah” shows Rohrbough had responded to the letters from Claire Lovejoy Lennon and Larry Eisenberg.  They had told him the song was known in the American South.  The letter from Lennon, discussed in the post for 28 October 2020, was dated 19 November 1956.  Eisenberg’s letter was dated 29 January 1957, and described in the post for 23 October 2022.

The music plate was still the one created by Jane Keene for Indianola Sings in 1955.  However, the title was changed and the note about an Angolan origin was obliterated.

Exner was with the Agricultural Extension office at Iowa State College.  Although 4-H was sponsored by that group, its main concern was providing information to farmers.  This meant Exner had to work with many age groups.  Unlike editors of songbooks for youth groups, he included a large section of “Familiar” songs like “Loch Lomond” and “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”  There were so well known, many did not have music.

Many times, Exner or other extension agents, were using music to open programs.  It may be one reason he composed so many rounds that could be easily taught and worked with large audiences.  Exner also include more humorous songs that some youth groups leaders might have found offensive.  A crow in the Danish “Sim Bala Bim” is turned into soup.  “Herr Doktor Eisen Bart” ridiculed physicians and used rhyming nonsense rather than sung syllables. [2]

The Extension Office had to serve all the farmers in the state.  This may have influenced Exner’s choice of music.  The largest numbers of international songs came from three of the countries that supplied the largest numbers of foreign-born citizens living in rural areas in the 1920s: Germany, Sweden, and Denmark.  There were no songs representing the other two groups (Norway and the Netherlands), but there were songs from Czechoslovakia. [3]

Beyond hiring Exner and Augustus D. Zanzig, CRS seems to have been undergoing some organizational changes.  One of them, or perhaps one of Rohrbough’s sons-in-law, may have made him more aware of the importance of copyrights.  Not only was the songster copyrighted, but nine of the songs had been registered between 1956 and 1958.  Five carried some credit for Exner.  He provided CRS with five new pieces of music, seven arrangements, seven translations, and one text.  Many were rounds.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line

Credits
Songbook inside front cover: © 1957, Cooperative Recreation Srvice, Inc.  Delaware, Ohio, U.S.A.  All rights reserved.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: “Koom-bah-yah,” same as that published in Indianola Sings, which is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022

Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying; same verses and same order as those published in Indianola Sings

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; the melody is the same as Indianola Sings
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final “Lord”
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Cover: Arched bridge, with title above

Color Scheme: the cover uses dark teal ink on mustard stock; inside, the pages employ dark gray ink on white paper

Plate: Same music plate used in Indianola Sings, made by Jane Keen; title has been changed and reference to Angola has been removed.  The layout has returned to the standard one used by CRS with rounds scattered through the collection.

Notes on Performers
Max Vernon Exner was born in 1910 in Shanghai, China, to a YMCA medical officer. [4]  Max Joseph Exner had migrated to Iowa from the Sudetan in Austria when he was eleven years old.  While he was attending the YMCA’s college, he worked under Luther Halsey Gulick on the project to devise a new urban game that became basketball.  When he returned to this country in 1913, he worked in Newark, New Jersey. [5]

Max, the son, studied literature at Columbia College in New York City, then went to Vienna where he took courses in conducting.  He returned to New York where he worked for the state Extension Service.  Following his service in World War II, he earned a masters in music from Columbia University. [6]  At Columbia, he probably studied with, or heard about the work of, Lilla Belle Pitts and Harry Wilson.  She was promoting the use folk songs in public school music programs. [7]  He taught choral conducting [8] and published a collection of rounds in 1943. [9]

In 1947, Exner joined the Iowa Extension office, where he taught leadership workshops and directed choral activities. [10]  Sometime in the late 1940s, he published his first songbook through CRS.  Music of One World: U.N. Songs for U.N. Singing was dominated by songs from Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Italy.  He wrote three rounds and two choral arrangements. [11]

Exner continued with the Extension service until he turned 70, then continued directing church choirs and leading a folk dance group in Ames, Iowa.  He died in 2004.  His memorial service was held in the local Congregational church. [12]  His photograph appears in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

Availability
Songbook: “Come By Here” “Kum Ba Yah.”  30 in The Bridge of Song, edited by Max V. Exner for the Iowa State College Extension Music Program.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1957.

End Notes
1.  “Song of the Seasons.”  94-95 in Bridge.  The English words were by GBB and Augustus D. Zanzig.  Exner did the arrangement of the Hungarian folk song.

