Camp Farthest Out - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The American Camping Association (ACA) included “Kum Ba Yah” in a songbook edited in 1958 by Walter Anderson. [1]  By then, the song already had begun seeping into summer camp repertoires through youth groups like the Girl Scouts, [2] YWCA, [3] and 4-H. [4]  It also had begun spreading through religious networks [5] and into the folk-music revival movement. [6]

By 1960, when it was included in a songbook published for the Camp Farthest Out movement, “Kumbaya” was moving into the repertoire of churches that sought personal contact with Christ.  A Presbyterian, Glenn Clark, founded the group in 1930 [7] as an alternative to what he saw as the sterile emphasis by the dominant denominations on passive lectures rather than active prayer. [8]

While most of the day in his camps was devoted to discussions, the parts he thought were the most conducive to producing meaningful religious experiences were spent in producing art and in movement as ways to “losing our self-consciousness in a sense of oneness with God.” [9]

Clark discovered the importance of music at his first camp session on Lake Koronis in Minnesota when Glen Harding began leading songs.  He wrote:

“Strange we had not thought of having a song leader present!  And Glenn was a revelation to us of what a true song leader ‘born of the spirit’ could be.  Of all the forms of spiritual and aesthetic co-ordination, this most wonderful means of all, the method of song, had been left out of the picture.” [10]

During the music hour, he noted “some songs preach and some songs teach, some songs pray.”  Clark wanted “every song period” to be “a complete religious experience in itself.” [11]

The movement expanded from 22 camps in 1950 to 40 in 1960. [12]  This was when the organization determined it needed a songbook for use in its camps.  Richard Shull became the editor.  He was raised in the Church of the Brethren, but had worked with Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. [13]

These Brethren had their roots in Germany, and appeared in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1723 as the German Baptist Brethren.  Because they believe in full immersion, adult baptism, they were derided as Dunkards. The group held love feasts, encouraged simplicity in clothing, and healed by laying on of hands. [14]

Shull may have heard “Kumbaya” anywhere.  He credited Hymns of Universal Praise, but it was not that version.  Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young had provided four-part harmony. [15]  While most tunes in CFO Songs had such forms, “Kum Ba Yah” was one of 17 that had a single melodic line.  Wiant and Young had used three CRS verses; Shull used the four from the original CRS publication.  This was simply the copyright Lynn Rohrbough, the owner of CRS, chose to provide Shull.

The Farthest Out collection contained 225 songs plus “How Great Thou Art” as an advertisement from Manna Music.  Only 15 were secular, and, of those, four were secular songs given religious interpretations.  For instance, Shull suggested substituting “father” for “river in the Girl Scouts’ “Peace, I Ask of Thee.” [16]

The religious songs included 18 identified as Negro spirituals.  The rest reflected no particular religious tradition: a couple were old hymns like “Amazing Grace” and some, like “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” came out of the late nineteenth-century gospel music tradition.  The largest topics in the index were Aspiration, Christ, Dedication, God’s Care, and Trust.

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

Credits
From HYMNS OF UNIVERSAL PRAISE.

Copyright 1956 by Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc.  Used by permission.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: none
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: 4-verse song
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
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: music staff with Christmas ornaments for stars
Color Scheme: blue-green cover with black ink
Plate: general size and style of hymnal with four-part harmony for most songs

Audience Perceptions
The footnote said: “‘Kum Ba Yah’ means ‘Come by Here’.”

The topical index suggested its themes were “God’s Care” and “Social Concern.”

Notes on Audience
The songbook was printed four times between 1960 and 1965, the date of my copy

Notes on Performers
Camp Farthest Out did not sponsor residential camps.  Only one in Maryland was and is a member of the ACA. [17]  Instead, the organization offered sessions of various lengths where people could escape from the routine and spend time in prayer. [18]  In this way it may be a continuation of the Scots’ holy fairs described by Leigh Schmidt. [19]  As mentioned in the post for 8 November 2020, Schmidt believed these were the precursors to the Cane Ridge revival in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1801.

No direct link exists between Clark and Cane Ridge, and he may simply have reinvented a particular type of religious retreat.  He was raised in Des Moines, Iowa, and educated at Grinnell College. [20]  The Congregational school then was involved with the social gospel movement. [21]

However, one of Clark’s immigrant ancestors, Archibald W. Glenn, moved from Ireland to Nicholas County, Kentucky, sometime before he died in 1826. [22]  Nicholas was the home of Daniel Boone and lay directly northeast of Bourbon County. [23]

William Russell Shull’s immigrant ancestor, Peter Scholl, was born in Germany in 1704, [24] and his son, Frederick Scholl, was born in New Jersey in 1734.  He died in Pennsylvania, [25] where the family stayed until members began moving west in the 1830s.  Shull himself was born in Macoupin County, Illinois, [26] and spent the years after World War I serving Brethren churches in Indiana and Illinois.  At one on 22 May 1921 at the Clear Creek Church, “Catherine Forney led the song services.”  The love feast was held in August. [27]

He married Ruth Marjorie Hanson in 1922.  Sometime before 1950, they divorced [28] and he married Eva Henson, who was either the widow or ex-wife of a man named Brown. [29]  This may be the reason Shull became involved with religious denominations outside the Brethren.

Eva taught math at Hyde Park High School in Chicago [30] until she retired in 1968. [31]  She and Shull moved to Timbercrest, a retirement community run by the Brethren in North Manchester, Indiana.  After she died in 1971, Russell published Letters to Eva in Heaven. [32]

Shull married Mildred Morgan in 1972, and she survived him when he died in 1985.  Before she moved to Timbercrest, she had taught chemistry in Ottawa Township, Illinois.  Her family requested memorial contributions be made to the church’s Heifer Project, [33] which Rohrbough had supported in the 1950s. [34]

Shull had two daughters with his first wife.  One happened to be living twenty miles from my hometown when she died in 2019.  Her obituary said she “loved music and encouraged her children in their musical pursuits.” [35]

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  163 in CFO Songs, edit by Eva and Russell Shull.  Chicago, Illinois: Camp and Retreat Songs, 1960.

End Notes
1.  For more on the ACA songbook, see the post for 4 June 2023.

2.  For more on the Girl Scouts, see the posts for 27 November 2022 and 4 December 2022.

3.  For more on the YWCA, see the post for 11 December 2022.
4.  For more on 4-H, see the post for 18 December 2022.

5.  For more on the spread of “Kumbaya” in my part of Michigan, see the post for 13 August 2023.

6.  For more the folk revival movement, see the posts on Tony Saletan for 23 March 2023 and Pete Seeger for 20 August 2023.

7.  “History of CFO.”  Page on CFO of North American website.

8.  Glenn Clark.  “The Camp Farthest Out.”  197-208 in A Man’s Reach.  New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949.  197.

9.  Ruth Raymond.  Quoted by Clark.  200.
10.  Clark.  204.
11.  Clark.  207.
12.  “History of CFO.”

13.  Entry on Amazon website for William Russell Shull.  The Universe Still Sings: With Notes on Creative Writing.  Durham, North Carolina: Religion and Health Press, 1957.

14.  “Church of the Brethren.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 August 2023.
15.  Hymns of Universal Praise is discussed in the post for 2 October 2022.

16.  CFO Songs.  215.  “Peace of the River” was written by Glendora Gosling and Viola Wood at a Girl Scout training session held on a Kentucky river boat [36].  Janet Tobitt published it in Sing Me Your Song O in 1941.  CRS included it in Songs of Many Nations in 1944.

17.  Entry for Farthest Out, Inc.  98 in National Directory of Accredited Camps for Boys and Girls.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 14th edition, 1974.

“Camp Farthest Out Inc.”  ACA Camps website.  It is a day camp.

18.  Mark Hicks.  “Camps Farthest Out/Journey Farthest Out.”  Hicks’ Truth Unity website, 23 April 2023.

19.  Leigh Eric Schmidt.  Holy Fairs.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
20.  “Founder | Glenn Clark.” CFO International website.
21.  “Grinnell College.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 August 2023.

22.  Brenda Goldy.  “Pvt Archibald W. Glenn Sr.”  Find a Grave website, 12 April 2008; last updated by Andree Swanson.  He was the father of the wife of Glen’s great-grandfather.

23.  “Nicholas County, Kentucky.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 August 2023.
24.  “Peter Scholl.”  Geni website; last updated 25 November 2014.

25.  Charles Sheldon Simcox, Jr.  “Frederick Scholl.”  Geni website; last updated 14 December 2014.

26.  Gibson ‘Gibby’ Brack.  “William Russell Schull (Shull).”  Geni website; last updated 13 July 2022.

27.  Items in The Gospel Messenger.  Elgin, Illinois: Brethren Publishing House, volume 70, 1921.

28.  “Ruth Marjorie Hanson.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.  Ruth died in 1987.

29.  “Mabel Irene Brown SEAMAN (born HENSON), 1897 - 1962.”  My Heritage website.

30.  Aitchpe yearbook, Hyde Park High School, Chicago, Illinois, 1951.  23.

31.  “Mrs. William Shull.”  Chicago Tribune 28 April 1971.  Reprinted by Bonnie Dagen.  “SHULL Obituaries from Chicago area.”  Genealogy website, 1 June 2004.

32.  William Russell Shull.  Letters to Eva in Heaven.  Saint Paul, Minnesota: Macalester Park Publishing Company, 1972.

33.  OPPSheryl.  “Mildred Morgan Shull.”  Find a Grave website, 16 February 2010.
34.  For more on Rohbough and the Brethren project, see the post for 395.

35.  “Iris Zieger, 1924 - 2019.”  Jackson Citizen Patriot, Jackson, Michigan, 7 October 2019.

36.  Eleanor L. Thomas.  Girl Scout Pocket Songbook.  New York: Girls Scouts of the U.S.A., 1956.  7.  The opening line is “Peace I ask of thee of river.”

