Go Tell It On the Mountain -- John Wesley Work, Jr.

This song’s familiar refrain must have been in his ears for a number of years, before he decided to add some verses to complete the Christmas-time theme. John Wesley Work, Jr. was probably in or near his Nashville, Tennessee home, perhaps with his wife Agnes and his brother Frederick in close proximity, when he penned the words with the refrain’s title theme “Go Tell It On the Mountain” as a song that would be published by 1907. He also must have had in mind a group with whom worked at the university  where he taught when the words came to John, because they could help spread the sound of this song, an objective that seemed to fit perfectly with the song’s message. Who had invented the original words of this old spiritual ‘Go Tell It…’ is a mystery that will await us in another time.

Work may also have been near or at Fisk University in Nashville when he contemplated penning the words to ‘Go Tell It…’ in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Fisk was where he spent a great deal of time, after all, as a student of Latin and history and subsequently as a professor of  the same subjects (other sources alternately indicate he taught Greek). He also directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers and toured with them annually, a forum that gave his musical creations voice. In a similar vein, John also apparently directed a church chorus. John and Frederick and Agnes, as well as others the Works encountered, made it their mission to collect and keep alive the negro spiritual music that they’d heard for decades in the Appalachian region, such that the Work brothers eventually published two collections in 1901 and 1907, the second of which included ‘Go Tell It…’. The verses that John added to the well-known chorus expanded on the thoughts that the anonymous originator had crafted, relating the Christmas story’s scenes from the perspective of the shepherds. These shepherds saw, heard, and then visited the God-inspired events in the fields and at His birthplace, Work reminds us. John and Agnes may have had at least some of their six children by the time, perhaps during one of their family’s Christmas celebrations, that John decided to complement the negro spiritual he’d heard for so long with his three verses. Were his wife and children some of the first to hear this Christmas poetry? It’s likely that the church chorus, which included some of the Fisk singers, also had ears for John’s invention. The song quite plausibly made its way into the hills and valleys of the region as the group conducted one of its annual singing trips before it was actually in print.  

‘Go Tell It On the Mountain’ was something that John must have heard or said himself thousands of times, perhaps on occasion pondering its creator and his or her story. John and his family were at least one generation removed from the one who actually first sang the original words, someone who might have been enslaved, yet found a reason to shout joyfully. Like many of the spirituals of the period, which emerged from people whom logic might say should be complaining, ‘Go Tell It…’ refocuses one’s life upon the miraculous instead. Is life unfair, even miserable? That’s what a slave might have more logically vocalized. Perhaps John had re-discovered that logic has nothing to do with Him and His appearance.    

   

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; and Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.

See brief biography on the composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Work_Jr.

And here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/w/o/r/work_jwj.htm

Also see this link, showing all three original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/g/o/t/gotitotm.htm

A brief history of the song is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Tell_It_on_the_Mountain_(song)