2.  The refrain is: “Twilli willi witt, boom boom.  50 in Bridge.

3.  Germany supplied 60,548 residents, followed by Sweden (18,021), Norway (15,546), Denmark (15,035), and the Netherlands (12,0440).  Czechoslovakia had sent 5,908 rural residents and Exner’s Austria 3,268 by 1920.  Figures calculated from state totals in the Census report for 1920, [13] with numbers subtracted for Des Moines, [14] Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Dubuque, Sioux City, and Waterloo. [15]

4.  Sue Haug.  “Max Vernon Exner.”  In Iowa State University Faculty Senate.  “Memorial Resolutions.”  26 April 2005.

5.  Janice A. Beran.  “Max J. Exner: Naismith’s Roommate—Later Coach, Teacher and Public Health Physician.”  13 in North American Society for Sport History.  Proceedings, 1991.  It is the same Gulick discussed in the posts for 5 September 2021 (note 35) and 27 November 2022.

6.  Haug.
7.  Pitts is discussed in the post for 30 August 2018.

8.  Wilson is discussed in the post for 15 July 2018.  He directed “vocal and choral activities” at Teachers College from 1939 to 1958. [16]

9.  Harry Robert Wilson.  Rounds and Canons.  Chicago: Hall and McCreary Company, 1943.

10.  Haug.

11.  Music of One World, compiled by the Extension Music Office, Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa; Max V. Exner, Extension Specialist in Music.  Delaware, Ohio: Coop. Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service.  Last copyrighted song was 1948.

12.  Haug.

13. Table 6.  Country of Birth of Foreign-Born Population, by Divisions and States, 1920.  697-699 in “Chapter VI.  Country of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population.”  United States Census, 1920 census.

14.  Table 12.  Country of Birth of Foreign-Born Population, for Cities Having 100,000 Inhabitants or More: 1920.  729-731 in Chapter VI.

15.  Table 17.—Country of Birth of Foreign-Born Population, for Cities Having from 25,000 to 100,000 Inhabitants: 1920.  760-767 in Chapter VI.

16.  “Harry Robert Wilson.”  World Biographical Encyclopedia Prabook website.

YWCA - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was the second youth group to include “Kum Ba Yah” in 1957.  We know it came after the Girl Guides’ book, because one page of graces is described as “from CHANSONS DE NOTRE CHALET” [1].

In this case, Augustus D. Zanzig’s role is clearer: he is listed as an editor.  In addition, he translated or arranged 15 of the 63 international songs.
 
It is not known if he contacted the organization, which may not have placed an order since 1954.  On the other hand, it may decided it was time to issue a revised songster and lacked the resources after Marie Oliver left in 1952.  In the 1965 revision, Zanzig is credited with arranging the music. [2]

As mentioned in the post for 20 March 2022, the impression was Oliver was the victim of Harvey Matusow’s claim the organization was infiltrated by the Communist Party.  The 1957 songster has 13% fewer songs from countries controlled by the Soviet Union or which fought against us in World War II.  However, many of the labor songs were reprinted, including the most controversial, “Joe Hill.”

Although some of the songs the caused problems for Oliver were kept, her presence was excised.  Zanzig redid her arrangements for “The Silver Moon Is Shining” and “Golden Day Is Dying.”  This leads to questions about bureaucratic and budgetary decisions that cannot be answered.

Otherwise, the selection of songs remained the same.  It dropped 46 songs from the earlier edition and added 54.  If such changes were not made, no one would have a reason to buy it.

The major change had occurred between the 1941 and 1951 editions, when the number of religious songs increased by nearly 40%. [3]  They came at the expense of what were called “general songs.”  That class included camp songs.  This edition dropped two songs then in active camp tradition, “French Cathedrals” and “Hark to the Chimes.”  The first is a round; the second is a grace.

The songbook’s intended audience was Y-Teen clubs for high-school and college aged young women.  This is a group that would be more likely to sing religious songs at its meetings.  The songbook offered 52 hymns, of which 10 were new.  Among the 8 spirituals, “He’s Got the Whole World” and “Let Us Break Bread Together” replaced “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

The group drew its members from the same main-line denominations that ordered songbooks from Cooperative Recreation Service.  Sing Along, or the owner of CRS, Lynn Rohrbough, did not offer popular gospel songs like “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” or the “Old Rugged Cross.” It certainly did not include the raucous ones like “Do Lord.  The closest the songbook came was “Green Grow the Rushes.”

