Playlist:
* Go Tell It on the Mountain John Scofield & The Wild Magnolias 5:15
* Balulalow The O’Reilly Consort 4:00
* Do You Hear What I Hear The Rankin Sisters 3:40
Music notes:
Go Tell It on the Mountain This very familiar song likely dates back to the post-Civil War time of jubilee spirituals sung by former slaves. It was first documented in the choral songbook New Jubilee Songs and Folk Songs of the American Negro (1907) that was compiled by John Wesley Work Jr., the music director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They were (and still are) a student choir that was formed to tour and raise funds for Fisk University in Nashville, America’s oldest historically black college founded only six months after the end of that War. They performed authentic traditional songs, but harmonized for choral presentation in a refined manner that contrasted with the songs sung by minstrel show performers in blackface which were very popular at that time.
Because it first appeared in that publication, collection of the song is usually credited to John Wesley Work Jr. but some sources argue that it was more likely to have been collected by his brother Frederick Jerome Work, who was also a song-catcher and song arranger, or by his father John Wesley Work. They were a family that was very dedicated to preserving and building upon their musical heritage. Here the song is performed in a world music fashion by jazz fusion singer/guitarist John Scofield and the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade “Indian tribe” funk band The Wild Magnolias.
Balulalow The origin of this song is a mystery. Balulalow is the Scottish word for lullaby, so online searching proved useless, mainly yielding Benjamin Britten’s composition by that name in his A Ceremony of Carols. I got this track from one of those cheap albums by a minor record label called A Celtic Christmas (1998). It is subtitled “Carols for Celtic Ensemble” but the name of the group isn’t even shown on the CD’s cover. Only in very small print in the liner notes are the performers credited as Lisa Edwards on vocals with The O’Reilly Consort. That led to more research. I suspect that, since this album’s co-producer was Buddy O’Reilly, and John Maschinot is one of the credited musicians, without Lisa the O’Reilly Consort may have evolved into The Buddy O’Reilly Band. I could find nothing about Lisa Edwards unless she is the Australian pop singer by that name.
The liner notes are typically scanty for this type of album. They just call this: “A song of ebullient praise in the Scots dialect.” But it does go on to give a short passage from Balulalow with spelling that suggests it may indeed be an old Scottish song:
My Saull and life stand up and see, what lyis in ane cribbe of tree.What Babe is that, sa gude and fair – it is Christ, God’s Son and Air.
Do You Hear What I Hear? I didn’t know it at the time but this is definitely not an old traditional song. The lyrics are by the French WWII Resistance fighter and songwriter Noël Regney with the music written by his then-wife Gloria Shayne. Noël had been invited by a record producer for the Harry Simeone Chorale to write a new Christmas song, but he was hesitant due to the rampant commercialism of the holiday. Then in October 1962, during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he and Gloria were inspired to write this as a plea for peace.
The song certainly has not avoided Christmas commercialism. It was too late to make it onto their Christmas album that year but the Harry Simeone Chorale rushed to release it as the A side of a 45rpm single where it did very well. But its big success, and its entry into the canon of Christmas classics, came the following year when Bing Crosby recorded it. Now just about every major recording artist has included their own version of it on their Christmas albums. This version is the title track for Heather, Cookie and Raylene Rankin’s 1997 seasonal album do you hear … .
Sampler-making recollections
I began planning this 1999 Sampler while compiling the 1998 one. It was comprised primarily of older songs and tunes that I chose not to include include in 1998 because they had taken a more contemporary approach to the music. But as I had been continuing to buy more albums I came across some old-fashioned songs that I wanted to use right away and that distinction broke down somewhat. The organization of each side of the tape ended up being fairly simple. Instead of being three movements they basically went from simple to jazzy.
Every year my objective was to produce a sampler that was both very different and better than the year before. I was my own standard of comparison, and that led to my Christmas music project getting to be more and more time-consuming every year. This one is perhaps the only exception to that. I have always thought of the 1998 and ‘99 samplers as being twins.
