Where shall I be when the first trumpet sounds?

I. Earliest Printing

The spiritual “Where shall I be when the first trumpet sounds?” was first published in Calhoun Plantation Songs (Boston: C.W. Thompson & Co., 1901 | 2nd ed. shown at Fig. 1), compiled by Emily Hallowell of West Medford, Massachusetts. Hallowell had transcribed the songs from students at the Calhoun Colored School in Calhoun, Lowndes County, Alabama, and she said the songs “are well known throughout the Black Belt of Alabama.” In describing her method, she wrote:

I have tried to write them just as they are sung, retaining all the peculiarities of rhythm, melody, harmony, and text; but those who have heard these or other like songs sung by colored people of the South will realize that it is impossible to more than suggest their beauty and charm; they depend so largely upon the quality of voice, the unerring sense of rhythm and the quaint religious spirit peculiar to the colored people who have spent their lives on Alabama cotton plantations, untouched by civilization.[1]

In this instance, the spiritual consists of four phrases, three of which begin with the same words (“Where shall I be”). The way the song is structured, a leader could initiate a different opening statement, which would then get picked up by the group and incorporated into the second and fourth phrases, the rest of the song being the same. Hallowell supplied five total possibilities, but more are possible and are limited only by the leader’s imagination. The number of syllables are not fixed, and the rhythm would be adapted according to the demands of the text, as shown in example 2.

Harmonically, the song follows a basic structure of I, IV, and V chords. The penultimate chord, although based on V, avoids the leading tone, and is a kind of plagal-over-dominant chord often found in spirituals and gospel music, preferring the parallel downward movement in the alto voice from 1 to 6 before settling on 5.

The thematic material behind the song comes from prophetic-apocalyptic passages in the Bible, especially 1 Thessalonians 4.16:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord (KJV).

Other similar passages relate to the trumpet signal (Matt. 24:31, 1 Cor. 15:52, 1 Thess. 4:16, Rev. 8–9) and the resurrection of the dead (1 Thess. 4:16, Isa. 16:19, Mk. 12:24–27). The phrase “Gwine befo’ de bar” is probably meant as a legal term, as in facing the Judge (Rev. 20:12).

II. Jones Variant

The same year it was printed by Hallowell, it appeared in a collection prepared by C.P. Jones (1865–1949), who at the time was pastor of Mt. Helm Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. Jones had been raised in Kingston, Georgia, then spent some time working and training in Tennessee and Arkansas, and had settled for a few years in Selma, Alabama (1892–1895), before moving to Jackson. Jones printed the song in his first songbook, Jesus Only Songs and Hymns (Jackson, MS: Truth, 1901 | Fig. 2), and he took credit for it (“General arrangement, words and music”), and dated it 1899.

Several years later, when Jones recounted the histories of his songs, he acknowledged the song was not entirely his:

“Where Shall I Be” was once greatly used to warn and win souls. A white brother from Texas wrote me about 1905, “Brother Jones, I think you ought to know this. Last night a young lady sang your song, ‘Where Shall I Be,’ and people began to get blessed and filled and converted and kept it up so that the preacher was unable to preach.” This was an old Alabama plantation melody to which I put music and words.[2]

His statement begs the question of what he had originally learned, apparently while he was in Selma 1892–1895, and what he had added himself. The refrain is certainly not his, because it is practically identical to what Hallowell had collected independently, and how it appears in the other variants below. The inner (or interlinear) refrain “Where shall I be” is also probably not his. The text of the four verses, on the other hand, should be credited squarely to Jones, and he apparently reshaped the melody of those verses.

Jones’s version of the song was quickly picked up by several other songbook compilers, most notably making an appearance in the venerable Baptist Standard Hymnal (1924) produced by the National Baptist Convention, USA. At the same time, while his version was proliferating in print, the original plantation spiritual continued to spread independently via oral tradition.