Spirituals may have been used as a substitute for the popular religious songs. [16]  “Kum Ba Yah” had the good fortune to be presented in the “Folk Song” section where it replaced “As the Sun Goes Down” as the token African song.

Since the Y was a Protestant organization, it was interested in converting the heathen of Asia, rather than Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics.  Thus, the editors were still trying to find songs from China, Japan, and Korea that were singable by girls trained in western music.  There were 5 from Asia and 6 from Latin America.

The interest in Jewish settlements in the Holy land continued with “Shalom Chaverim” and “Zum Gali Gali.”  The first still only had the English words by Zanzig, and so was not the source for that song in tradition.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line

Credits
African (Angola)

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: “Koom-bah-yah,” same as that published in Indianola Sings, which is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022

Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying; same verses and same order as those published in Indianola Sings

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; the melody is the same as Indianola Sings
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final “Lord”
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Cover: Five-line music at top and bottom of with YWCA logo at bottom left

Color Scheme: the cover uses dark blue ink on medium gray stock; inside the pages employ faded navy ink on white paper

Plate: The songster was reprinted several times, and each time the plate change.  The first issued had the one made by Jane Keen for Indianola Sings.

Notes on Performers
Lura Marie Barnes was born in 1897, [4] and raised in Topeka, Kansas, where she sang in the chorus of The Messiah in 1915. [5]  She married Byron Mohrbacher in 1921, when he was working for the Santa Fe Railroad.  At the time, they planned to attend Kansas State Agricultural College.  She expected she would study music and home economics. [6]

The next public notice came in 1924 when they were living in Wichita, Kansas, where he managed the United Warehouse.  They both were singing in glee clubs. [7]  By 1942, they were living in Ithaca, New York.  He ran the Cooperative Consumers Society grocery store there. [8]

Her first known contact with the YWCA came in 1943, when she wrote a letter to Oliver that said the composer of “Witchcraft” had been her accompanist in 1940. [9]  This song is mentioned in the post for 5 December 2021.

Around 1945, the Mohrbachers moved to Hazardville, near Enfield, Connecticut, where they remained. [10]  She was representing the Y on colleges in 1949, when she was a member of the national music committee. [11]  In 1950, she put on a program for the Y in Hartford where she sang and played accordion. [12]  The following year the soprano gave a concert in Thompsonville, a village near Enfield. [13]

Her first known contact with CRS came after 1954, when she set down an Indonesian song she heard at the Y’s summer school.  Rohrbough’s wife, born Katharine Ferris, translated it and he copyrighted it in 1956. [14]

After that she disappears from public view.  She died in 1977. [15]

I could find nothing about Mary B. Wheeler.  It is a common name.  Posts about Zanzig are listed in the index to the right.

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  7 in Sing Along, edited by Mary Wheeler, Lura Mohrbacher, and Augustus D. Zanzig for the National Board of the YWCA in New York.  Delaware, Ohio: Coop. Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1957.

End Notes
1.  Sing Along.  61.  Chansons is discussed in the posts for 27 November 2022 and 4 December 2022.

2.  Sing Along, edited by Mary Wheeler for the National Board of the YWCA in New York.  Delaware, Ohio: Coop. Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1965.  Inside front cover.

3.  Earlier YWCA songbooks are discussed in the posts for 5 December 2021, 13 March 2022, and 20 March 2022.

4.  “Lura Mohrbacher.”  Ancient Faces website.

5.  Item.  The Topeka Daily Capital, Topeka, Kansas, 8 April 1917.  3.  Uploaded to the internet by fritzabq on 18 January 2015.

6.  Item in “Among Ourselves.”  The Santa Fe Magazine, 13:96:1921.

7.  Item.  The Marysville Advocate, Marysville, Kansas, 24 April 1924.  5.  Uploaded to the internet by araywatson on 4 August 2020.

8.  Ithaca Directory, 1942.  Bellows Falls, Vermont: H. A. Manning Company, 1942.  237.

9.  Marie Oliver.  Let’s Have Music.  1945.  47.  When I was copying pages from the book in the 1970s, I did not get the complete publication information, and it is not in WorldCat.  Presumably it was issued by the YWCA’s Woman’s Press in New York City.