University Settlement Camp - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Indianola, a Methodist family-camp based in Columbus, Ohio, included “Kumbaya” in a March, 1955, songbook published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) of Delaware, Ohio.  John Blocher, Jr., transcribed it from the singing of Kathryn Thompson Good.  In May of that year, it was sung at the annual meeting of the Buckeye Recreation Workshop attended by Good in Urbana, Ohio. [1]  This introduced the song to 4-H leaders.

In January of 1956, the owner of CRS, Lynn Rohrbough, advertized the song’s availability to his customers in a Song Sampler. [2]  Before the Sampler’s formal release, copies of the pamphlet probably were distributed at a meeting of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) in Athens, Ohio, over the Christmas holidays.  Rosa Page Welch and Frederick Hilborn Talbot recalled singing “Kumbaya” there. [3]

Rohrbough remembered one of the first songbooks to include “Kum Ba Yah” was Hymns of Universal Praise, which was compiled in February and March of 1956 for the North East Ohio conference of the Methodist Church by Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young. [4]  In May, “Kumbaya” was sung at the youth night of the church’s general conference in Minneapolis.  The post for 9 October 2022 theorized that it was introduced by someone in the Ohio Wesleyan University choir, which was in town that evening.  The school is in Delaware, Ohio, and Wiant was serving in the local church.

Agents of Rohrbough introduced the song to secular, youth-group leaders in 1957.  Max Exner included “Kum Ba Yah” in a songster he edited for Iowa 4-H groups, [5] while Augustus Zanzig probably was responsible for its inclusion in Chansons de Notre Chalet.  That latter was edited by Marion Roberts for the International Girl Guides, and distributed in this country by the Girl Scouts. [6]  Soon after, Zanzig suggest the YWCA use it in Sing Along. [7]  Their books took the song into girls’ summer resident camps.

These movements were not accomplished through the printed word alone.  Wiant had been a missionary in China and likely attended the SVM meeting, where he may have observed the participants’ reaction to the song. [8]  Similarly, Zanzig was at the 1956 meeting of the Buckeye workshop and probably included a transcription in the meeting notes at the request of attendees. [9]

The post for last week (13 August 2023) detailed how the song began percolating through the veins of the Methodist church.  I noted some church leader may have learned it at a meeting or from a songbook, and then introduced it in a Methodist Youth Fellowship leadership-training session attended by a teacher in my hometown.  He lead it at a Sunday evening MYF meeting in the fall of 1958 or spring of 1959.  Members of MYF were singing it on the high-school band bus in the fall of 1969, where I learned it.  By then it was at least three removes from a CRS source and the form had changed from a four-verse song to an open-ended one with verse-burden format.

“Kumbaya” crossed a cultural boundary in the spring of 1957 when Tony Saletan performed it at the Swarthmore College Folk Festival.  He probably learned it from Rohrbough or Zanzig when he was making recordings for CRS. [10]  Joe Hickerson and others heard it in Philadelphia when they were forming the Folksmiths.  The octet taught it that summer in camps in New England. [11]

Pete Seeger also heard it that spring at Davidson College in North Carolina where a friend of Rohrbough’s, Larry Eisenberg, taught it a conference designed to encourage racial understanding.  People in the audience let Eisenberg know the song did not come from Angola, as he supposed, but was African American. [12]  This news, and Eisenberg’s subsequent contact with Thora Dudley, led Rohrbough to change the headnote for the song in CRS publications. [13]

Meantime, Seeger began singing it at concerts and released a recording of “Kumbaya” in December 1958. [14]  The 1960 songbook for the University Settlement Camp obviously came from him.  The camp was near Beacon, New York, where Seeger lived.  Norman Steele remembers that he

“attended the camp 2 summers for 2 weeks in the fifties.  Pete lived in the camp and sang every night It was an incredible experience.” [15]

The version in the camp’s 1960 songbook classed it as a lullaby.  The Weavers had treated it that way on their 1958 recording, [16] but they had written their own verses that used “nana” for “my Lord.”  USC included Seeger’s “someone’s sleeping” verse in place of the “crying” one.  The book only provided words and guitar chords, so it is impossible to know how it actually was sung.

Performers
Not known

Credits
None; classed as a lullaby

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no comment
Verses: kumbaya, sleeping, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: four-verse song
Unique Features: borrowed from Pete Seeger

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: music not provided
Guitar Chords: D G A7

Notes on Performance
Cover: none on my copy
Plate: mimeographed from typed master

Notes on Audience
University Settlement House, located on New York City’s lower east side, began sending children of Jewish immigrants to summer camps in Connecticut and New Jersey around 1900.  In 1910, Eliza Woolsey Howland gave her husband’s estate to the organization. [17]  By 1928, more than a thousand children went to the camp in Beacon. [18]  Some returned, but many were one-time campers who had no shared music repertoire.  Those who led songs would have had to devise ways to interest children who may have had no exposure to group singing.  Seeger’s group singing techniques were ideal for these situations.

In 1945, the settlement house added a work camp for adolescents who spent their time doing camp chores. [19]  While the ethnic backgrounds of the children in the camp changed with that of the lower east side from Jews to Blacks and Puerto Ricansin the 1950s, the ones who came to the work camp often were children of Jews who once lived in the neighborhood. [20]  Their interests in music were different than those of children.

The work camp songbook used the categories of men like Carl Sandburg and John Lomax, discussed in the posts for 5 May 2019 and 12 May 2019, but substituted contemporary commercial, folk-music revival songs for traditional ones.  “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore” [21] was included in the Work Songs, while “Sloop John B” was in the Sea Shanties section. [22]  Other songs were grouped by genres like Ballads, Blues, and Rounds.  The only religious songs for a group that included many Jews were Spirituals.

Notes on Performers
The New York City settlement house was inspired by Tonybee House in London, which encouraged young men from Oxford and Cambridge to “share ‘the culture of the university with those who needed it most’.” [23]  Stanton Coit visited Tonybee House in London in 1886, and then opened the Lily Pleasure Club for boys on Forsyth Street. [24]

The initial work was through clubs for youth that resembled the groups that preceded the Boy Scouts in this country.  In 1887, Coit added a kindergarten and organized the effort as the Neighborhood Guild. [25]  By 1891, the guild’s activities outpaced its financial resources, and it formed the University Settlement Society on Delancey Street with the president of Columbia University as its head. [26]

Once given a formal structure, the University Settlement expanded its reach, and changed its emphasis to match the needs of the neighborhood and the evolving theories of social work.  The organization survives on Eldridge Street, but it closed the Beacon camp in 1989 when it no longer could afford to maintain the site.  After an experiment with the New York City schools in the 1990s, [27] the grounds were sold to New York State Department of Parks and Recreation in 2008. [28]

Availability
Songbook: University Settlement Work Camp.  “Kumbaya.”  28 in U. S. C. AT COUNCIL.  Beacon, New York: 1960.  Copy provided by camp in 1975.

End Notes
1.  For more on Blocher, Good, and Indianola Sings, see the post for 29 May 2022.
2.  For more on the Sampler, see the post for 6 October 2019.
3.  For more on the SVM meeting, see the post for 31 July 2022.
4.  For more on Wiant and Hymns of Universal Praise, see the post for 2 October 2022.
5.  For more on Exner, see the post for 18 December 2022.

6.  For more on Chansons de Notre Chalet, see the posts for 27 November 2022 and 4 December 2022.

7.  For more on the YWCA’s Sing Along, see the post for 11 December 2022.
8.  See the post for 2 October 2022.
9.  See the post for 24 July 2022.
10.  For more on Saletan, see the post for26 March 2023.

11.  For more on the Folksmiths, see the posts for 2 April 2023, 9 April 2023, and 16 April 2023.

12.  For more on the Davidson College event, see the post for 16 October 2022.

13.  For more on Thora Dudley, see the posts for 23 October 2022 and 30 October 2022.

14.  For more on Seeger’s activities, see the post for 16 October 2022.

15.  Norman Steele.  Comment posted on 23 April 2020 to “University Settlement of New York City.”  Social Welfare Library website.

16.  For more on The Weavers’ version, see the post for 3 October 2017.

17.  Jeffrey Scheuer.  Legacy of Light: University Settlement’s First Century.  1960.  Reprinted in Legacy of Light.  University Settlement: 1886–2011.  New York: University Settlement, 2012.  22–94.

18.  Scheuer.  75.
19.  Scheuer.  103.

20.  Ellen Kirschner.  “University Settlement Camp and the Jewish Presence in Beacon.”  Beacon Hebrew Alliance website, 23 August 2021.  She attended the work camp in 1967.  She recalled: “When I was at camp, nearly every evening, Pete joined us for ‘Council,’ the daily all-camp gathering and after-dinner sing.  That’s where I learned the songs of the Civil Rights Movement and Seeger favorites like ‘Union Maid’ and ‘Abiyoyo.’  If USC had an anthem in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was ‘This Little Light of Mine’.”

21.  For more on “Michael,” see the post for 26 March 2023.

22.  “The Wreck of the John B” was recorded in 1950 by The Weavers. [29]  It was based on a text published by Sandburg, [30] and revised by Lee Hays of the Weavers. [31]  The Kingston Trio recorded it in 1958 for the same album that contained “Tom Dooley.” [32]

23.  H. J. Hegner.  “Scientific Value of the Social Settlements.”  American Journal of Sociology 3:171–182:July 1897.  Quoted by Scheuer.  47.

24.  Scheuer.  56.
25.  Scheuer.  58.
26.  Scheuer.  59.

27.  Karen Maserjian Shan.  “University Settlement Faces a New Future.”  Beacon Dispatch website, posted by Michael Daecher on 5 March 2006.

28.  Kirschner.

29.  “The Roving Kind / (The Wreck Of The) John B.”  Decca recording 9-27332, released December 1950 [Discogs entry].

