Deep River

The story

"Deep River" is an anonymous African American spiritual. It was first mentioned in print in 1876, in the first edition of J. B. T. Marsh's The Story of the Jubilee Singers: With Their Songs. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor arranged its melody as the tenth of his 24 Negro Melodies, Op. 59 (1905), and Daniel Gregory Mason quoted it in his String Quartet on Negro Themes, Op. 19 (1919). Harry Burleigh made it widely known in his collection Jubilee Songs of the USA (1916); by 1917, when he finished the last of his several influential arrangements, it had become very popular in recitals. It has been called "perhaps the best known and best-loved spiritual".

Its melody was taken in 1921 for the song "Dear Old Southland" by Henry Creamer and Turner Layton, a popular success the next year in versions by Paul Whiteman and Vernon Dalhart. Marian Anderson recorded it for Victor in November 1923 and Paul Robeson on 10 May 1927; in the film Show Boat (1929) Laura La Plante mouthed it to the singing of Eva Olivetti, and Robeson sang it with a male chorus in The Proud Valley (1940). Michael Tippett wrote it into his oratorio A Child of Our Time (1941) as one of five spirituals. Later recordings include those of Tommy Dorsey (1941), Odetta (1957), Johnny Mathis (1958), the Roger Wagner Chorale and Mahalia Jackson (1964), Bobby Womack (2012) and Beverly Glenn-Copeland (2020).

What it says

An anonymous African-American spiritual, a sacred song; the account used here does not describe its words.

The words

The words of this song are in the public domain, but no free, reliable edition has been found yet to import them from, and the Institute never types a song’s words from memory: Genius shows them below, under its own licence.