10.  Lura Mohrbacher.  “Three Stories about Music and People.”  Music Journal 9(6):15:1 October 1951.

11.  “Sara Swartz Heads Membership Week Committee for S. C. M.”  The Etownian, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, 44(1):3:15 September 1947.

12.  “About Town.”  Manchester Evening Herald, Manchester, Connecticut, 13 September 1950.  14.
 
13.  “Plan Concert.”  The Thompsonville Press, Enfield, Connecticut, 72(27):5:4 October 1951.

14.  “Sarimandé.”  39 in Sing Along.

15.  Obituary for Lura Mohrbacher.  Manchester Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Connecticut, 10 June 1977.

16.  The one group who used evangelistic songs was Pioneer Girls.  As mentioned in the post for 4 December 2022, their songbook, Pioneer Girls Sing, contained no spirituals.  It had more hymns than many CRS songsters along with the words to a Fanny Crosby song.  “Good-bye, Our God Is Watching O’er You” was composed by Wendell P. Loveless.  He lived in Wheaton, Illinois, and had a radio program on the Moody Bible Institute’s station in Chicago. [17]

17.  “Wendell P.  Loveless.”  Hope Publishing company website.  

 

Initial Impact of Chansons de Notre Chalet

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
It is difficult to know how important the Girl Guides’ songbook, Chansons de Notre Chalet, was in spreading “Kumbaya” in 1957.  It is known the song entered the Girl Scout repertoire in this country.

Members of Troop 99 in Shamrock, Texas, sang it at a Girl Scout meeting in April of 1959. [1] June Rushing remembered learning it at Silver Springs in 1961. [2]  The first group may have been Brownies.  The second was a primitive camp for older Scouts sponsored by the San Jacinto Council of Houston, Texas. [3]

“Kumbaya” may have been learned from Chansons, or from some other source.  By 1959, it had appeared in a number of CRS and other songbooks.

Larry Holcomb compiled statistics on sales of CRS songbooks from the mid-1950s until 1969. [4]  Within that time period, the Methodist church still was the primary customer followed by the Presbyterian and the Evangelical and Reformed churches.  The most important youth organizations were the American Camping Association, followed by ones for young women. Among the latter, the Camp Fire Girls purchased 15% more copies of Music Makers than the Girl Guides did of Chansons.  The YWCA ordered 15% fewer booklets.

Chansons went through five editions, which means its print run in 1957 may have been 20% of the 190,000 copies reported by Holcomb.  Further, a large number probably were sent to Switzerland, so at most, 19,000 may have been circulating the first year in the United States.

Of the groups named by Holcomb, the Methodists included “Kum Ba Yah” in songbooks, but the Presbyterian and Evangelical and Reformed [5] churches did not.  The ACA, [6] Girl Scouts and YWCA [7] published it, but the Camp Fire Girls [8] and Pioneer Girls did not.  I could not find a copy of the songbook of the other group he mentioned.  However, even if the Pioneer Girls had included the text in Songfest, they would not have introduced it into camp tradition because the conservative religious program was designed as an alternative to the more secular girls’ groups. [9]

Membership in the other three girls’ groups was not exclusive.  I sent a questionnaire to camps in 1976 asking what songs they were singing.  Of the 87 who responded who had attended Girl Scout camps, 13 also had gone to CFG camps and 8 to YWCA ones.  74 reported going to a Camp Fire camp; [10] 9 also had gone to a Scout camp and 4 to a Y one.  There were fewer YWCA camps then, but of the 19 who had attended one, 5 also had spent time in a CFG one and 8 in a GS one.  24% of the Scouts had gone to church camps, 28% of the Camp Fire Girls, and 39% of the Y members.

Another way to measure the importance of the Girl Guides’ collection is not to look at sales figures or an individual song, but to ask if the anthology reflected the active repertoire in camps.  If other songs in Chansons entered tradition, then one knows, at least, that the songbook was not just purchased but used.  Of the 90 songs in the 1957 edition of Chansons, 41 were mentioned voluntarily by someone who answered my questionnaire, not necessarily a Scout.  Of those, 25 had appeared in earlier Scout or Guide songbooks, and 14 of those had been published by CRS for the Camp Fire Girls or the YWCA.

One grace, “If we have earned the right to eat this bread,” had been written for the Camp Fire Girls in 1912 by William Harold Neidlinger, but had not been included in their CRS anthologies because the organization was selling copies of it. [11]  The Girl Guides included it in the Kent County Song Book in 1934 with full credit. [12]  It may have been taken by them to the Chalet.