III. Hobson Variant

In 1903, the song appeared in a small collection of plantation songs appended to a fictional story by Anne Hobson, In Old Alabama: Being the Chronicles of Miss Mouse (NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903 | Fig. 3). Although story was written in imitation of a southern African American dialect and appears to be mostly or entirely by Hobson, the songs were likely transcribed or remembered from real experiences living in or visiting the American south. Unfortunately, not enough is known about Hobson to know if she had found these in Alabama or somewhere else. How much of the song is Hobson’s recollection and how much is her own invention is impossible to tell. In this same volume, Hobson had also recorded an early variant of “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

In Hobson’s example, the first four phrases of the song are fixed as a refrain/chorus, sung in alternation with verses. The variability happens in the verses rather than in the opening strain, “Where shall I be.” Without notation, the melodic seeds of the verses are impossible to determine, but the verses have an inner (or interlinear) refrain, “Where shall I be when it sounds?” which is likely a repetition of the last line of the chorus.

The first verse harkens back to the death of Moses, and the second to Noah’s flood, with its prophetic warning of a “fire next time” (Gen. 9:8–17, Mal. 4:1, 2 Pet. 3:5–7).

IV. Hampton Variant

This spiritual appeared in the series of collections produced by Hampton University, first in Religious Folk Songs of the Negro (Hampton: Institute Press, 1909 | Fig. 4). The preface was signed by Robert R. Moton, who said some of the songs had been borrowed from other institutions, such as Fisk University (Nashville, TN), Tuskegee Institute (Tuskegee, AL), Calhoun Colored School (Calhoun, AL), and the Penn School (St. Helena Island, SC). In the 1920 edition, this song was marked in the index as being from Calhoun Plantation Songs, but clearly the Hampton version was not taken directly from that collection. Moton claimed to have led the singing of the spirituals at Hampton for nearly 20 years, but he did not mention acting as a collector. Thomas Fenner (1829–1912) had returned to Hampton in retirement in 1898 and could have had some input into the collection, except most of his career had been spent in New England.

This Hampton version of the song resembles Hobson’s version more than Hallowell’s, with a fixed refrain, an inner refrain for the verses, and references to Moses and the rainbow. The melody is slightly different here, not rising to a high 5 at “sounds so loud” like it does in Fig. 1. The inner refrain here is short, like Jones’s version in Fig. 2, versus the longer refrain in Fig. 3. Given the possibility of the Hampton version or other later versions being influenced by Jones’s version, or whether they are all based on an older tradition, the latter scenario seems to be most likely.

V. Odum Variant

The same year the song appeared in a Hampton collection, it appeared in an article by Howard W. Odum (1884–1954), “Religious folk songs of the Southern negroes,” in The American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education, vol. 3, no. 3 (July 1909 | Fig. 5).[3] Odum did not specify where exactly he found this song, only that he had collected songs from across the southern United States. In describing the general features of the songs, he mentioned:

The stanzas have no order of sequence, but are sung as they occur in the mind of the singer; a song does not have a standard number of stanzas, but the length depends upon the time in which it is wanted to sing that particular song. In the songs that follow, the most common versions are given (p. 301).

Regarding this song, he described it quite vaguely as “a general mixture of old and new song, of old traits and new traits,” but he did not explain what he meant.

Howard Odum’s version has two additional stanzas not previously printed, one mentioning the four gospel writers, and the other referencing the book of Revelation (1:12, 1:20, 2:1).

When Odum’s wife, Anna Kranz Odum (1888–1965), prepared a collection of spirituals for her article “Some negro folk-songs from Tennessee,” in The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 27, no. 105 (July–Sept. 1914), Anna mentioned this song, cross-referenced it against her husband’s article, and said it was from southern Mississippi.[4] She also said she had collected the songs for her article from Sumner County, Tennessee, from children who could not read and “sang only the songs they had heard from their elders at home, in the fields, or at church,”[5] so it apparently demonstrates the transmission of the song by oral tradition farther north than the Alabama border.

VI. Reddick/Lindsley Variant

The spiritual had appeared in a collection produced by the National Baptist Convention, National Jubilee Melodies (1916 | Fig. 7), collected by K.D. Reddick and arranged by Phil V.S. Lindsley. This one resembles Hallowell’s version (Fig. 1) in the way it uses word substitutions in the refrain rather than having separate verses, except the substitutions (“Mourner,” “Sinner,” etc.) are more of an interjection, whereas the more significant change is in the way this version is structured as a question-and-answer, with each verse asking, “Where will you be?,” and the chorus responding, “You’ll be lying in your grave.”

