SWING LOW SWEET CHARIOT

Created on 18/03/2004
Latest update on 18/09/2020

Artist: Standard Quartette
Author: traditional
Label: Columbia
Year: 1890s

First published in Fisk's Jubilee Songbook (1872) and partly used by Anton Dvorák in his New World Symphony. Title is Underground Railroad code for The Railroad train to Freedom.

Covers:

1909:

Fisk University Male Quartet [Jubilee choir of the black university of Nashville, established in 1866 by idealists concerned with the education of freshly freed slaves; from day one the choir was their best publicity, bringing negro spirituals to every corner of the world]

1910s:

Harry Secombe

1912:

Apollo Male Quartette

1926:

Paul Robeson

1931:

Jules Bledsoe

1939:

Charioteers

1939:

Fats Waller [on pipe organ]

1946:

Golden Gate Quartet

1947:

Peggy Lee [swing-jazz version]

1951:

Dizzy Gillespie [as Swing Low Sweet Cadillac]

1957:

Big Bill Broonzy

1958:

Johnny Burnette [as Sweet Baby Doll]

1958:

Louis Armstrong [on lp Swing Low, Sweet Satchmo]

1959:

Johnny Cash

1959:

B.B. King

1960:

Coasters [as Wake Me, Shake Me]

1960:

Bobby Hackett

1960:

Laurel Aitken [possibly Clapton's example]

1960:

Sam Cooke [title track lp]

1962:

Spotnicks

1962:

Count Basie

1972:

Country Gazette

1974:

Eric Clapton

1976:

Jo Ann Kelly

1976:

Joan Baez

1977:

Parliament [as Swing Down, Sweet Chariot]

1979:

Som Maior [Brasilian]

1984:

Clannad

1991:

Gospel Hummingbirds

1992:

Diamanda Galas

1994:

Big Lucky Carter

1995:

Ladysmith Black Mambazo & China Black

1995:

Volumia! [as Swing Low]

1997:

Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi

1999:

Russell Watson [as Swing Low '99; hit in UK]

2020:

Diane Schuur

The Swing Down Sweet Chariot recorded by Elvis for his first gospel album His Hand In Mine is a different song. See also: My Old Kentucky Home.

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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