Thirteen more songs, including “Kum Ba Yah,” already were in the CRS stockpile.  Twelve already had appeared in Y or CFG booklets.

The remaining three of the 41 popular songs may have been introduced by Chansons.  Certainly “Tina Singu” came from the Guides.  While Chansons does not claim a role, it had been collected from Wycliffe Nkuma of Basutoland by Kathleen F. Hill.  Hill wrote a history of the organization in South Africa in 1951. [13]  In the 1970s, “Tina Singu” was mentioned by 7 people who responded to my questionnaire.

The second that had to have had an English Guide origin is “Jubilate Deo” by Michael Praetorius. [14]  The Kent County Song Book had included another round by his uncle, Christoph Praetorius.  “Rise Up, O Flame” was mentioned by 29 individuals in the 1970s.  “Jubilate” was named by 23.

“Linstead Market” could have been a Guide song or it could have just been received by Lynn Rohrbough and recommended by Augustus Zanzig.  Chansons only noted that it came from Jamaica.  In fact, it first had been collected there in 1907. [15]  It was the kind of popular folk song that caught the attention of both the people who offered songs to CRS and to the Girl Guides.  It was mentioned by 24 people who answered my questionnaire.

The creole-language song is a bit of an anomaly in Chansons: its seeming nonsense syllables have a greater appeal to younger campers than those who attend the Chalet in Switzerland.  The only other song that played with language was Sanders’ version of “A-Jogging Along.”  The ones with pure sung syllables among the top 41 were “Holla Hi,” “Vrenalie” and “Weggis Song.”

Notes on Performers
The songs contributed by U. S. Scouts to the top 41 came from two different traditions.  The official publications emphasized the organization.  George Newell introduced “O Beautiful Banner” in the Girl Scout Song Book in 1929 [16]  Sarah Birdsall Otis Edey added two Scout verses to Homer Harbour’s “The Flag Goes By.” [17]  Edey was on the national board of director in 1929. [18]

While Marion Roberts was preparing Chansons, the Scouts issued a rival songbook that adopted the size and format of CRS booklets.  The Girl Scout Pocket Songbook had sections devoted to “Songs for Girl Scout Occasions” and “Songs of the Girl Scout Regions.” [19]  It introduced two of Chalet’s most popular songs: “Ego Sum Pauper” and “Gelobet Sei.” [20]

Eleanor Thomas, editor of the Pocket Songbook, was born in South Dakota in 1917, and earned a degree in music education from the University of Nebraska.  In the 1940s she was a regional field director.  She left to earn an advanced degree from Stanford, where she sang in the university chorus.  She joined the national GS staff in 1949, and continued in staff positions with local councils until she retired in 1979.  Thomas also wrote novels featuring a Brownie Scout named Becky. [21]  She died in 1991. [22]

Mary Alison Sanders represented the other Scout tradition, that of women interested in music who privately published collections that were sold by the national organization.  She was born in eastern Tennessee in 1886, where she taught music in schools.  After studying in Europe, she worked in New York, and occasionally at the Edith Macy training center for leaders. [23]

Her first collection, Our Songs, reflected the early Scout interest in folk songs and games of England, and nothing in it stayed in tradition. [24]  Her second, Sing High, Sing Low, was responsible for the greatest number of songs in Chansons, four. [25]  One reason for its importance was that was distributed by both the Scouts and Camp Fire Girls.  I sang them all in CFG camps.  Two used rhythmic gestures [26] and two were reserved for older campers and counselors. [27]

Janet Evelyn Tobitt moved between the two traditions.  She was born in England in 1898 and earned a degree from King’s College London in 1923.  While teaching school, she spent time in Europe where she discovered folk music and became a collector.  When she first moved to New York, she taught at the Mary C. Wheeler School and the New School for Social Research before she worked as a music supervisor at Edith Macy in 1934. [28]  She edited an official songster, Sing Together, in 1936. [29]  The only song it contributed was the “Day is done” words for “Taps,” which were available from many sources.

Tobitt returned to England in 1936, but permanent moved to this country in 1938, just before the war became serious there. [30]  She privately published three songbooks, with one, The Ditty Bag, containing new materials and reproductions from the two earlier ones. [31]  They popularized some material from Kent County [32] and were the first publications of three songs in Chansons. [33]  While the Girl Scouts did not published Tobitt’s books, they did distribute them.

