Amazing Grace key of G
In the late 1700s, before John Newton composed “Amazing Grace,” he was the owner and captain of a slave ship. He experienced what he was later to refer to as his “great deliverance” while attempting to steer his ship through a violent storm in the middle of the Atlantic. When all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, it is reported that he exclaimed, “Lord, have mercy upon us,” and miraculously the ship, it’s crew and cargo of Africans were spared.
Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him. According to popular folklore, Newton then turned his slave ship 180 degrees around and took those people back to their homes.
He sailed back to England, joined the Methodist Church, became a minister and spent the rest of his life in service of the church. In that time Newton composed some 280 hymns, including “Amazing Grace” which describes the great epiphany he experienced at sea.
In the Southern United States, this hymn is traditionally sung in “long-meter” style, where the preacher “lines out” the lyrics to a congregation that may not have been able to afford hymnals or been able to read them.
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Careless Love key of C
“Careless Love” is one of the earliest, if it is not actually the first, blues and is one of the greatest American melodies. Folklorists think that it originated among white singers and was adopted later by Southern African Americans. “Careless Love,” like many songs from the South, has changed hands across race lines so many times that it has invariably picked up musical and lyrical characteristics from both cultures.
“Careless Love,” like “Easy Rider” and “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor,” all share an early blues heritage as well as a common musical structure. Each verse is sixteen measures in length, with the first line repeated 3 times and the “punch” or rhyming line as the fourth and final line of the stanza.
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Corrinna, Corrinna key of G
“Corrina, Corrina” has always been a dance number and is the same song as versions of “Roberta” and “Alberta.” Whatever name this tune goes by, it has been a popular song among Anglo and African American musicians for as long as anyone can remember. It’s part blues and part hillbilly. Notable among the countless recordings of it are cuts by Mississippi John Hurt, Big Joe Turner and British rocker Eric Clapton, but the song’s popularity was undoubtedly sustained when a Texas swing fiddler by the name of Bob Wills and his band, the Texas Playboys recorded it in the late 1930s. The record was a huge hit and became one of their signature pieces.
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Down in the Valley key of D
Popular music almost always has to do with the subjects of love and heartbreak, and in the days before records and radio, “Down in the Valley” was among the most popular songs sung in rural America. Folklorists count many, many variations of this classic, but each is sentimental and nostalgic and each deals with isolation.
“You Are My Sunshine” and “Home on the Range” are close musical relatives of “Down in the Valley.”
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Good News key of D
Spirituals - great songs of faith born out of slavery - represent one of America’s important song treasures. The African American spiritual style often features a “call and response” format as well as a two line, interchangeable lyric. A spiritual also often involves an Old Testament or Judgment Day theme.
After the Civil War, African American colleges such as Fisk University, sent their choirs to tour the northern United States and Europe. Groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers helped to popularize many of the spirituals that are still widely known today.
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My Home’s Across the Smoky Mountains key of D
The most influential group in country music history, the Carter Family switched the emphasis from hillbilly instrumentals to vocals, made scores of their songs part of the standard country music canon, and made a style of guitar playing, “Carter picking,” the dominant technique for decades. Along with Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family were among the very first stars in country music.
Comprised of a gaunt, shy gospel quartet member called Alvin P. Carter and two reserved country girls - his wife Sara and their sister-in-law Maybelle - the Carter Family sang a pure, simple harmony that influenced not only the numerous other family groups of the ‘30s and the ‘40s, but folk, bluegrass and rock musicians like Woody Guthrie, Bill Monroe, the Kingston Trio, Doc Watson, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris, to mention just a few. It’s unlikely that bluegrass music would have existed without the Carter Family. A. P., the family patriarch, collected hundreds of British Isles and Appalachian folk songs and, in arranging these for recording, both enhanced the pure beauty of these “facts-of-life tunes” and at the same time saved them for future generations.
Those hundreds of songs the trio found around their Virginia and Tennessee homes, after being sung by A.P., Sara, and Maybelle, became Carter songs, even though these were folk songs and in the public domain. Among the more than 300 sides they recorded are “Worried Man Blues,” “Wabash Cannonball,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken," "Wildwood Flower," "Keep on the Sunny Side" and “My Home’s Across the Smoky Mountains.”
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When the Saints Go Marching In key of C
In the years before emancipation, it was not uncommon for backwoods slave owners to bring their slaves to summer revival meetings. Here the slaves could freely participate in the meeting, contribute to the singing and to the general excitement of the occasion.
“Old Ship of Zion” was commonly sung at such a revival and was one of the first songs to cross the race line from white camp-meeting hymn to African American spiritual. Black singers have used the melody to create an entire family of spirituals - ”The Gospel Train,” “The Whole Round World,” “Way Beyond the Sun,” and the best known of all, “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
It’s ironic that over the years “The Saints” has become an international hot jazz standard. New Orleans jazz men, most of whom came from good religious homes, would never jazz up the normal spiritual, but “The Saints” was an exception. It had already been turned into a red-hot revival tune.
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