Civil War Songs: The Union

As some of you may know, I am playing President Abraham Lincoln in "Honorable Distinction," a play produced by and performed at the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

The play is about the experience, struggles, and victories of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry and other famous and should-be-famous black heroes of the Civil War period, including Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Robert Smalls, and Martin Delaney. It is being done in salute to our veterans the weekend after Memorial Day. Tickets are available at Eventbrite.

This is my second year doing this show, and the second time playing Lincoln (though not in the same show). I played General William Tecumseh Sherman the last time I was in this play), and again, in addition to playing a major role, I am also supplying a number of costumes and playing in the band. As part of the band-playing, I have am advising the band and the production on certain songs that may fit into the show.

Here are YouTube videos of several Civil War songs that you may hear during the show, in one manner or another. This list is of Union songs only. Confederate songs are in the following post.

You can hear most of these songs performed in bombastic style by US military orchestras (you may search if you like), but I have tried to find versions that sound more like they are being sung by real people. One amazing thing about these songs is how adaptable they are to different arrangements, accents, instruments, and rhythms!

A second post will follow of Confederate songs

UNION SONGS
The Battle Cry of Freedom (Rally 'Round the Flag):
Perhaps the best-known song from the Union side after "Battle Hymn of the Republic." It was a big deal because it both glorified the Union and stated the cause of ending slavery.

This "parlor version" gives a sense of how it might have been sung by a gathering of family and friends around the piano in a well-to-do family's home (Not a dynamic you find often in modern recordings of Civil War songs):

The Battle Hymn of the Republic (John Brown's Body; Glory, Glory Hallelujah):
Like many folk songs, the lyrics have been changed and misinterpreted and adapted for different causes. Here are three different arrangements, each with a different mood:

March:
(Mid 20th century Mich Miller version)

Gospel:

Campfire:

Tramp Tramp, Tramp the Boys Go Marching:
This was about men in prisoner of war camps looking forward to rescue by their comrades. The melody is used for the Christian song, "Jesus Loves the Little Children," and apparently other songs all over  the world.

This version is probably sounds more like it might have been heard back in the day and has some great civil war pics in the video:

This version is played on a music box from 1904!

When Johnny Comes Marching Home:
Adapted from an old Irish tune, you might know this as "The Ants Go Marching One by One..."
Note the strength of the "Hurrah!" each time it comes around. This was a thing back in the day.

This song probably has the most fascinatingly adaptable melody of all Civil War songs.

As an example, this instrumental version is a fascinating progression from modest marching tune to the very definition of bombastic orchestral excess, and then ends in a haunting melody on a single fife.

My Old Kentucky Home:

It was not until I did the research for this show that I actually heard this whole song and learned that it is actually an anti-slavery song. Of it, Frederick Douglas himself wrote that the song "awakens sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and flourish": 

And here is a contemporary acapella vocal group doing their version, proving what Dave Alvin says, "It's all folk music."

The lyrics you hear at the Kentucky  Dereby are not the original ones, which is why the abolitionist heritage of this song my be surprising. But I found (thanks to the internet) those lyrick. Modern eyes and ears my find them quite stunning:

Original Lyrics (composed by Stephen Foster in 1853):

Verse 1:
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
‘Tis summer, the darkies are gay;
The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day.
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright;
By ‘n’ by Hard Times comes a-knocking at the door,
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

Chorus:
Weep no more my lady
Oh! weep no more today!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
For the Old Kentucky Home far away.

Verse 2:
They hunt no more for the possum and the coon,
On meadow, the hill and the shore,
They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
On the bench by the old cabin door.
The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart,
With sorrow, where all was delight,
The time has come when the darkies have to part,
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

Chorus

Verse 3:
The head must bow and the back will have to bend,
Wherever the darky may go;
A few more days, and the trouble all will end,
In the field where the sugar-canes grow;
A few more days for to tote the weary load,
No matter, ’twill never be light;
A few more days till we totter on the road,
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

So some see the show, hear the music, learn the history, and enjoy the acting, singing., an dancing talents at Mt Pisgah Baptist Church this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, May 30, 31, and June 1.

Next: CONFEDERATE TUNES!

BONUS!

Marching Through Georgia:
We are not actually doing this song anywhere in the play, but it is too important to leave out of a collection of Civil War songs.

This is the version of which I am most familiar. I love the spirit of the vocalists in this band! It does use a word or two that are no longer in common parlance among polite company, and some may consider it insensitive towards the sufferings of the South. But the event it describes did shorten the war. Not to get too political, I wonder how many such people complain about the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan? Would they object to a song called "Flying over Hiroshima?"

Tennessee Ernie Ford was part of the mid 20th-Century movement that sanitized and glorified the Civil War and its participants, particularly the Confederates. This version carefully omits any part of the song that might be politically sensitive or relates the suffering of the victims and the aggressive nature of the event.

Being as I sing this song as part of my "Time Travelling Bard" act, I was tickled to be able to actually play General Sherman in last year's version of this play!

P.S. There is a reenactment regiment of the 54th Mass in Washington D.C.!