AND DID THOSE FEET IN ANCIENT TIMES
Created on 10/12/2001Latest update on 20/10/2023
Artist: CHH Parry
Author: William Blake/Charles Hubert Hastings Parry
Year: 1916
Based on William Blake's Preface to Milton, A Poem, printed in 1808. Exactly one century later it was selected by poet laureat Robert Bridges for his patriotic collection The Spirit Of Man in a desperate attempt to cheer up British soldiers in the trenches of WW I. That's when Parry was asked to score it. First noticed by the Suffragettes who recognized it as a possible Voters Hymn. Parry agreed, not only orchestrating it for them (in 1918), the National Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies was co-credited. That's when it became known as Jerusalem, becoming England's most popular patriotic hymn.
Covers:
- 1922:
Sir Edward Elgar [re-scored for large orchestra as Jerusalem during the Leeds Festival]
- 1922:
Peter Dawson [idem]
- 1939:
Paul Robeson [idem]
- 1941:
John McCormack [idem]
- 1950s:
Sir Malcolm Sargent [idem; during the earliest Last Night Of The Proms concert in the Royal Albert Hall]
- 1971:
Faces [idem; just Ronnie Wood on slide solo on Long Player]
- 1972:
- 1973:
Emerson, Lake & Palmer [idem; banned by the BBC, much to Keith Emerson's regret for being banned to ever set foot in the Royal Albert Hall again since he burned an American Stars and Stripes while performing America with The Nice there in protest against the Vietnam war]
- 1977:
Suzi Pinns [in punk film Jubilee]
- 1977:
Supertramp [choir part in the background at the end of Fool's Overture]
- 1981:
Vangelis [in film Chariots Of Fire; vocal: Ambrosian Singers; actually the same William Blake Preface inspired the film's title; Chariot of fire as byword for divine energy]
- 1983:
Mark Stewart & The Maffia [idem]
- 1988:
Fall [idem]
- 1988:
- 1990:
- 1991:
Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu [in It's Grim Up North; top 10 UK]
- 2007:
- 2009:
Jeff Beck [all as Jerusalem]
Films other than Chariots Of Fire featuring a version of Jerusalem: Four Weddings And A Funeral, The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, Calendar Girls, Brassed Off, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Shameless and Monty Python's Flying Circus. It is also the Jerusalem Herman van Veen sings about in Hilversum III: 'Op elke steiger klonk een lied, van Paljas of Jerusalem'.
