Pharaoh's Army Got Drownded (O, Mary Don't You Weep)
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2021-01-10

Day 298 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Sandburg only has the first and last verse. The remainder is how I first learned it and have sung countless times.

First published/recorded in 1915 (recording, Fisk University Male Quartette)

Also titled “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” the song "is one of the ethereal African American spirituals--a freedom song--born in the anonymity of slavery and drifted across time to bubble up as the need arose. The song might have been lost to the ages had it not been resurrected by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers of Nashville, Tennessee, who performed it on their post-bellum worldwide tours and were the first to record it as “O Mary Don’t You Weep, Don’t You Mourn” in New York City on October 23, 1915 (Columbia A1895).

“Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” drew from both Old and New Testament stories with Pharaoh’s army perishing in the Red Sea as they pursued the Israelites fleeing bondage out of Egypt (Exodus 13:17-14:29), and sisters Mary and Martha of Bethany blaming Jesus for failing their brother Lazarus, pleading that Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, which he miraculously did (John 11: 28-35).

The song is not coy or veiled in meaning: in the struggle for “right,” don’t be troubled by harm that comes to those who were inflictors or stood in the way. In 1958, as the Civil Rights Movement was heating up the Swan Silvertones (“Swan” was the name of the bakery that sponsored them) recorded their stunningly brilliant version of “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” (Vee Jay 879), that meaning hit home especially.

The Silvertones were led by Claude Jeter with Paul Owens, John Myles, and William Connor (Louis Johnson, a regular in the line-up, may not have been present) delivered a tour de force performance recorded live in the studios of radio station WENW in Bessemer, Alabama. In his singular arrangement, Jeter deconstructed the traditional “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” and reassembled it as nothing less than a battle cry for freedom. [from the Library of Congress]