30.  “Sloop John B.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 19 August 2023.
31.  Discogs, The Weavers.

32.  The Kingston Trio.  “Sloop John B.”  The Kingston Trio.  Decca recording T-996, released 1958.  The credit was to Sandburg and Hays [Discogs entry].

Albion High School Band - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough was expanding the reach of Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) in the middle 1950’s.  While he was experimenting with recordings [1] and his agents were contacting secular youth groups, [2] “Kumbaya” was spreading through the arteries of the Methodist Church.

It is difficult to document the flow because CRS songbooks were ephemeral, and few survive.  Of those, few have dates.  One exception is the one produced for Lake Poinsett in 1958, which was discussed in the post for 9 July 2023.

One never knows what is actually sung from a songbook, and within that group, what is remembered.  Asking people involves unraveling memories, which can be tricky.  One woman, who lived about an hour north of my hometown, said:

“I am thinking that I first sang ‘Kumbaya’ in the early 50’s at the Sunday evening Youth Fellowship meetings of the Dowling Methodist Church.” [3]

She graduated from high school in 1957, so the early 50’s may have been 1956 or 1957.  Since the song was not publicized by CRS until 1956, she could not have learned it earlier.

A high-school classmate of mine wrote:

“My memories seem to flow together, one setting mixes in with others, so don’t trust anything I say about this as being accurate, although I’ve tried to find some time markers.  I remember singing Kumbaya around the fire at Lake Louise.  I was only there one year, in the summer of 1960, and after high school I was never in a setting where it was sung, so I doubt that I have it mixed up with some other large gathering around a fire.  [Name] was an MYF leader when we were in 9th grade, and I have a picture of him leading us in the song.  He left to teach in another school system the next year, so it was no later than that, the 1958-1959 school year.  I don’t remember if it was he who introduced the song or someone else.  I don’t have a memory of singing it in Jr. High MYF, but that may be my faulty memory.” [4]

MYF was the Methodist Youth Fellowship.  As my friend recalled, members were sent to Lake Louise between their sophomore and junior years in high school.  It was similar to Epworth Forest’s Senior Institutes mentioned the post for 30 May 2021.  The only other person I talked to about the camp remembers just the baseball games.

I learned it on the band bus.  Like my friend, I cannot be precise.  I was in the senior band from  ninth grade, 1958, to 1962.  Each year we took two trips, one to band day at Michigan State University, and another to an away game.  My junior year the father of one of the football players paid for us to attend every away game.

Games were played at night in Michigan.  When we boarded the school buses for the return trip home, we were cold and tired.  After heat filled the bus, and some became drowsy, we began singing slow songs like “Kumbaya” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”  We could not have sung the latter until 1961, the fall of our senior year, because it only became popular in the fall of 1961. [5]

I do not recall if we were singing my freshman year, but I know it was an established tradition by my junior year, the fall of 1960.  I remember I sat next to a friend that year who wanted to talk, and I was a bit annoyed because I could npt join the singing.  I know it was that year because I was a majorette and he was the drum major.  He did not return the next year, and someone else was the drum major.

I mention these trivial details because they are the sort of secondary evidence individuals marshal when they are trying to reconstruct their memories of past events.

Based on that, I assume we were singing by my sophomore year.  I sent emails to some of my classmates on the bus.  Only one responded, and she did not recall singing.  She was Black, and her comment revealed another aspect of the sociology of our high-school class.

There were two buses, and people wanted to get on the one with one’s friends or, perhaps more accurately, the ones one wanted to be associated with.  Her comment suggests the African Americans in the band deliberately chose the bus that did not have the “cool white kids.”  It may have been self-segregation or simple logistics.  If the one group took many of the seats on the one bus, that left the other available for them.

If the singing was not initiated by the Black members of the band, then, I thought, it had to be someone who had gone to camp or was in a church group.  Our high school was small, and I knew the religious affiliation of many of the people in the band.  The largest number, who were in a social position to initiate the singing when I was a sophomore, were both Methodists and in Camp Fire Girls.
 
We did not sing it at either the day camp or the resident camp sponsored by the Camp Fire Girls.  The director of the local day camp confirmed by recollection.  She told me:

“I loved that” but “I don’t think I ever sang it at our day camp.” [6]

Her husband was on the faculty of the local Methodist college, and I assume she sang it at some of the church’s weekly fellowship meetings for adults.

The woman from Dowling remembered singing it at Kitanniwa, the summer resident CFG camp that people from my hometown attended.  As mentioned in the post for 21 January 2018, she recalled it from the 1960s, and then it was a counselors’ song, not a campers’ one.

The process of elimination led me to ask someone who was not in the band, but I knew still was active in the Methodist church if she remembered the song from MYF.  That led to the correspondence quoted above.

Our version no longer was the four-verse song publicized by CRS.  We repeated the “kumbaya” verse after every “someone’s xxx” verse as a burden.  While we probably sang the standard verses, they were not sung in any particular order.  My recollection is that someone started a verse and we began at the same time, but waited to hear the verb to join in on the “ing.”  This led to the possibility that verses were improvised to prolong the singing.

We probably only sang the melody, but because our voices were not trained to precise notes, the sound in our ears, while we were singing, was what I call timbraic harmony.  This is the effect of voices with different qualities singing together.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none

Vocal Group: adolescent, mainly female, members of the marching band

Vocal Director: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
None

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: probably equal emphasis on syllables

Verses: standard verses in any order, with ad libbed ones sometimes 

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: “kumbaya” as burden
Ending: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one note to one syllable except for final “Lord”
Harmony: timbraic

Notes on Performance
Occasion: return trips from football games at night
Location: school bus
Microphones: none
Clothing: band uniforms worn for the game

Notes on Movement
Girls generally sat together, scattered the length of the bus.  The bus was warm, and people were relaxing from the cold.

Notes on Performers
I have not been able to contact the teacher, and so have not included his name.

His family was from West Virginia, [7] and he graduated from Hillsdale College in 1958, where he played football.  The young white man was tapped for Omicron Delta Kappa, [8] an honorary that included athletes. [9]  The school was founded by Free Will Baptists, but began allowing other congregants to attend in 1907.  It did not begin taking strong conservative stances until 1963. [10]

As my friend recalls, the new college graduate taught arithmetic and social studies in our school, which spanned grades seven to twelve.  He also coached junior varsity football and seventh-eighth grade basketball. [11]

He worked in other schools until he received a masters’ degree in 1963 from Michigan State University. [12]  He was on the Hillsdale faculty from 1967 to 1972, then returned to teaching.  Later, he moved to northern Michigan where he worked for the state prison system. [13]

I assume he learned “Kumbaya” at some sort of workshop for MYF leaders.

Availability
None

End Notes
1.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  143-149.  Tony Saletan’s participation in the CRS recordings is mentioned in the post for 26 March 2023.

2.  See the posts for 27 November 2022 through 18 December 2022 that discusses the work of Max Exner and Augustus D. Zanzig in the 1950s.

3.  Email, 3 March 2016.
4.  Email, 11 May 2016.
5.  “Michael” is discussed in the posts for 29 January 2023 and 26 March 2023.
6.  Lucille Parker Munk.  Interview, fall 1974.
7.  Find a Grave website entry for his father.
8.  LinkedIn website entry.
9.  “Omicron Delta Kappa.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
10.  “Hillsdale College.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
11.  The Breeze, Albion High School, Albion, Michigan, yearbook, 1959.
12.  LinkedIn website entry.
13.  Hillsdale Chargers website.

Lake Poinsett - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The American Camping Association’s 1958 songbook, Let’s All Sing, [1] met a need for camps without their own singing traditions or without mimeograph machines to produce their own collections.  For, before song publishers started enforcing the copyright law in the 1970s, the most common camp songsters were a few sheets of paper produced by local volunteers.

Larry Holcomb’s appendix of custom songbooks produced by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) was 14 pages long.  But, only 28 were identifiable as camp books, as distinct from organizations superintending camps.  Most were sponsored by the Methodist church or Girl Scouts. [2]  There no doubt were more that were not preserved in CRS’s archives.  They often were given out, and disappeared with other souvenirs of summer.  I found few for sale online.

Lake Poinsett produced one in 1958, the same year as the ACA songbook, which included “Kum Ba Yah.”  The South Dakota Methodist camp was organized to hold institutes for older campers to bind them to the church, and to recruit future ministers. [3]  In that, it was no different than the Wisconsin Lutheran camp attended by Janet Lynn, mentioned in the post for 16 October 2018, or the Methodist’s Epworth Forest in Indiana, mentioned in the post for 30 May 2021.

Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs contains 138 songs, of which more than half are religious.  Two thirds of those are hymns, with fourteen spirituals and four graces.  “Kum Ba Yah” is the first selection in the spirituals section.

The songbook seems to have been part of an ambitious project of the local Methodist churches, who then were at their peak of influence.  Marshall Reed, Bishop of the Detroit and Michigan Annual Conferences, [4] believed the church needed 3,000 new ministers each year to replace men who retired and serve new congregations.  The church already was having problems recruiting men, [5] and in a few years would acknowledge its membership was dropping. [6]

The Northern and Southern Districts in South Dakota had established their church without funds from the Annual Conference. [7]  However, by 1957, it was hoping to grow from a local camp into a regional center. [8]  It produced a film about the camp in 1955, [9] commissioned a history in 1956, [10] and published the songbook in 1958.

The camp still exists as a retreat and conference center. [11]  However, it no longer was a member of the American Camping Association in 1974. [12]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar

Credits
Spiritual

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no note

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: 4-verse song

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
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”

Notes on Performance
Cover: outline drawing of tree branches at top and heads of a boy and girl at bottom right; title between

Color Scheme: black ink on maroon paper; inside blue ink on white paper

Plate: made by music typewriter

Audience Perceptions
A member of MYF, the Methodist Youth Fellowship, recalled in 1956: “Bible study groups, studies about Christian living and Christian vocations, and the singing of hymns and spirituals fill a day.  Each evening, weather permitting, the young people gather at the campfire and singing with meditation they thank God for another wonderful day.” [13]

This was before Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs was published.  Thus, it cannot indicate if “Kumbaya” was sung at the camp, but does suggest a singing tradition existed which would have favored the song.

