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Go Tell it on the Mountain, from Family Christmas Online™This song is probably the best-known African American Christmas song - it has even found its way to hymnals in many mainline denominations. Although the chorus may date to the mid-nineteenth century, the first three verses below are generally recognized to be the work of twentieth-century African-American university professor and musicologist John Wesley Work, Jr.
In 1953, author James Baldwin use the name Go Tell it on the Mountain for the title of his best-known novel, a book about his own youth and the people who surrounded him. Although the work is hardly complementary toward the culture of the mid-twentieth-century African American church, we think John Work would have appreciated the tribute. Chorus Go, tell it on the mountain,
While shepherds kept their watching
The shepherds feared and trembled,
Down in a lowly manger
When I was a sinner,
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Work is responsible for preserving many of the spirituals of the 1800s that would otherwise have been lost to our age, as the few remaining paper copies decayed or were lost, and the generation that knew the songs by heart was passing from the scene. It is perhaps a sign of his ability to recognize greatness in simple folk melodies and lyrics that his verses for this song are often considered a part of his "collection" rather than an original work in that style.