Tobitt continued to work as consultant for the Scouts while teaching, writing, and collecting in the area of New York touched by the ferment of the pre-commercial phase of the folk-music revival.  She died in 1984. [34]

End Notes
1.  Item.  The Shamrock Texan, Shamrock, Texas, 23 April 1959.  6.  The copy of the newspaper available on the internet was badly broken during the digitation process.  This is what it said: “Each troop then presented opr phase of the program as follows: Troop 99, Mrs. .) Bailey, Lead! i” ‘Kum Ba Yah’.”

2.  June Rushing.  “Kumbaya,” collected in 1961 at Camp Silver Springs.  In “Camp Songs.”  Utah State University, Department of English, Folklore Archive, 1971.  Her version included an additional verse, “laughing,” and used the verse order introduced by Tommy Leonetti in 1968. [35]  Since the words may not have been written down in 1951, her text may reflect what she was singing later.  More information about her and her photograph appear in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

3.  “Highlights through the Years.”  The Golden Link 48(2):6-8:Summer 2022.  8.

4.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  129.

5.  Edward Schlingman and the importance of the Evangelical and Reformed churches are discussed in 20 February 20220 and 6 March 2022.

6.  The American Camping Association is discussed in the posts for 28 May 2023 and 4 June 2023.

7.  The YWCA is discussed in the posts for 13 March 2022, 20 March 2022, and 11 December 2022.

8.  The Camp Fire Girls will be discussed in a future post.

9.  Pioneer Girls was organized in 1939 by Betty Whitaker, a Wheaton College student, as an conservative religious alternative to the more secular girls’ groups. [42]  I have a songbook, Pioneer Girls Sing, that could be from the middle or late 1950s.[43]  It contains songs from traditional girls’ camps, like “Each Camp Fire” [44] and “Witchcraft” [45] along with ones for young campers.  The editors selected few international songs from the CRS repertoire, and used evangelistic religious songs. [46]  It did not include “Kumbaya” or any Negro spirituals.  However, in  1976, two women attending camps sponsored by the Pioneer Girls answered my questionnaire.  Both knew “Kumbaya.”  Neither mentioned going to another camp.

10.  I excluded people who went to the same CFG camp I attended from these numbers.

11.  W. H. Neidlinger.  “Blessing,” copyrighted in 1912.  Songs of the Camp Fire Girls.  This went through a number of editions, including early extracts of individual songs and later issues that removed some of the more offensive material.

12.  Girl Guides Association, County of Kent.  Kent County Song Book, edited by Gladys Crawter, Doris Escombe, Audrey Page, and Alison Tennant.  London: Novello and Company, 1934.  47.

13.  Kathleen F Hill.  “Brief History of the Guide Movement in South Africa.”  May 1951.  Copy in Girl Scout Archives in New York.  Cited by Tammy M. Proctor.  Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.  Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2009.  22.

14.  Both men were born Schultze and used the Latinized term for a local political leader, Praetorius.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs has a few more details on page 443.

15.  Walter Jekyll.  Jamaican Song and Story.  London: D. Nutt, 1907, for the Folk-Lore Society.  219-220.  Cited by “Linstead Market.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 10 November 2022.

16.  George Newell.  Girl Scout Song Book.  New York: Girl Scouts, Inc., 1929.

17.  Homer H. Harbour.  “The Flag Going By.”  2 in Archibald T. Davison, Thomas Whitney Surette, and and Augustus D. Zanzig.  A Books of Songs.  Boston: E. C. Schirmer Music Company, 1924.  The teacher’s edition is better known as Concord 14.  The student’s version is Concord 4.  2.  Harbour is discussed in the post for 5 December 2021.  He used a German folk tune.

18.  Joyce Weaver.  “Biographical Sketch of Sarah Elizabeth Birdsall Otis (Mrs. Frederick) Edey.”  Alexander Street website, accessed 14 November 2022.

19.  Eleanor L. Thomas.  Girl Scout Pocket Songbook.  New York: Girls Scouts of the U.S.A., 1956.

20.  Janet E. Tobitt had published “Gelobet Sei” earlier in A-B-C’s of Camp Music.  Pleasantville, New York: 1955.  14. [36]  This was not the sort of book most Scouts would see.  The varied spellings of the title indicate most had learned it from tradition, not Chansons.

21.  Eleanor Thomas.  Becky and Tatters: A Brownie Scout Story.  New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1940.