Notes on Performers
Lewis Reimann, the author of the Lake Poinsett Story, graduated from the University of Michigan around 1916, and went to work for the YMCA in Barry County, Michigan.  In 1921 he established a fresh air camp for the university, then opened a private camp in Michigan in 1928.  Later, he became a camp consultant for the ACA. [14]  This probably led him to assist Poinsett.

The camp’s song, “Shores of Poinsett Waters” was written by his wife. [15]  The former Pearle Shewell, [16] said she had set “numerous songs and verses of noted authors” to music in a 1961 interview. [17]

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  50 in Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service Cooperative Song Service, revised 1958.

End Notes
1.  Let’s All Sing is discussed in the posts for 4 June 2023, 18 June 2023, and 2 July 2023.

2.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “Appendix B.  Custom Songbooks, 1954-1972.”  222-235 in A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.

3.  Lewis C. Reimann.  The Lake Poinsett Story: A Venture in Faith.  Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, Inc, for Lake Poinsett Methodist Camp, Arlington, South Dakota, 1957.  94.

4.  “Marshall Russell Reed.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 July 2023.
5.  Marshall R. Reed.  Quoted by Reimann.  94.

6.  The membership decline in the Methodist Church is discussed in the post for 14 March 2021.

7.  Reimann.  7, 39.
8.  Reimann.  139.
9.  Reimann.  147.
10.  Reimann.  168.

11.  “Lake Poinsett Camp & Living Waters Retreat Center.”  Dakotas United Methodist Church website.

12.  National Directory of Accredited Camps for Boys and Girls.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 14th edition, 1974.

13.  Quoted by Reimann.  92.  No name given.

14.  “Lewis Reimann.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 July 2023.  The camp was Charlevoix.

15.  Lake Poinsett.  Inside front cover.
16.  “Lewis Reimann.”

17.  “Pearle S. Reimann and Tea Table Menu.”  Ann Arbor News, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1 June 1961.

Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) was the second religious group to publish “Kumbaya” after it appeared in the American Camping Association’s Lets All Sing in 1958. [1]  As mentioned in several posts, the denomination broke from Presbyterians following the Cane Ridge Revival, and was distinguished by its refusal to use musical instruments. [2]

Its Chapbook was intended for youth group meetings, as well as summer camps.  As such, it contained more religious material than a typical Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) publication or the Southern Baptist Convention collection mention in the post for 18 June 2023.  Just over a quarter of the songs in the ACA songbook were religious and nearly 44% in Songs for Fun and Fellowship.  More than 75% of the ones in the Christian Church book had sacred content.

The denomination’s musical aesthetic was formed in the 1800s when the two denominations, the Christian Church and the Disciples of Christ, were spreading.  More than 60% of the hymns are from that century, with less than a quarter from the 1900s.  The earlier ones were written by Martin Luther, [3] Isaac Watts, [4] and Charles [5] and Samuel Wesley. [6]

Almost none are popular religious songs from the late 1800s [7]  Instead, like CRS and the Baptists, the editorial committee used spirituals as a less solemn alternative to hymns.  They represented about 30% of the ACA songbook, and 18% of this one. [8]  The number in the Baptist book represented 16% of the total.

The editors obviously expected the songbook to be used in camps: it contained eleven graces while the Baptists only had one.  However, sung graces were not an indigenous traditions: six were in Let’s All Sing. [9]

The songbook wished to include “fun songs,” but again had no tradition to draw upon.  Of the 31 secular songs with no religious content, 22, or nearly 60%, were in the CRS songbook.  “Kumbaya” falls into the group of songs it considers secular, but, in fact, have religious content.

The editors took their version from the Song Sampler published by CRS in 1956. [10]  It not only had the same headnote on an Angolan origin and the same pronunciation footnote, but it italicized “Kum Ba Yah” that way Jane Keen had.  Let’s All Sing said it was a “Spiritual,” and had no footnote or special typography.

The song was accepted: it was one of the ones that was reprinted in Chapbook 2 in 1966.  That collection “picks up some of the best songs, hymns, and worship resources from The Chapbook.”

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
 
Credits
African (Angola)

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: koom-bah-yah, like that published by CRS Song Sampler

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) in Song Sampler – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: four-verse song

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
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”

Notes on Performance
Cover: 4.25" x 5.75" spiral bound; drawings of thee Gothic church windows enclosing music notes

Color Scheme: white with red print; windows and music notes in shades of black, white, and gray

Plate: exactly like that in CRS’s Song Sampler; this includes italicizing “Kum Ba Yah”

Audience Perceptions
The person who owned the copy I purchased online checked “Kumbaya” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” in pencil; “Are You Sleeping” was checked in ink.  The C-F-G chords were written in; this is the only song so marked.

Notes on Performers
Guin Tuckett worked for the Christian Board of Education from 1953 until 1990.  Born Guinevere Ream in Indiana, [11] she was a descendant of Johann Eberhard Reihm who migrated to Conestoga, Pennsylvania, from the Palatine in 1717. [12]  Count Zinzendorf, leader of the Moravians in Germany, stayed with Eberhard in 1742. [13]  When her branch joined the Christian Church is unknown, but her father’s mother was a member when the family lived in Nebraska [14].

Besides the Martin Luther hymn, the Chapbook contains lyrics set to old German tunes.  The setting for Saint Francis of Asisi’s “All Creatures of Our God and King” is from Geistliche Kirchengesäng. [15]  The tune for “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” is in Straslund Gesanbuch. [16]  The melody for “Fairest Lord Jesus” is from Schlesische Volkslieder. [17]

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  150 in Christian Youth Chapbook: Hymns, Fun Songs, Worship Resources for Young People.  Saint Louis: Bethany Press, 1955.

Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  151 in Chapbook 2, edited by a “joint youth committee from The American Baptist Board of Publication and Education and the publishing and program divisions of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) chaired by Guin Tuckett.  Saint Louis: The Bethany Press, 1966, and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: The Judson Press, 1966.

End Notes
1.  Let’s All Sing is discussed in the post for 4 June 2023.

2.  The Christian Church and Disciples of Christ are mentioned in a number of posts, including one for 8 November 2020.  The Disciples of Christ in Pamlico County, North Carolina, were mentioned in posts about Minnie Lee, especially the one for 26 January 2020.

3.  “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
4.  “Jesus Shall Reign.”
5.  “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” and “Love Divine, All Love Exceeding.”
6.  “The Church’s One Foundation.”

7.  The one possibility is “Take Time To Be Holy,” which was published by Ira Sankey. [18] Sankey is discussed in the post for 17 January 2021.

8.  The church segregated after the Civil War, but did not expel freed slaves as the Methodists and Baptists did.  Its attitudes toward Blacks are mentioned in the posts for 18 July 2021 and 30 October 2022.

9.  “Chimes Grace,” the Girl Scouts’ “God Has Created a New Day,” “Gratitude Grace,” “O Give Thanks,” “Praise for Bread,” and “Round of Thanks.”  The Baptists adopted the “Round of Thanks.”

10.  Song Sampler, number 1, is discussed in the posts for 31 July 2022 and 7 August 2022.

11.  Lynn.  “Guinivere (Tuckett) ‘Guin’ Ream Stemmler.”  Find a Grave website, 24 October 2009.

12.  John Ream. “Ream Family History: 9 Generations.”  His website.

13.  Norman Whisler Ream.  “Riehm-Ream Genealogy.”  1930.  248.  Reprinted by John Ream.

14.  “Mrs. J. S. Ream Funeral Held.”  The Minden Courier, Minden, Nebraska, 27 Mary 1948.  11.  Reprinted by Rose Marie Brown on “Maggie Mae Simon Ream.”  Find a Grave website, 7 August 2013.

15.  Friedrich Spee.  Geistliche Kirchengesäng.  Kohn: 1623.
16.  Ernewertes Gesangbuch.  Stralsund: 1665.

17.  August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben.  Schlesische Volkslieder mit Melodien.  Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1842.

18.  Laura Lee Leathers.  “Who Wrote the Hymn ‘Take Time to be Holy’?”  Christianity website, 5 December 2022.

Southern Baptist Convention - Kum Ba Yah (Come By Here)

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Membership in the American Camping Association (ACA) grew after World War II, with much of it coming from church groups. [1]  In Michigan, a third of the camps, which existed in 1974, that were accredited between 1947 and 1958 were religious. [2]  No doubt there were more that did not seek ACA approval. [3]

The Michigan camps represented a variety of sponsors from Detroit’s Roman Catholic Youth Organization [4] and Ann Arbors’s Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship [5] to Baptists, [6] Calvinists, [7] Methodists, [8] and Mennonites. [9] [10]  Presumable staff members of some of the camps purchased copies of the ACA’s 1958 songbook, Let’s All Sing that contained “Kum Ba Yah.” [11]  This allowed the song to spread beyond the confines of the Methodist church that originally sponsored the song and its publisher.

The Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention included a version of “Kum Ba Yah” the next year, 1959, in its Songs for Fun and Fellowship.  They used the CRS text, but provided a four-part chord arrangement by William Reynolds. [12]  This made it one of the first versions to include a piano accompaniment.

David Music notes that the church was broadening its interest in music in the 1950s, but it had few available composers who could write hymns in contemporary styles.  Reynold filled the vacuum and became “the most influential Southern Baptist church musician in the second half of the twentieth century.” [13]

The church apparently also did not have many resources for children’s music.  Twenty-five of the thirty-one secular songs were published by CRS by this time; twelve of the twenty-five were in Let’s All Sing.  The others included a nineteenth century popular song with Irish themes, [14] and ones like “Michael Finnigan” and “Mistress Shady” that CRS did not encourage.

