# SOLID ROCK

## Favorite Hymns of My People

### PAUL ROBESON

World-famed for over 30 years as a singer of Negro spirituals, the renowned concert artist has now recorded, for the first time in his career, an album of favorite hymns.

**SOLID ROCK**

Here in this album of six selections is all of the surging power and heartfelt longing, the moving faith and soaring aspiration of the old-time hymns.

**SOLID ROCK**

Here, with the matchless beauty and feeling that have thrilled audiences around the world, Paul Robeson sings the songs you love. You will play these records over and over again. . . . Here are hours of enraptured listening pleasure for your family and friends!

**SOLID ROCK**

The following hymns, sung with piano accompaniment, are included in this superb new album:

PAUL ROBESON says:

"As an artist, my greatest interest has always been in the field of folk song; and to me that means not only the classic folk songs that are our heritage from the past, but also *songs that the people sing today*.

"I began my career more than 30 years ago as a singer of Negro music—mostly the spirituals. The power and beauty of this great body of song is undying, but we have seen the spirituals—the collective creation of the Negro slaves—become more limited in use. Today the classic spirituals are usually presented by concert soloists rather than as group song.

"In the churches—the main center of Negro group singing—it is the hymn rather than the spiritual that is sung by the people. (Of course, there are some spirituals which have come to be sung as church hymns: *Jacob's Ladder* is one example.)

"And there are other reasons why it is deeply fitting that I now record an album of favorite hymns. From my earliest days back in Princeton, New Jersey, where my father lived and died a minister of the Gospel, these songs have been close to my heart. Raised in the church—I studied two years for the ministry—I grew up with the hymns, the first songs that I knew.

"I sing these songs today in Mother A. M. E. Zion Church in New York, where my brother Ben is pastor and of which I am an active member. And recently, as I have gone about the land, singing mainly at church services and concerts, the hymns have become even dearer to me. Church folk have urged me to include their favorites in an album and I have been happy to do so.

"Here I have sought to present these hymns in the way I learned them from my people—simply, tenderly; and to interpret honestly the great qualities of the human spirit that I find triumphant in them. For these are songs of faith and fellowship, of comfort and courage. 'Be not dismayed,' my people sing together, though you be 'hand-sore and scarred from the work you have done.'

"Yes, it has been a long, hard road for all of us—that road that my own father took as a fugitive from chattel slavery—and the goal still lies ahead; but together we 'shout for glory,' knowing indeed that 'every round goes higher and higher. ...'

"And along with all that I have learned from my brothers and sisters of the church community, from their lives and their songs, there is the warming glow I feel these days as I move among them, as they take my hand in theirs. So it is to them, with the deepest love and respect, that I dedicate this album."

Paul Robeson