"Deep River" is an anonymous African-American spiritual, popularized by Henry Burleigh in his 1916 collection Jubilee Songs of the USA.

Overview

The song was first mentioned in print in 1867, when it was published in the first edition of The Story of the Jubilee Singers: With Their Songs, by J. B. T. Marsh. By 1917, when Harry Burleigh completed the last of his several influential arrangements, the song had become very popular in recitals. It has been called "perhaps the best known and best-loved spiritual".

Adaptations

The melody was adopted in 1921 for the song Dear Old Southland by Henry Creamer and Turner Layton, which enjoyed popular success the next year in versions by Paul Whiteman and by Vernon Dalhart. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor arranged the melody in the tenth of his 24 Negro Melodies Op. 24 (1905). Daniel Gregory Mason quotes the melody in his String Quartet on Negro Themes Op. 19 (1919). "Deep River" has been sung in several films. The 1929 film Show Boat featured it mouthed by Laura La Plante to the singing of Eva Olivetti. Paul Robeson famously sang it accompanied by a male chorus in the 1940 movie The Proud Valley, and Chevy Chase sang it in the 1983 blockbuster hit National Lampoon's Vacation. "Deep River" is also one of five spirituals written into the 1941 oratorio A Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett.

Recordings