Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Continued from previous post dated 29 January 2023
Notes on Performance
Cover: “Nobody Knows.” Linoleum cut on tanwove paper [1] of Negro head by William Smith.
Color Scheme: The cover uses dark brown ink on beige stock. Inside, the pages employ brown ink on beige paper.
Reissue as 50 Negro Folk Songs: Same cover design, but with a light brown cover and cream pages. The version of “Come by Here” is the one used in Max Exner’s The Bridge of Song. It used the plate made by Jane Keen for Indianola Sings with a revised title and no reference to Angola.
Reissue as 56 Negro Folk Songs: Same cover design, but with a goldenrod cover and white pages. The plate for “Kum Ba Yah” is the one from that period.
Notes on Audience
The songbook Look Away seems to have had wide distribution: several libraries have recorded owning copies with WorldCat. The publication dates are contradictory because Lynn Rohrbough, the owner of the company that issued Look Away, was not consistent in how he labeled his songbooks.
As mentioned in the post for 18 July 2021, Rohrbough or Walter Anderson, the editor of Look Away, may have sent copies to civil rights groups in Alabama in 1963. Carlotta Scott King had been a student of Anderson’s at Antioch College, [2] and contributed a song to the 1963 revision. [3]
Anderson himself apparently carried copies to distribute. In 1980, he gave a copy to John Paul II when he was invited to meet him at a United Nations conference held at the pope’s summer palace. John Paul responded: “I love spirituals. I like to sing them.” [4]
The anthology seems to have encouraged others to submit collections of spirituals to Rohrbough. In 1961, CRS published Great Day. The editor, Joseph Jones, was the son of a Black Presbyterian pastor who organized Sunday Schools in the south for the denomination. He “frequently sang and led singing on his travels.” [5] The artwork for Great Day was done by B. D. Roberts, the principal of a Black elementary school in Charlotte, North Carolina. [6]
The 1963 revision of Look Away had Jones’ version of “Rock My Soul.” It was illustrated with Roberts’ illustration for “Great Day.” [7] Jones’ page for “Kum Ba Yah” had the drawing of a man sitting on the ground with a mule by Roberts. [8]
Notes on Performers
Walter Franklin Anderson was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1915 to children of slaves. His mother’s family had been owned by an Irishman near Asheville, North Carolina, who fathered Anderson’s grandmother. [10] His father was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to slaves who had been purchased by Swedes. [11]
James Rosemond Anderson could read music and play piano. [12] He sent all nine of his children to music classes. [13] Leila Henrietta Weaver had attended Berea College for one year before Kentucky passed a law that prevented African Americans from sharing classes with whites. [14] She made sure all the children could go to college. Most went to Hampton Institute in Virginia. One boy attended Wilberforce in Xenia, Ohio. [15]
Walter studied piano and organ at Oberlin College. He spent his summers working at a summer residential camp run [16] by Karamu House, a Cleveland community center modeled on settlement houses. [17]
His first teaching job, after graduation, was at Wilberforce where he led a chorus that emphasized “gospel music, spirituals, and related sorts of ethnic music.” [18] The Black college founded by Methodists was in the throes of reorganization, [19] and Anderson left after a year. [20]
In 1938, Anderson embarked on a career as a concert pianist. [21] After a year on the road, he accepted a position at Kentucky State College. [22] This time he had to direct the band [23] and a jazz orchestra. [24] During February, he was able to book concerts. [25] He also continued to work at the Karamu camp in summers. [26] It hired him full-time in 1942. [27]
While he was working in Cleveland, he took classes at the Cleveland Institute of Music. [28] A piece he wrote for his composition class, “Variations on the Negro Spiritual, Lord, Lord, Lord,” was played by the Cleveland Symphony in 1946. [29] The arrangement of “Lord, Lord, Lord” in Look Away must have been based on that work.
In 1946, he found a home as chairman of the Antioch College music department. He was then thirty years old. [30] In addition to teaching, he continued to play concerts, and edited the songbooks issued by Lynn Rohrbough. His next projects are discussed in the post for 4 June 2023.
The names listed on the Advisory Editorial Committee [31] suggest he asked for help from people he already knew. Clarice Jones Michaels had been his department chairman at Kentucky State, [32] and Harry Baker later held that position. [33] Anderson’s brother continued to live near Wilberforce, [34] and that probably is how Anna Terry became involved.
Other members of the committee were on the faculties at Southern University, [35] University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, [36] the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, [37] and Clark, [38] Howard, [39] Spellman, [40] Morgan State, [41] and North Carolina colleges. [42] Anderson may have met people when he touring or at academic meetings.
Anderson was responsible for the aesthetic design of Look Away. Karamu House had become an arts center. The man whose artwork is on the cover, William Elijah Smith, moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Cleveland in 1927 where he was taken in by the center’s owners, Russell and Rowena Jelliffe. His training in the 1930s included classes at the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute. During the 1950s he ran a gallery in Los Angeles devoted to art by African Americans. He may have done the print used by Anderson for the WPA in the Depression. [43]
Rohrbough obviously had stayed in contact with Marion Downs and Olive Williams, and probably had met Welch at sometime when she was in Ohio. [44] He, or Anderson, may have known Thomas Harrison who ran a private music school in Tallahassee, Florida. [45]. I could not find any information on line about E. Anderson of Langston, Oklahoma, [46] or Fred Hall of Montgomery, Alabama.
One of the most famous members of the committee was Charles Harris. He had accompanied the concert tenor Roland Hayes. [47] The other noted contributor was Bayard Rustin. He then was with the Fellowship for Reconciliation, and later helped Martin Luther King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. [48] FOR was the organization that sponsored the songbook for Conscientious Objectors edited by Olcutt Sanders.