Nine of the twenty-four religious songs were spirituals, while “One More River” was a humorous description of Noah’s ark.  The book also may have introduced “I Have Decided To Follow Jesus,” which Music credited to Reynolds. [15]

Performers
Vocal Group: four part chords
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano arrangement

Credits
Arranged by Peter Gregory.  Arrangement © Copyright 1959, Broadman Press.

From Hymns of Universal Praise copyright Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc., 1956, Delaware, Ohio.  Used by permission.

[At this time, CRS was using the Hymns of Universal Praise copyright for the song.]

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no comment

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, crying, singing, praying

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

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Time Signature: 3/4
Key Signature: three flats
Basic Structure: strophic repetition

Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for final “Lord;” alto occasionally sings two notes

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: four-part chords change on every syllable

Notes on Performance
Cover: none oval balloons with bows underneath to suggest heads with bow ties; ovals at different heights; title at top

Color Scheme: green and black ink on dark yellow paper

Notes on Audience
Two more volumes were published in 1961 [16] and 1969. [17]  They must have popular, because versions of all three are available on Abe Books, Amazon, and eBay.

Notes on Performers
William Jensen Reynolds edited Songs for Fun and Fellowship and arranged “Kum Ba Yah.”  He was the son and nephew of singers, and both his parents graduated from Moody Bible Institute. [18]  He earned degrees in church music from Southwestern Baptist Theological School and North Texas State College. [19]

After graduation in 1946, he spent nine years workings as a minister specializing in music and youth in Oklahoma and Texas.  During this period, he established a summer music camp for the First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City.  He also served on the committee that produced the 1956 Baptist Hymnal. [20] [21]

Reynolds went to work as music editor for the Sunday School Board in 1955, and remained there until the purges that followed the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979. [22]  Music says: “the reasons for his mandatory retirement are not entirely clear, but were a result of internal issues at the Board.”  Reynolds returned to teach at Southwestern Seminary until he retired in 1998.  He died in 2009. [23]

Cecil McGee co-edited Songs for Fun and Fellowship.  He was raised in Oklahoma, and received a master’s degree from Southwestern Theological Seminary.  He was the man on the Sunday School Board who encouraged the group that produced the first Baptist musical, Good News. [24]  He later built a retreat in Titusville, Florida, and died in 2007. [25]

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah (Come Ba Here).”  47 in Songs for Fun and Fellowship #1, edited by William J. Reynolds and Cecil McGee.  Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1959.

End Notes
1.  Item on Elmer Ott in “A History of ACA Presidents and Board Chairs.”  American Camp Association website; based on Eleanor Fell’s History of Organized Camping: The First 100 Years.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 1986.

2.  See the post for 28 Mary 2023 for more details on the sample of camps.

3.  A camp does not need accreditation from the ACA to operate.  Many 4-H and church camps I knew about in the 1950s and 1970s were not accredited, because the name of the sponsoring organization was sufficient for parents.

4.  CYO Camp for Boys.
5.  Cedar Campus.
6.  Michigan Baptist General Conference’s Center Lake Bible Camp.

7.  Church of Christ’s Michigan Christian Youth Camp; Maumee Valley, Ohio, Presbyterians’ Premauca Education Center.

8.  The Methodist Church’s Wesley Woods; Free Methodist’s Covenant Cove Camp.
9.  Friedenswald.
10.  I could not find the affiliation for Blair Lake Bible Camp, although it still exists.
11.  Let’s All Sing is discussed in the post for 4 June 2023.

12.  Reynolds used the name Peter Gregory. [26]

13.  David W. Music.  “William J. Reynolds: Extraordinary Church Musician.”  Artistic Theologian website, 15 November 2013.

14.  “Sweet Rosie O’Grady” was written for vaudeville by Maude Nugent in 1896.  In 1946, she unsuccessfully sued 20th Century Fox for misappropriating the title. [27]

15.  “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.”  53 in Songs for Fun and Fellowship.  Stanzas 1 and 2 as sung by the Garo Christians; stanza 3 by John Clark; folk song from India arranged by William J. Reynolds; copyrighted in 1959 by Broadman Press.

16.  Songs for Fun and Fellowship #2, edited by William Jensen Reynolds and Cecil McGee.  Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1961.

17.  Songs for Fun and Fellowship #3, edited by Cecil McGee and Bob Oldenburg.  Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1969.

18.  Moody Bible Institute was founded in Chicago in 1886 at the behest of Dwight Lyman Moody to train Christian teachers, ministers, missionaries, and musicians to work in cities. [28]  It has been mentioned as an alma mater or employer in posts for 27 September 2017, 19 December 2018, 2 August 2020, and 11 December 2022.

19.  Music.

20.  Southern Baptist Convention.  Baptist Hymnal, edited by W. Hines Sims.  Nashville, Tennessee: Convention Press, 1956.

21.  Music.
22.  “Southern Baptist Convention.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 7 June 2023.
23.  Music.
24.  Good News is discussed in the post for 13 December 2020.

25.  Obituary for Cecil L. McGee.  Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas, 11 April 2007; reprinted on Legacy website.  I assume he also was forced out in 1979, although that is not stated in the obituary.

26.  “Carols Sing.”  Copyright Encyclopedia website.

27.  James J.  Fuld.  The Book of World-Famous Music.  New York: Dover Publications, 2000 edition.  343-345.

28.  “Moody Bible Institute.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 8 June 2023.

American Camping Association - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The American Camping Association issued a new songbook through Cooperative Recreation Service in 1958 that included “Kumbaya.”  It contained 42 songs from the 1948 songbook discussed in the post for 28 May 2023.  They represented just over a quarter of the 160 songs in Let’s All Sing.

The change was not simply the result of Lynn Rohrbough having more international songs to offer.  The editors of the 1948 songbook were associated with private camps.  Two of the four editors of the newer book worked with camps for the underprivileged.  Beyond class, the children in private camps tended to be older than those in ones sponsored by public agencies.

The repertoire reflected these changes.  A quarter of the songs in the 1948 songbooks came from Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, the YWCA, and other girls’ camps traditions.  That number was down to 14% in 1958.  The earlier songbook had only one that involved motions, decremental or cumulative repetition that appeal to younger campers.  In 1958, that number was up to 19, or just over 10% of the collection.

Equally important is a change in the gender composition of camps.  A third in Michigan in 1948 served girls alone and a third catered to boys and girls in the same session.  About 15% of the camps were for boys, and the other 15% were camps that served boys and girls in different sessions or locations. The camps in Michigan accredited by the American Camping Association between 1949 and 1958, which still existed in 1974, were predominantly coed (65%). [1]

More songs in the 1958 songbook would have appealed to boys than in the 1948 one.  Two in the earlier book had cowboy themes. [2] Four were added in the 1948 songster, [3] along with two sea chanteys. [4]  The editors did not include any of the rowdy songs that would appeal to young boys, like “Puffer Billies” or “Little Tommy Tinker.” [5]

The 1948 songbook contained just two spirituals: “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Trampin’.”  The latter often was considered a camp song because “tramping” was analogous to “hiking.”  The later collection had nine, [6] plus two that had the same form: “Rocka My Soul” and “Standing in the Need of Prayer.”

The text and tune for “Kum Ba Yah” were the same as the one’s included in the original Indianola songbook edited by Kathryn Thompson Good and John Blocher.  The credit had changed from “Angola” to “spiritual” and the pronunciation note had been removed in the copy I own. [7]  In addition, guitar chords had been added.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar chords

Credits
Spiritual

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: the pronunciation note in Indianola Sings has been removed

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
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: Title with a treble clef sign and the American Camping Association logo

Color Scheme: The cover uses dark green ink on mustard stock; inside, the pages employ dark gray ink on white paper.  The revised edition cover is lighter yellow.

Plate: made by music typewriter

Notes on Audience
Let’s All Sing was revised in 1960.  Unlike many CRS songbooks, [8] this one listed the changed on the inside front cover.  All the songs that were dropped were under copyright, including “Smokey the Bear.” [9]

The impact of the songbook on various camps varied, depending on their existing repertoires.  I remember singing 16 at Camp Kitanniwa from the 1948 anthology, and 15 that were new in 1958.  However, the Battle Creek, Michigan, Camp Fire Girls’ camp already was singing most of them.

The one that most likely came from this book is “In a Cottage in the Wood.”  I recall one girl in the senior unit particularly liked the gestures, and she was there in 1958 and 1959.  However, the ACA version came from Mrs. Charles Hensley, who learned it at an International Encampment of Girl Scouts. [10]  It could have been brought to Kitanniwa by a Girl Scout.

Notes on Performers
The ACA song book committee had four members.  I could find nothing about Ann Woolf, other than she received the Southern California chapter’s Outstanding Service Award. [11]  She contributed the version of “Downright, Upright,” [12] a literal gesture song.

Annabeth Brandle was born in Missouri in 1907, [13] and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1929. [14]  She became associated with Sherwood Forest, a camp in the Cuivre State Park near Troy, Missouri.  The camp opened in 1937 as a WPA project to offer recreation to urban residents, and catered to the low-income city children. [15]  She was particularly interested in public school camping programs. [16]

Brandle was credited with three songs in Let’s All Sing: “Fire Is Burning,” [17] “Lu-la-le,” [18] and “Now Come All.” [19]  The first is based on “Scotland’s Burning,” while the second encourages swaying to the words.  The last is an evening closing song.

