The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #130508   Message #2937617
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
30-Jun-10 - 09:23 PM
Thread Name: St. Helena Island Spirituals Permathread
Subject: At de Jedgment Bar
64. At the Jedgment Bar

Only one line of the music of this chorus and solo song is printed (p. 51, no. 64), the rest omitted.
Chorus
At de jedgment bar
Solo
(omitted)

Several "Little Black Train" spirituals mention the Judgement Bar. These are posted in "The Little Black Train" thread 31582.
"That Little Black Train Is A Comin'," version in M. A. Grissom, The Negro Sings a New Heaven:
Part verse:
That little black train and engine
An' a little baggage car,
With idle thoughts and wicked deeds,
Must stop at the judgement bar.
(thread 31582 for complete song)

"The Little Black Train" in Dorothy Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folksongs:
Similar verse to one collected by Grissom, above.

"The Little Black Train" in Lomax, Our Singing Country;
There's a little black train and engine,
And one small baggage car;
You won't need to have much baggage
To come to the judgement bar.

Kurt Weill used "Little Black Train", with the line 'You rich old fool, at the judgement bar', in his folk opera "Down in the Valley."

Joe Armstrong and group, St. Simon's Island, sang a song "Blow Gabriel (Judgement Bar)" recorded on a Georgia Sea Island Singers recording.

The last may be similar to the missing spiritual, but I don't have the recording.

From the poetry of James Weldon Johnson:
"The Judgement Day"
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, 1927.

"And the living and the dead in the twinkling of an eye
Are caught up in the middle of the air,
Before God's judgement bar."