S.O.D. "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" by The Fisk Jubilee Singers

7/1/2018      Lots of history with this one.  Most likely written around 1865 by Wallace Willis, a Choctaw freedmen (enslaved African-Americans that were emancipated after the Civil War and given their freedom in the Choctaw Nation).  Prior to the Civil War, Willis and his wife, Aunt Minerva, worked at the Spencer Academy. The superintendent there was Reverend Alexander Reid.  After hearing the couple singing throughout the day, he transcribed their songs and presented them to the Fisk Jubilee Singers at Fisk University, a private all black college in Nashville, Tennessee.  This group made the first recording in 1909. They toured the United States and Europe, making the song and others by Willis quite famous.

     In 2000, the Library of Congress added the Jubilee Singers' version to the United States National Recording Registry.  You can find many renditions, including by Joan Baez who performed it at Woodstock.