Larry Eisenberg, as mentioned in the post for 9 February 2020, worked for the Methodist Church until 1952.  He and his wife, the former Helen Lowe, then wrote books for the YMCA through 1956. [20] This broadened his awareness of camp needs, especially his How To Lead Group Singing. [21]  He volunteered the “Calliope Song” to the ACA collection.  It involved groups imitating the different parts of an instrument. [22]

Walter Anderson probably was the lead editor, since he was closely associated with Rohrbough in 1958.  As mentioned in the post for 5 February 2023, he spent the summers before joining the Antioch College faculty, working at a summer camp run by a Cleveland community center.  He directed the Chippewa Valley Camp during World War II. [23]  Sometime in this period he was elected treasurer of the American Camping Association. [24]

In 1968, Anderson left Ohio for the Washington, DC, area to work for the National Endowment for the Arts.  He died in 2003. [25]

He is credited with the version of “Good News” [26] in the ACA songbook, and transcribed the songs of Brandle and Woolf.  He, no doubt, also was responsible for the inclusion of so many spirituals.

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  85 in Let’s All Sing, edited by Walter Anderson, Annabeth Brandle, Larry Eisenberg, and Ann Woolf for the American Camping Association.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, no date.

Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  85 in Let’s All Sing, edited by Walter Anderson, Annabeth Brandle, Larry Eisenberg, and Ann Woolf for the American Camping Association.   Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, January 1958; revised December 1960.

Graphics
“Kum Ba Ya.”  Let’s All Sing.  85.  Previous owner checked the song.

End Notes
1.  See the post for 28 Mary 2023 for more details on the sample of camps.
2.  “Night Herding Song” and “Roundup Lullaby.”
 
3.  “Ol Texas” [27] and “Railroad Corral” [28] appeared in earlier Girl Scout songbooks.  The “Cowboy Love Song” and “Cowboy Night Song” were new and carried no citation.

4.  “Rio Grande” and “Shenandoah.”

5.  When I attended a public school camp in 1955, these are the two rounds that were taught.

6.  “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit,” ‘Good News,” “He’s Got the Whole World,” “I Know the Lord,” “Let Us Break Bread Together,” “Little Wheel,” “Old Ark’s a-Movering,” and “We’ll Stand the Storm.”   Kitanniwa sang the version of “All Night, All Day” published by Mary Allison Sanders for the Camp Fire Girls and  Girl Scouts. [29]

7.  One is never sure one has the original version of a CRS songbook.

8.  The post for 20 February 2022, note 18, mentions some of the ways songbooks changed from printing to printing, and the problems those changes could cause.

9.  The other omitted songs are “Tzena, Tzena” and “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”
10.  “In a Cottage.”  Let’s All Sing.  26.

11.  American Camp Association Southern California/Hawaii.  “Outstanding Service Award Recipients.”  Its website.  It only lists names.

12.  “Downright, Upright.”  Let’s All Sing.  18.  “As sung by Ann Woolf.  Notated by Walter Anderson.

13.  Laura.  “Annabeth Brandle.”  Find a Grave website, 7 November 2013; updated by Memorial Grammy.

14.  Savitar.  University of Missouri yearbook, 1929.

15.  Cathy Sala.  “Note about the Emergency Conservation Work (E.C.W.) Architecture in Missouri State Parks, 1933 – 1942, Thematic Resources (TR).”  Missouri State Parks website, April 2018.

16.  Annabeth Brandle.  “Camp Living Gives New Insights.”  Childhood Education 30(4):172-174:1953.

17.  Annabeth Brandle.  “Fire Is Burning.”  Let’s All Sing.  49.  “Based on Scotland’s Burning.”

18.  “Lu - la - le.”  Let’s All Sing.  18.  “As sung by Annabeth Brandle.  Notated by Walter F. Anderson.”

19.  “Now Come All.”  Let’s All Sing.  49.  “As sung by Annabeth Brandle.  Notated by Walter F. Anderson.”

20.  Larry Eisenberg.  “It’s Me, O Lord.”  Tulsa, Oklahoma: Fun Books, 1992.  62.

21.  Helen Eisenberg and Larry Eisenberg.  How To Lead Group Singing.  New York: Association Press, 1955.

22.  “Calliope Song.”  Let’s All Sing.  40.  Courtesy Larry Eisenberg.  Other songs in the collection that imitated musical instruments or ensembles are: “The Instruments,” and “Orchestra.”

23.  Joan Horn.  Playing on All the Keys: The Life of Walter F. Anderson.  Yellow Springs, Ohio: Yellow Springs Historical Society, 2007.  39–40.

24.  Horn.  45.
25.  Claudia Levy.  “Walter Anderson Dies.”  Washington Post, 29 November 2003.
26.  Walter F. Anderson.  “Good News.”  Let’s All Sing.  82.

27.  “Ol’ Texas” appeared in Eleanor Thomas’ Pocket Songbook, which is discussed in the post for 4 December 2022.

28.  “Railroad Corral” appeared in Janet Tobitt’s Ditty Bag, which is discussed in the post for 4 December 2022, especially in note 33.

29.  Sanders is discussed in the post for 4 December 2022, especially note 26.

A. C. A. Song Book

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The next Cooperative Recreation Service publication that contributed to the spread of “Kumbaya” was issued by the American Camping Association in 1958.  It came ten years after CRS published the A. C. A. Song Book. [1]

The organization then was beginning its transition from a small group of private camp directors to a professional organization.  The ACA president in 1948 was Carol Gulick Hulbert, [2] whose uncle founded the Camp Fire Girls [3] and whose parents opened a private girls’ camp in Vermont in 1905. [4]  In 1922, Edward Gulick opened Lanakila for boys.  It was run by Carol’s husband, Chauncey Hulbert.  She took over in 1924. [5]

Hulbert was succeeded as ACA president by Reynold Carlson. [6]  He had joined by faculty of Indiana University’s Health, Physical Education and Recreation school in 1947.  Previously, he had worked for the National Recreation Association. [7]

Under Hulbert, the organization changed the name of its periodical from the Camp Directors Bulletin to Camping Magazine in 1946. [8]  The ACA began accrediting camps in 1948. [9]  It was countering Porter Sargent’s A Handbook of Summer Camps, which he had begun publishing in 1924 [10]  This complemented his Handbook of Private Schools that first appeared in 1915. [11]

Of the 68 camps, which existed in 1948 in Michigan and still were accredited by the ACA in 1974, half were sponsored by five youth groups: the YMCA (16), Girl Scouts (9), Camp Fire Girls (4), YWCA (4), and Boy Scouts (1).  Less than a quarter were private, and those of the Camp Fire Girls, YWCA, and Kings’ Daughters emulated their programs, bringing their influence to 36%.  The remaining 25% were religious, settlement houses, or special interest. [12]

No one is credited with editing the ACA songbook, but songs are included from three private camps: Wabukani and Winona in Maine, and Severance in New York.  Emily Welch, the owner of Wabukani, was the ACA president in 1932. [13]

The one thing that distinguished private camps from others was the length of time children and adolescents spent in them.  Private camps before 1950 tended to have one session that lasted all summer, while the others catered to groups that changed every week.  This had a strong impact of their repertoires. [14]

Private camps often developed traditions that included a number of songs written in the camps, which had been passed on for years.  New campers learned them as part of their initiation into the mores of camps.  Few spread beyond a camp’s boundaries.  The exceptions in the A. C. A. Song Book are: “My Paddle’s Keen and Bright” from the Gulick’s camp Sebago, [15] and “Whipporwill.”  The last was written by Anne Chapin at a Girl Scout training camp in 1921. [16]  Both spread through organization channels.

Camps that emulated private ones, like the CFG camp I attended in 1951, still assumed returning campers would learn the local repertoire a bit at a time, some songs each year.  Camp owners, who ran camps for profit, could not assume community prestige would move young children to accept such demands.  They realized they needed songs children could learn quickly, and something more was needed than “Row, Row Your Boat.”

The 1948 A. C. A Song Book was an attempt to fill the gap.  It still included many of the songs that had been sung in camps since the 1920s, like “The Border Trail,” [17] “Each Campfire Lights Anew” [18] and “Father Time.” [19]  It had a few from English and American folk tradition, like “The Keeper” [20] and “Old Smoky,” [21] and a few cowboy songs like “Night Herding Song” [22] and “Round-Up Lullaby” [23] that came from the popular view of folk music derived from collections published by Carl Sandburg and John Lomax. [24]

Many of the European folk songs were popularized by the National Recreation Association, or its music specialist, Augustus D. Zanzig. [25]   Seven came from their Singing America, [26] three from Folk Songs and Ballads published by Zanzig’s earlier employer, [27] and “Toviska” from an NRA publication from 1938. [28]

Lynn Rohrbough had not yet begun amassing a collection of international songs.  The ones in the A. C. A. Song Book that came from the CRS repertoire were from Bliss Wiant’s The Pagoda of 1946, [29] Olcutt Sanders’ Amigos Cantando of 1948, [30] and UNESCO’s Work and Sing of 1948. [31]

A large number of songs in the A. C. A. Song Book were religious, including three graces, [32] and eight spirituals. [33]  Except for the “Hannukah Hymn,” [34] they were from the Protestant tradition.  Two, “Day Is Dying in the West” [35] and “Now the Day Is Over” [36] came from the Chautauqua strain of camp meetings.

It is difficult to judge the impact of this songbook.  I remember 15 of the 94 songs at Kitanniwa.  Most were available from other sources and I know some were introduced after my first summer.

Notes on Performers
Wabunaki was founded in 1910 by Amy Dunlap.  At the time, she was working for the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  The camp apparently closed and the site “on an island in Hancock Lake, near Hillside,” Maine, [37] was purchased by Welch in 1921. [38]  It did not survive into the 1970s.

