GUEST,Q, the date of 1910 is useful to me because I am trying to locate the original recordings of these two songs -- the first recordings made. The authorship might indeed be lost, but there was certainly a first recording of each song.

Elvis's knwoledge of spirituals was huge, of course, and he once auditioned for a gospel group in Memphis. He was a great fan of the Blackwoods , too, but he apparently learned "Swing Down Sweet Chariot" from the Golden Gate Quartet in Paris, where he saw them perform and sang together with them after the show in private ("A Life In Music," Jorgensen). They had recorded the number some twenty years earlier.