This version of the spiritual was repeated verbatim—but without credit to Reddick and Lindsley—in a collection of spirituals produced by John Nelson Clark Coggin (1870–1927), a black minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church (Fig. 8). His collection, Plantation Melodies and Spiritual Songs, was made while he was pastor of Mt. Calvary M.E. in New York City, 1923–1927.

VII. Johnson Variant

Lastly, one other notable variant was arranged by J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in The Book of American Negro Spirituals (NY: Viking Press, 1925 | Fig. 9). In the preface by his brother James Weldon Johnson, he indicated they had tried to stay true “not only to the best traditions of the melodies but also to form.” The harmonizations were an attempt to be representative of what a singer might encounter if the same harmonies were being sung, “so an old-time Negro singer could sing any of the songs through without encountering any innovations that would interrupt him or throw him off” (p. 50).

In this case, the brothers offered a version in which there were no verses, only an example of word substitution, much like Figure 1. It also has an interjection, “O Bretheren” or “O Sisteren,” inserted between repetitions, somewhat like Figure 7.

VIII. Additional Considerations

The recorded history of the song offers its own set of variants, and it gives some idea as to how the song was commonly performed. A list of the earliest seven versions is given below in order by date. Notice the cluster of activity in 1927, which would seem to indicate the height of the song’s popularity. All of these recordings have been digitized and reissued by Document Records, except the first, which was digitized by Kevin D. Davis for his website Century-Old Sounds, and the last, which has apparently not been reissued.

1. 1927 Apr. 6 (New York City)—Sara Martin, Sylvester Weaver & Hayes B. Withers, vocal trio with Weaver playing guitar (OKeh 8661). Uses the version by C.P. Jones.

2. 1927 Apr. 28 (St. Louis, MO)—Missouri-Pacific Diamond Jubilee Quartet, probably consisting of Louis Mills, James Kennedy, William Moore & Esque Ewing, unaccompanied (OKeh 8472). Similar to the Hampton variant, but with different verses.

3. 1927 July (New York City)—Norfolk Jubilee Quartette, consisting of J. “Buddie” Archer, Otto Tutson, Delrose Hollins & Len Williams, unaccompanied (Paramount 12234 / Broadway 5074). Similar to C.P. Jones’s version but with different verses.

4. 1927 Sept. (New York City)—Norfolk Jubilee Quartette, consisting of J. “Buddie” Archer, Otto Tutson, Delrose Hollins & Len Williams, unaccompanied (Paramount 12234). Similar to C.P. Jones’s version but with different verses. Apparently a re-recording of the July session, in a lower key.

5. 1929 Oct. 11 (Chicago)—Rev. Edward W. Clayborn (The Guitar Evangelist), voice and guitar (Vocalion 1458). Similar to C.P. Jones’s version but with different verses.

6. 1937 Feb. (Austin, TX)—Melinda Jones & Elsie Smith (Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song, AFS 00914 A01), recorded by John and Alan Lomax. [Dixon dates this 1934 Feb. 7, but LOC gives 1937 Feb.].

Ultimately, Jones’s version has prevailed in modern hymnals, while the other variants have fallen by the wayside.

by CHRIS FENNER
with SANDRA GRAHAM
for Hymnology Archive
17 February 2021

Footnotes:

1. Emily Hallowell, Calhoun Plantation Songs, 2nd ed. (1907), p. 4.

2. Ortho B. Cobbins, History of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. 1895–1965 (Chicago: National Publishing Board, 1966), p. 413.

3. Howard W. Odum, “Religious folk songs of the Southern negroes,” The American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education, vol. 3, no. 3 (July 1909), pp. 265–365: HathiTrust

4. Anna Kranz Odum, “Some negro folk-songs from Tennessee,” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 27, no. 105 (July–Sept. 1914), p. 257: HathiTrust

5. Anna Kranz Odum, “Some negro folk-songs from Tennessee,” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 27, no. 105 (July–Sept. 1914), p. 255: HathiTrust

Related Resources:

Eileen Southern & Josephine Wright, African-American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale, and Dance, 1600s–1920: An Annotated Bibliography, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Black Music (NY: Greenwood Press, 1990).

Robert M.W. Dixon, et al., Blues & Gospel Records, 1890–1943, 4th ed. (Oxford: University Press, 1997).

Kevin D. Davis, Century-Old Sounds: http://www.centuryoldsounds.com/

“Where Shall I Be?,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/when_judgment_day_is_drawing_nigh