Welch graduated from Vassar in 1904, and worked as a teacher.  In 1914, she became principal of the Charlton  School in New York. [39]  She left for Richmond, Virginia, in 1917 where she was headmistress of Saint Catherine’s School.  The school said “her early retirement was influenced by the precarious state of the School’s finances as well as the increased family responsibilities which she faced following the death of her sister.” [40]  Her nephew recalls she started the camp because her teacher’s salary was insufficient to raise him and his two brothers. [41]

The two songs in the ACA collection from Wabunaki [42] were written by Isabel Grimes Booth and Ethel Wilcox.  Booth was writing music [43] when she was a senior at Vassar College in 1921. [44]  Wilcox had to leave Vassar when her father died. [45]  Thereafter, she lived in Poughkeepsie where she sang at programs sponsored by the Methodist Episcopal Church. [46]  One assumes both worked at Wabunaki.

Winona was founded in 1908 by Charles Cobb in Denmark, Maine, as the brother camp to Wyonegonic.  In the 1940s, it was managed by his grandson, Roland. [47]  In 1973, an eight-week session for boys cost $1,075. [48]  In comparison, Kitanniwa charged $39 for a one-week session.  The total income, per camper for the summer, was $241. [49]

One song appeared in the A. C. A. Songbook from Winona by F. E. Jones: “Off to the Hills.” [50]

Severance was found in 1917 on Paradox Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. [51]  Carrie Sinn was the owner in the 1940s. [52]  The girls’ camp closed in 1972. [53]  At that time, an eight-week session cost $1,400. [54]

No author was given for “We Think of Camping.” [55]  Like many camp songs before CRS began publishing custom songsters, it was written to a popular song.  The melody for “The Old Refrain” was composed for a Viennese operetta in 1887 by Johann Bundle and popularized in this country by Fritz Kreisler. [56]

End Notes
1.  American Camping Association, Inc., Chicago, Illinois.  A. C. A. Song Book.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Song Service, Cooperative Recreation Service.  Undated; the most recent songs in the book are from 1948.

2.  “A History of ACA Presidents and Board Chairs.”  American Camp Association website; based on Eleanor Fell’s History of Organized Camping: The First 100 Years.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 1986.

3.  Luther Halsey Gulick is discussed in note 35 in the entry for 5 September 2021.  He also is discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  12.

4.  Hulbert’s parents, Edward Leeds Gulick and the former Harriet Marie Farnsworth, are discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  341.  The first camp was Aloha.

5.  “Who We Are.”  Aloha Foundation website; accessed 26 May 2023.
6.  “History of ACA Presidents.”

7.  Joel Meier.  “Reynold E. Carlson: A Distinguished Pioneer in Outdoor Education.”  Research in Outdoor Education  6:article 4:2002.  3.

8.  “Timeline of ACA and Summer Camp.”  American Camp Association website.
9.  “American Camp Association.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23 April 2023.
10.  A Handbook of Summer Camps.  Boston: Porter Sargent, 1924.

11.  “Porter Sargent.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 20 Mary 2023.

The Handbook of Private Schools.  Boston: P. Sargent, 1915.

12.  National Directory of Accredited Camps for Boys and Girls.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 14th edition, 1974.  I chose Michigan as my sample because I am from Michigan and have some sense of the camps listed.  Beyond that pragmatic reason, the state was typical of camps in the 1970s.  Camps not only had a variety of owners, but the sponsors were based in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  This was because cities like Chicago and Toledo did not have the same types of small lakes and big lake waterfronts that are found in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

13.  “History of ACA Presidents.”

14.  The following discussion is based on a more detailed analysis in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

15.  “My Paddle’s Keen and Bright” is discussed in the post for 5 December 371 (note 46) and on pages 445 and 565 in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

16.  “Whipporwill” and Chapin are discussed on pages 445 and 571 in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

17.  Carol Peterson.  “The Border Trail.”  Written to “Road to the Isles” as transcribed by Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser in Songs of the Hebrides.  London: Boosey and Company, 1917. [57]

18.  “Each Campfire Lights Anew” is reproduced in the posts for 28 November 2021 and 13 March 2020, and is mentioned in posts for 5 December 2021 and 20 February 2022.

19.  “Father Time” is mentioned in the post for 13 March 2022.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs quotes a woman who believed it was from Vassar (page 341).

20.  “The Keeper” is discussed in the post for 5 December 2021.

21.  “Old Smoky,” is identified in the A. C. A.  Song Book as an  American folk song recorded by Greta Biddle Kaylor in Knox County, Tennessee.  This was before the song was popularized by The Weavers in 1951. [58]  By then, it had been collected by a number of folklorists. [59]

22.  “Night Herding Song.”   Published by Ina Sires in Songs of the Open Range.  Boston: C. C. Birchard and Company, 1928.  Ellen Ina Sires grew up in Navarro County, Texas, [60] about 40 miles south of Dallas. [61]  She taught school [62] and lectured on cowboy culture. [63]

23.  “Round-Up Lullaby” is discussed in note 32 of the post for 20 March 2022.

24.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs describes the music that developed from the publications of Carl Sandburg and John Lomax as “consensus folk music  [64]  Sandburg is discussed in the post for 5 May 2019.  Lomax is discussed in the post for 12 May 2019.

25.  For more on Zanzig, see the column at the right of the screen.

26.  “America the Beautiful,” “At the Gate of Heaven,” “Down in the Valley,” “Over the Meadows,” “Prayer” from Engelbert Humperdinck’s  Hansel and Gretel, “Våsång,” and “Walking at Night.”

27.  “Morning Comes Early,” “The Silver Moon Is Shining,” and “Tiritomba.”

28.  “Toviska.”  Songs for Informal Singing.  New York: National Recreation Association, 1938. [WorldCat entry]  The A. C. A. Song Book identifies it as a Moravian folk song arranged by Max V. Exner.

29.  “After School” and “Yangtze Boatman’s Chantey” appear in The Pagoda, arranged by Bliss Wiant.  Cooperative Recreation Service Inc, © 1946.  This is mentioned in the post for 2 October 2022.

30.  “The Carpenters” and “My Farm” appear in Amigos Candando, edited by Phyllis Aden Sanders and Olcutt Sanders.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service; copyrighted 15 October 1948.  This is mentioned briefly in the post for 13 February 2022.

31.  “Ahrirang,” “Holla Hi, Holla Ho!,” “Mill on the Rhine,” “My Bela Bimba,” and “Tamo Daleko” appear in UNESCO, Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service.  Work and Sing: An International Songbook.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc.  It was copyrighted in 1948, but the earliest edition I own was edited by Patricia Dunham Hunt.

32.  “Chimes Grace,” “Round of Thanks,” and “Praise for Bread.”

33.  “Jacob’s Ladder,” “Nobody Knows,” “Steal Away,” “Study War No More,” “Trampin’,” and “Won’t You Sit Down.”  James Weldon Johnson’s “Life Every Voice and Sing” is not a spiritual but often is treated as one.

34.  “Hannukah Hymn,” which begins “Rock of Ages, let our song.”   It was copyrighted in 1932 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis.  The group represented the Reformed Jewish tradition. [65]

35.  Mary A. Lathbury and William F Sherwin.  “Day Is Dying in the West.”  It was written in 1877 for the Chautauqua Assembly. [66]

36.  Sabine Baring-Gould wrote “Now the Day Is Over” in 1865, and Joseph Barnby composed the melody in 1869.  It appeared in the 1868 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern edited by William Henry Monk.  London: J. Alfred Novello. [67]

37.  Handbook of Private Schools.  1915.
38.  Handbook of Summer Camps.  1935.  262.
39.  Handbook of Private Schools.  1915.
40.  “School Leadership.”  Saint Catherine’s School, Richmond, Virginia, website.

41.  Ralph Hubbell.  “As It Was at the Beginning!”  Living Prime Time website, August 1997.

42.  “Come All You Campers” and “When a Breezy Morning.”  A. C. A. Song Book.  36–37.

43.  “Jadda Bird” was published by Isabel Grimes in 1921. [68]
44.  Item.  Vassar Quarterly 25(1):1 October 1939.
45.  Item.  Kappa Kappa Gamma’s The Key 29(2):154:May 1912.

46.  Item.  Pokeepsie Evening Enterprise, Poughkeepsie, New York, 20 February 1915.  6.

“Sunday School Association Convention, Oct 31.”  Poughkeepsie Eagle, Poughkeepsie, New York, 30 October 1914.  7.

Vassar is in Poughkeepsie.

47.  “Camp Wyonegonic.”  Sensagent website reproduces a Wikipedia post that no longer exists.

48.  National Directory.  96.

49.  National Directory.  39.  This included six one-week sessions, and two five-day sessions.

50.   F. E. Jones.  “Off to the Hills.”  A. C. A. Song Book.  34.  Nothing could be found about Jones.

51.  A. C. A. Song Book.  186.
52.  Item.  Ticonderoga Sentinel, Ticondergoa, New York, 6 June 1940.  3.

53.  “Sleepaway: Two Chances to Go Back to Summer Camp.”  American Heritage 43(3):June/July 2003.

54.  National Directory.  186.
55.  “We Think of Camping.”  A. C. A. Song Book.  35.

56.  James J.  Fuld.  The Book of World-Famous Music.  New York: Dover Publications, 2000 edition.  414–415.

57.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  282.

58.  The Weavers And Terry Gilkyson.  “Across The Wide Missouri / On Top Of Old Smoky.”  Decca 9-27515; issued 1951. [Discogs entry]

59.  “On Top of Old Smokey.”  The Traditional Ballad Index.  Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle, Ballad Index website, 2023.

60.  “Obe Hoy Sires.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.  He was her father.

61.  Julie G. Miller.  “Navarro County.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.  1976; last updated 28 May 2021.

62.  Ina Sires, Dallas, Texas.  Letter to Erwin E. Smith, 9 July 1926.  Reproduced on Amon Carter Museum of American Art website.

63.  Guy Logsdon.  “The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing” and Other Songs Cowboys Sing.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.  Quoted in a review by George W. Lyon.  Ethnologies 17(2):168–171:1995.  169–170.

64.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  54–55.

65.  “Central Conference of American Rabbis.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 May 2023.