Sanders’ role may have been a silent one. As mentioned in the post for 22 January 2023, the 1940s songbook was the first to include a number of spirituals. All ten he selected were in Look Away. In 1963, was hired to direct Karamu House. [49]
Availability
Songbook: Look Away: 50 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service. Undated, but before Olive Williams moved from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Baltimore, Maryland in the mid-1950s. [50] Does not contain “Kumbaya.”
Songbook: “Come By Here (Kum Ba Yah).” 27 in Look Away: 50 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service. Undated revision; dated to late 1957 or early 1958 by the plate.
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.” 27 in in Look Away: 56 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1963.
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.” 13 in J. T. Jones. Great Day: Negro Spirituals as Sung and Directed by J. T. Jones. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1961.
Songbook: Rosa Page Welch. Fifteen Negro Spirituals. Delaware, Ohio: Informal Music Service, 1960s. It came up in my search for “Come by Here,” but the WorldCat entry did not provide any details to support the selection. It probably was “Kum Ba Yah.”
Album: Rosa Page Welch. “Kum Bah Yah.” Sings Of God’s World And “His Wondrous Love. MRC LP 11-28. The liner notes mention a 1963 event. [Discogs entry.]
End Notes
1. “William E. Smith (1913 - 1997 ) Nobody Knows.” Item offered by Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 7 October 2008. Invaluable website.
2. Joan Horn. Playing on All the Keys: The Life of Walter F. Anderson. Yellow Springs, Ohio: Yellow Springs Historical Society, 2007. 178-180.
3. “Walk Together Children” as sung by Carlotta Scott King. 39 in Look Away, 1963.
4. Horn. 178.
5. LindaJo J. McKim. The Presbyterian Hymnal Companion. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993. 125.
6. Roberts was principal of the Myers Street School in Durham. [51] “It was the largest elementary school in North Carolina for black children” in the “late 1940s.” [52]
7. Jones. 1.
8. Jones. 13.
9. John Major ran MRC Records from the 1960s through the 1980s. [53]
10. Horn. 2.
11. Horn. 7.
12. Horn. 24.
13. Horn. 10.
14. Horn. 3.
15. Horn. 17.
16. Horn. 39.
17. “Karamu House.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 January 2023.
18. Horn. 49.
19. Horn. 50-52.
20. Horn. 54.
21. Horn. 53.
22. Horn. 59.
23. Horn. 60.
24. Horn. 61.
25. Horn. 59.
26. Horn. 40.
27. Horn. 72.
28. Horn. 80.
29. Horn. 87.
30. Horn. 96.
31. Look Away, early 1950s. 2.
32. Horn. 60.
33. Thorobred, Kentucky State College yearbook, 1969, dedicated to Baker.
34. Horn. 17.
35. DeBose Tourgee should be Albion Tourgee DeBose. He taught at Howard, Talladega College, and Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to the Debose Foundation website.
36. Ariel M. Lovelace directed the Vesper Choir, according to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff website.
37. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga awards the Edmonia J. Simmons Endowed Scholarship in Music according to its website.
38. J. DeKoven Killingsworth was chairman of the music department at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia. [54]
39. Walter Lawson was dean of Howard’s College of Fine Arts. “He developed the art of choral singing among Negroes to perhaps its highest point. He is credited with demonstrating that the Negro choir, while retaining its folk music, also could interpret the choral literature of the world.” [55]
40. Kemper Harrold was a violinist [56] and head of the music department at Spellman in Atlanta. [57]
41. Orville Moseley was head of the music department at Southern University in the 1940s [58] and directed the choir at Morgan State in the 1950s. [59] Morgan State is in Baltimore where Williams later had close relations with it.
42. Thomas Dorsey was chairman of the music department at North Carolina College in Durham. [60]
43. “William E. Smith (Artist).” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 January 2023.
44. Welch was often in Ohio, usually as a soloist for a Disciples of Christ or Christian Church gathering. Irma Voight said she was at Ohio University for its 1943 Brotherhood Week, in part because she taught spirituals to youth groups. [61]
45. “Students holding recital at the St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church in Tallahassee.” Florida Memory website.
46. He probably was associated with Langston University, but could I not confirm this.
47. “Harris Family Papers.” Durham County Library website, Durham, North Carolina.
48. Bayard Rustin. Wikipedia website, accessed 10 January 2023.
49. Sanders is discussed in the post for 13 February 2022.
50. Williams is discussed in the post for 22 January 2023.
51. Jones. 32.
52. Charlotte Mecklenburg Story website.
53. “MRC (2).” Discogs website.
54. “The Renowned Dr. J. DeKoven Killingsworth, conducting the Clark College Philharmonic Society.” National Museum of African American History and Culture website.
55. Death Notice for Warner Lawson, Sr. The Pittsburgh Courier, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 19 June 1971. 6. Item posted by internet judith_lawson on 5 June 2015.
56. Associated Negro Press. “Musicians Open Meet At Hampton Institute.” Published by Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 29 August 1931.
57. Item. Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 7 August 1943.
58. Item. Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 10 February 1940.
59. Item. Baltimore Afro American Newspaper Archives website, 4 December 1951.
60. Johnny B. Hodge, Jr. A Biography of Phillmore Mallard Hall with Particular Emphasis on His Contribution to the Development of Black School Bands in North Carolina. PhD dissertation. American University, 1997. 155.
61. Irma Voight. “The Religious Foundations of Ohio University.” Ohio University website.
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