Eleanor Thomas.  Becky’s Boarding House: A Brownie Scout Story.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952.

22.  Obituary for Eleanor L. Thomas.  Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 29 July 1991.  16.

23.  Emily Holmberg.  “Mary Alison Sanders (1886 - 1949).”  Wiki Tree website, 22 May 2018; last updated 16 June 2022.  Her source was a genealogy by Sanders’ brother, William Robert Sanders.  Genealogy of the Sanders, Alison, and Collateral Families of Sullivan & Washington Counties Tennessee.  Self-Published, 1972.  32-34.  This post has family photographs of Sanders.  Holmberg is Sander’s niece.

24.  Mary A. Sanders.  Our Songs.  New York: 1942.
35.  Mary A. Sanders.  Sing High, Sing Low.  New York: 1946.

26.  At the CFG camp I attended, we used patterned gestures with “A-Jogging Along” and alternated hand claps and finger snaps with “All Night, All Day.”  Sanders claimed the second was a Negro spiritual, but the words are the familiar “Now I lay be down to sleep.”

27.  Homer H. Harbour wrote “Cloud Ships” to a Tyrolese folk tune for Concord 14.  215-216.

Eleanor Farjeon published the text for “Shepherdess Walk” in Nursery Rhymes of London Town.  London: Duckworth and Company, 1916.  48.  She published a second volume in 1917, and the two since have been combined into one book.  In 1919, she issued a four volume set that included music.  “Shepherdess Walk” is in volume 1 of Nursery Rhymes of London Town.  London: The Anglo-French Music Company, 1919, as agents for The Oxford University Press.  8-9.

28.  “Janet E. Tobitt.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 7 November 2022.  It has a photograph of her; another appears in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  The Wikipedia article is a thoroughly researched biography.

29.  Janet Tobitt.  Sing Together.  New York: Girl Scouts, Inc., 1936.  The Scouts reused the title in 1949 for an anthology that included a few songs from Newell and a few from 1936. [37]  It made no obviously contribution to the popular songs in Chansons.

30.  Wikipedia, Tobitt.

31.  Janet E. Tobitt.  The Ditty Bag.  Pleasantville, New York: 1946.  A revised 1960 edition replaced some songs for copyright reasons.

32.  “God has created a new day” appears in Yours for a Song.  Pleasantville, New York: 1939.  It is printed on page 174 of The Ditty Bag.

“Peace of the River” is in Jane E. Tobitt.  Sing Me Your Song O!  Pleasantville, New York: 1941.  It appears on page 91 in The Ditty Bag.

33.  “Railroad Corral” appears on page 62 in The Ditty Bag.  The lyrics in Chansons are different, and come from Alice Mulkey of Amarillo, Texas. [38]  She worked on the national staff of the Scouts training leaders from the 1930s through the early 1960s. [39]  Mulkey led singing at a 1940 meeting in Amarillo [40]

“Dona Nobis Pacem” appears on page 33 in The Ditty Bag with no notes.

“Vrenalie” appears on page 23 in The Ditty Bag.  The Swiss song was translated by Violet M. Synge.  She later was head of the Girl Guides in England. [41]

34.  Wikipedia, Tobitt.
35.  Leonetti is discussed in the post for 12 April 2020.
36.  Date from Wikipedia, Tobitt.

37.  Sing Together.  New York: Girl Scouts of the U. S. A, 1949.  Forward by Janet E. Tobitt, music consultant to the Girl Scouts of the U. S. A.

38.  Chansons, 61.

39.  Newspaper reports, including Amarillo Daily News, Amarillo, Texas, 25 July 1935; Denton Record-Chronicle, Denton, Texas, 21 May 1952; and The West News, West, Texas, 19 January 1962.

40.  Item.  Amarillo Globe, Amarillo, Texas, 19 April 1940.
41.  “Violet Synge.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 13 November 2022.

42.  Timothy Larsen.  “Pioneer Girls: Mid-Twentieth-Century American Evangelicalism’s Girl Scouts.”  The Asbury Journal 63(2):59-79:2008.

43.  Pioneer Girls Sing.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service.

44.  “Each Camp Fire” is used as an example of a traditional girls’ camp song in the posts for 28 November 2021, 5 December 2021, 20 February 2022, and 13 March 2022.

45.  “Witchcraft” is discussed as a traditional girl’s camp song in the post for 5 December 2021.

46.  Their religious songs are discussed in the post for 11 December 2022.