66.  Donald P.  Hustad.  Dictionary-Handbook to Hymns for the Living Church.  Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing, 1978.  184.

67.  Hustad.  184.
68.  Item on Picclick website selling sheet music.

Folksmiths - The Musicians

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Four of the Folksmiths who introduced “Kumbaya” to twenty New England residential camps in the summer of 1957 primarily were interested in music when they were students at Oberlin College.

Ruth Weiss
Ruth Weiss was the granddaughter of Otto Loewi, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1936.  He fled to Brussels in 1938 when the Germans invaded Austria that year.  From there he made his way to New York City in 1940. [1]

Her father, Ulrich Weiss, was a chemist in Austria.  In 1939, she and her mother moved to Brussels, then to France after Ulrich’s company opened a branch in Paris.  They began fleeing the Germans in 1940.  After short stays in England, Martinique, and the Dominican Republic, they were able to settle in New York City with the Loewis. [2]

By the time Ruth was a French student at Oberlin, the family had moved to Maryland where Ulrich worked for the National Institutes of Health.  They had hidden their Jewish roots.  Weiss recalled that “her father was an atheist, her mother an agnostic. They celebrated Christmas and observed no Jewish holidays.” [3]

Her activism was confined to singing Christmas carols at a Cleveland hospital for the campus Christian Science Organization. [4]  She played recorder with the Folksmiths and sang the soprano parts. [5]  Her voice is the most recognizable on their recording of “Kumbaya.”

After graduation in 1959, she spent time in a work camp in Vienna, Austria, sponsored by the World Council of Churches. [6]  When she returned to this country, she became a case worker for the Cuyahoga County Welfare Agency’s Division of Child Welfare. [7]

Weiss moved to Portland, Oregon in 1975 where she is active with Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. [8]

Joe Hickerson
Joseph Charles Hickerson was born in Highland Park, Illinois, [9] where his father was a mathematics teachers. [10]  Teaching jobs were precarious in the Depression, and they moved several times before James Allen Hickerson was hired by New Haven State Teacher’s College in Connecticut. [11]

Hickerson’s older brother, Jay Allen, showed musical talents when he was young.  He earned a degree in music theory in 1956, and later became a music teacher in the schools in Bethany, Connecticut.  He also appeared as the piano soloist with orchestras, starting when he was in high school. [12]

Their mother, the former Elizabeth Hogg, often played piano and sang with the young boys.  Joe remembered she bought a plastic ukulele to peak his interest when he was about 14 years old.  This led to some lessons on guitar.  He already had sung with the church choir from “5th grade until my voice changed.” [13]

Hickerson majored in physics at Oberlin, but became more interested in folk music after Pete Seeger began appearing in concerts.  He became friends with the individual who had a program on the college radio station, and took over his place when he left. [14]  He played banjo and guitar, and led singing with the Folksmiths the summer he graduated. [15]

Joe spent the next few years studying folklore at Indiana University where he had a folk music program on the local college radio station. [16]  He spent a few summers working as a counselor at Camp Woodland, where he revised “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” [17]

Hickerson was hired by the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song in 1963, and began performing in the Washington DC area. [18]  He also made some records for Folk Legacy.  He retired to Portland, Oregon, where he still performs. [19]

Sarah Newcomb
Sarah Robinson Newcomb was born in Fairfax, Virginia, [20] where her father was a government economist.  He was chased out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when he began researching Negro businesses for his PhD from Brookings Institute.  When she was young, he was on Harry Truman’s Council of Economic Advisors. [21]  By the time that she was a psychology major at Oberlin, [22] he was working for the Urban Land Institute. [23]

Newcomb’s mother, the former Carolyn Jones, was involved with Bluebird and Camp Fire Girls’ groups when Sarah was young. [24]  She may be the only member of the Folksmiths who participated in a middle-class youth group in the 1950s.  Newcomb spent her teen years at Oakwoods Friends School, a boarding school in New York state. [25]

Hickerson remembers that, while she was in high school, she visited the Archives of American Folk Song.  She was the one who took him there for his first interview. [26]

Newcomb played banjo and guitar with the Folksmiths. [27]  In the 1960s, she was writing songs with Susie Dean, an Oakwoods classmate. [28]  Around 1972, met Shari Ajemian Craig through The Folk Song Society of Greater Boston.  They began writing parodies at Pinewoods Music Camp, and, by 1986, had expanded to musical comedies. [29]

Newcomb still lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is writing songs with Dean. [30]

Chuck Crawford
Charles Raymond Crawford played banjo and guitar with the Folksmiths. [31]  One of his classmates, Neil Rosenberg, remembered Crawford was living in Mansfield, Ohio, and had “a neat record collection that included jazz greats Django Reinhart and Fats Waller.” [32]  Rosenberg also remembered a group of guys would gather before and after meals to figured out how to play what was then the new Bluegrass genre. [33]

This group was beginning to move away from Pete Seeger.  Rosenberg recalled: “The Pete Seeger manual, in the second edition that Mayne [34] had, didn’t have anything useful for learning Scruggs picking.  There was a page devoted to it, but it wasn’t accurate.  So we learned from other musicians.” [35]

Crawford went to the University of Michigan where he earned a PhD in mathematics in 1970. [36]  From there, he was the first computer professor at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus. [37]  Throughout this time he played in local Bluegrass bands. [38]  He still lives in Toronto and has joined sacred harp singing groups. [39]

End Notes
1.  “Otto Loewi.”  Nobel Prize website.

2.  Ulrich Weiss interview.  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, 1993.

3.  Melissa Binder.  “Holocaust Remembrance Day: Survivor Recalls Her Own Early Escape, Honors Those Who Died.”  The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, 16 April 2015.

4.  Hi-O-Hi.  Oberlin College yearbook, 1958.  87.

5.  Liner notes for Folksmiths.  “Kum Ba Yah (Come by Here).”  We’ve Got Some Singing To Do: The Folksmiths Travelling Folk Workshop.  Folkways Records FA 2407, released 1958.

6.  Dorothy M. Smith.  “Class of 1959 Directory.”  Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Oberlin College, December 1959.  2.

7.  Item.  Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Oberlin College, 56(7):28:November 1960.
8.  Binder.
9.  “Joe Hickerson.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 26 March 2023.

10.  The elder Hickerson wrote the article “Similarities Between Teaching Language and Arithmetic.”  The Arithmetic Teacher 6(5):241-244:November 1959.

11.  Joe Hickerson.  Liner notes.  Joe Hickerson with a Gathering of Friends.  Folk Legacy FSI-39.  Released 1970.  1.

12.  “Jay Allen Hickerson.”  Leesburg News, Leesburg, Florida, 9 August 2022.
13.  Joe Hickerson, 1970.  1.
14.  Joe Hickerson, 1970.  2.
15.  Liner notes, Folksmiths.
16.  Joe Hickerson, 1970.  3.

17.  “Joe Hickerson (Special Event).”  Folklore Society of Greater Washington website, 13 July 2014.

18.  Joe Hickerson, 1970.  4.
19.  Joe Hickerson, 2014.
20.  “Sarah Newcomb in the 1940 Census.”  Ancestry website.

21.  James R. Fuchs.  “Oral History Interview with Dr. Robinson Newcomb,” 6 August 1977.  Harry S. Truman Library website.

22.  Line notes, Folksmiths.
23.  Internet references to his publications.
24.  “Carolyn Jones Newcomb.”  Washington Post, 29 January 1989.

25.  “Class of 1956” reunion photograph.  Oak Leaves, Oakwood Friends School newsletter, Poughkeepsie, New York, Summer 2016.  8.

26.  Joe Hickerson.  “Folk Music, Archives & Performing: Experiences, Adventures & Great Stories.”  Interviewed by Jennifer Cutting for Library of Congress webcast, 15 July 2014; posted to YouTube on 26 January 2015.

27.  Liner notes, Folksmiths.

28.  Newcomb told her Oakwood classmates that a parody of a sea chantey she had written with Susan Dean Miller was being performed by groups in Britain in 2009. [40]

29.  “Ajemian & Newcomb’s Artistic Resume.”  Ajemian and Newcomb website, 2011.

30.  Item.  Oak Leaves, Oakwood Friends School newsletter, Summer 2020.  5.
31.  Liner notes, Folksmiths.

32.  Neil V. Rosenberg.  Bluegrass Generation.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.  No page numbers in on-line edition.

33.  Neil Rosenberg.  Interviewed by George Lyon in “Wherein George Lyon Talks to Neil Rosenberg and We Get To Listen!”  The Canadian Folk Music Bulletin 35:1-10:2001.  3.  Rosenberg earned a PhD in Folklore from Indiana University, and became the academic expert on Bluegrass music, as well as an accomplished musician.

34.  Pete Seeger.  How To Play the 5-String Banjo.  Beacon, New York: Pete Seeger, 1954.  Mayne Smith was a friend of Rosenberg’s from California who also attended Oberlin.

35.  Rosenberg, 2001.  3.  Earl Scruggs began playing banjo for Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass group in 1945.  In 1948, he and Lester Flatt formed their own group. [41]

36.  “Charles Raymond Crawford.”  Mathematics Genealogy Project, North Dakota State University website.  For more information on the importance of his dissertation, see Frank Uhlig.  “On Computing the Generalized Crawford Number of a Matrix.”  Linear Algebra and Its Applications 438:1923-1935:2013.

37.  G. Scott Graham.  “Computer Science at 25.”  61 in Celebrating 40 Years of History at the University of Toronto Mississauga, edited by John Percy and Sabeen Abbas.  University of Toronto Mississauga, 2007.

38.  Rosenberg, 2001.  3.

39.  “Directory and Minutes of Sacred Harp Singings 2009 & 2010.”  Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association, Huntsville, Alabama, website.

40.  Item.  Oak Leaves, Oakwood Friends School newsletter, Summer 2009.  13.
41.  “Flatt and Scruggs.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 15 April 2023.