Martin Luther King Jr.’s Extraordinary Playlist
AKA The Gospel…According to Mahalia

If I have wounded some poor soul today
If I have caused one foot to go astray
If I have walked in my own willful way
Dear Lord, forgive...
from An Evening Prayer


We Shall Overcome
wasn't even his favorite.

So, we'll go’head and call it 10.

Long before the Pete Seeger cover went pop

it was sung
by Lucille Simmons in 1945
as she helmed a Black women-led labor strike
against the American Tobacco Company
in Charleston, South Carolina.

Song like these,
the kind that stood up for people
long before boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins.
Lucille’n ‘em was bussin’

for 30 cents more per hour
armed only with a song
that went a lil’ something like this…

We shall overcome,
and we will win our rights

someday.

9.
Long before he came to be known
as the Godfather of Gospel Music
he performed with pioneering Blues artist Ma Rainey
and went by the name “Georgia Tom.”

However,
in 1932, Thomas Dorsey
tragically lost his wife Nettie Harper and their newborn infant son.

As the then music director
at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago,
Dorsey said the melody
for Precious Lord Take My Hand
came directly from God

in his time of grief.

Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

King couldn't have known it then,
sometimes we just like the songs we like…
but the 1932 hymn
would take on another
non-trivial connection to the King family

in 1974.

When his own mother
Alberta Williams King
was gunned down
while playing the organ one Sunday
at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

8.
Fit for a funeral second line,
Just a Closer Walk With Thee
is more than just a song,

it's a request.

“Hotline King”
long before Hotline Bling.

As if God is a DJ
and New Orleans Jazz
Is her genre.

The lyrics,
a scriptural portmanteau
of 2 Corinthians 5:7
and James 4:8

“We walk by faith, not by sight”
“Come near to God and He will come near to you”

Respectively.

7.
Before being recorded by Paul Robeson
on his 1943 album “Songs of Free Men,”

There is a Balm in Gilead was first recorded
by the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet in 1909.

There is balm in Gilead,
To make the wounded whole;
There's power enough in heaven,
To cure a sin-sick soul.

Nina Simone will later feature this song
on her album “Baltimore.”

Plagiarized by Washington Glass in 1854,
the modern version of the spiritual
also lifts some language from a 1779 John Newton hymn.

The same slave ship captain turned abolitionist cleric
who penned the song “Amazing Grace.”

6.
So I'll cherish the old rugged cross
Till my trophies at last I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged cross
And exchange it someday for a crown.


George Bennard, an evangelist,

Was making his way through the Midwest circa 1912…

when he was heckled by some young people at a revival stop in Michigan.

The same way misguided teens and adolescents bullied King and company

from the sidelines of every nonviolent protest.

Bennard left that encounter

unable to get the melody for The Old Rugged Cross

out of his head.



5.

According to Mahalia,

on New Year's Eve 1967
at Miss Maybelle's…

she, King and others were up late
waiting to bring in 1968.

Eve of the year he would leave us.

And before all the whistles and commotion
coming from the revelers in the street
snake charmed them outside
into the wee hours of the morning…

King asked Mahalia to sing one of his favorites.

Rock of Ages.

While I draw this fleeting breath,
When mine eyes shall close in death,
When I soar to worlds unknown,
See Thee on Thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.

The whole time, King singing right along.
“Dr. King could sing himself,” she said,
“and he sang to me all night.”

4.
Famously sung,
in technicolor, by Mahalia Jackson
at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,
How I Got Over
was composed by Clara Ward, of the Ward Sisters,
after a 1951 encounter with a mob of white men
while she, her mother and sister stopped for gas on their way to a gig

in Atlanta, Georgia.

I’m gonna walk the streets of gold (oh yes)
It’s in the homeland of the soul (oh yes).

Perhaps the most recognized song of the movement,
by those who were actually in the movement.

With apologies to We Shall Overcome.
3.
When King was invited
to be the Featured Speaker
in Denver CO, at New Hope Baptist Church’s Women’s Day Program…
he was introduced to the vocal styling of First Lady Analee Williams.
It was this moment in 1956 that King heard
If I Can Help Somebody
for the first time.
He was so moved
that he memorized and shared the song with the choir at his church
back in Atlanta,
politely demanding that they immediately

put in the Sunday rotation.

First composed by Black lyricist and pianist Alma Hazel Androzzo
for the National Tuberculosis Society in 1945,
Coretta said

this was the song that defined Martin.
It was also played at his funeral in 1968.
If I can help somebody, as I travel along
If I can help somebody, with a word or song
If I can help somebody, from doing wrong
No, my living shall not be in vain

2.
On the morning of August 28th 1963,
Hours before Marian Anderson,
world famous for integrating American opera,
was to kick off the March on Washington with her rendition
of the National Anthem…

Bayard Rustin found his $20K sound system vandalized
in an effort to sabotage the event.
Only with the help of the Army Signal Corps of Engineers
was it rebuilt.

Marian was late, nonetheless,
so they moved her from the top of the agenda
to following Martin’s speech.


A homecoming of sorts for the renowned contralto…
who first performed
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 24 years earlier
at the invitation of President Franklin Roosevelt …

after Daughters of the American Revolution denied her the opportunity
to perform at Constitution Hall.

Upon arriving late,
as we sometimes do,
she had to quickly come up with something else to sing.

Since a different singer stood in for the anthem in her absence,
as moved as everyone else in attendance
by the sheer berth of King’s dream…

He’s got the whole world in his hands.
He’s got the whole wide world in his hands.
He’s got the whole world in his hands.

was the best she could come up with.

1.
Now Mahalia was shouting
not singing,
no more than 50 feet away from the podium
when she filled the pregnant pause that swelled
in the throat of King’s most famous speech,
somewhere between the 9- and 10-minute mark...

“Tell them about the dream King!”

After which he went “off book.”
His tenor instantly unshackled to that most unforgettable tone
and tune.

Having heard King speak of this Dream
months earlier on the road in Detroit...

she knew,
that a quarter of a million people on the National Mall
needed to know it too.

Because an Evening Prayer
is nothing more than a dream.

And a dream
Is nothing more than a song
that we use to sing ourselves

awake.

© Hakim Bellamy January 13, 2024