Paul Robeson: Voice of Freedom. Paul Robeson, bass-baritone. Sony Classical 19439977452, 14 CDs. Total Time: 15 hours, 25 minutes.
DIGITAL REVIEW — How do you pay tribute to the towering figure of Paul Robeson, the bass-baritone who also had a major stage and film career and was a prominent labor and civil rights activist? Sony Classical’s answer is Paul Robeson: Voice of Freedom, and it is massive. The CD/book package weighs five pounds and includes 14 CDs covering his complete Columbia, RCA, HMV, and Victor recordings from 1925 to 1958, packaged inside a 158-page coffee-table book the same dimensions as an LP box set.
The recordings include traditional plantation songs and spirituals — lots and lots of them, many recorded multiple times over the course of his life — starting with scratchy 78 rpm records from the mid-1920s, which still can’t obliterate the gorgeous richness, depth, and sheer scale of his voice. It’s important to remember that in those days performing an entire art-song recital focused on spirituals was just not done, making pathbreakers of Robeson and his longtime friend, arranger and pianist Lawrence Brown, who is featured on many early recordings. It’s also true that some texts of then-popular songs can be shocking and offensive to modern ears, even just the titles (e.g., “De Li’l Piccaninny’s Gone to Sleep”).
The set includes music from the films Sanders of the River (1935) and Song of Freedom (1936), Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Chasidic chant (Lehman Engel’s “Rebbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev”), Act IV, Scene 2 from Boris Godunov (“Gospodi! Gospodi! Vozzri, molyu”). Discs 13 and 14 are a recording of his staged 1943-44 Broadway Othello opposite the Iago of José Ferrer and Desdemona of Uta Hagen.
Then there’s Robeson narrating a 10-minute piece called Ballad for Americans — a fascinating snapshot of the year 1940. This patriotic ode features a giant chorus and orchestra, complete with a crashing-cymbals finale. With text by John Latouche and music by Earl Robinson, Ballad for Americans depicts our country as a melting pot welcoming people of every faith and ethnic background. It was wildly popular in 1940 when it was recorded, so popular that it was performed at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
The two live recitals — Live in New York 1958 at Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and Paul Robeson Live in London 1958, Royal Albert Hall — are must-listens. Live, he jumps out of the speakers — his physical presence, his intellect, his oratorical skill, his passion for this music are overwhelming. The live recordings cover a wide swath of music — the AME Zion performance ranges from the traditional “Water Boy” to Bach’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and the Yiddish folk song “Vi azoy lebt der Keyser?” (How Does the Czar Live?). There’s an astonishing eight-minute spoken/sung speech about the connected songs traditions of China, Scotland, and America, complete with a Chinese language lesson involving audience participation. “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?” is a barn-burner, with rough edges on the repeated “Daniel” and indignation on “then why not every man.” In the London performance, the final track is spoken: Pablo Neruda’s 1948 poem “Let the Rail Splitter Awake.”
The book’s black-and-white photos from Robeson’s life and career are a fascinating historical record, a reminder of the tumultuous times he lived in and the obstacles he faced as a Black singer. Photos range from early years as a star athlete to a recital at the Moscow Conservatory with pianist Brown, singing the “Star Spangled Banner” with Oakland dock workers in 1942, in uniform en route to Europe in August 1945 for the first integrated USO tour of American military bases in Europe, and at a Civil Rights Congress demonstration outside the White House in 1948.
There’s a photo of his father, Reverend William Drew Robeson, who was enslaved and escaped to Philadelphia in 1860. There are images of Robeson’s many LP album covers and typewritten record-company recording sheets. There’s a black-and-red Carnegie Hall poster announcing his October 6, 1940 concert (“Paul Robeson: The Great Negro Singer”). Nickolas Muray’s 1927 nude photo taken in New York is striking, a side view and pose reminiscent of Rodin’s The Thinker, in which he looks every inch the athlete, seated, crouched, while holding up a massive concrete block with his hands.
Also included in the book are two essays, one by scholar Shana L. Redmond and another by the singer’s granddaughter, Susan Robeson, who as a child first heard him sing live at a 1958 concert at Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem. As Susan Robeson points out in her essay, there’s a long recording gap beginning in 1948, after the FBI forced concert promoters to cancel his contracts as the U.S. entered the era of Hollywood blacklists and McCarthyism.
If you know nothing else about Robeson, you’ve heard or seen his “Ol’ Man River,” the song by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II that brought Robeson to fame after he first recorded it in the 1920s and then sang it in the 1936 film version of Show Boat. “Ol’ Man River” is included on six of the 14 CDs, and you can listen to the progression of his voice, which deepened from bass-baritone to bass over the course of his life. A 1928 recording with Paul Whiteman’s Concert Orchestra & Chorus is set in such a high key (D) that Robeson switches to a lower octave on the “of” in “sick of dying.” The whole thing is off, oddly like a dance-hall number instead of the serious societal critique it is. A 1928/29 recording with the Mississippi Chorus and Theatre Royal Drury Lane Orchestra, in B-flat, is better for his voice, taken at a much slower tempo, and displays more feeling. His voice blows out the recording equipment, though.
A September 1930 recording with the more polished Ray Noble and His Orchestra is nicely balanced and more operatic in feel, arranged with full-on solos for violin and cello. A 1932 recording with Victor Young and His Orchestra is at a very slow tempo and has a string opening that modulates more like a film soundtrack. Robeson’s delivery of the text is natural, and the power of the voice is huge — even against the over-heavy brass. A May 1936 recording with Clifford Greenwood and His Chorus & Orchestra at London’s Abbey Road Studios, where Robeson’s 1931 performance of “Rockin’ Chair” with Ray Noble became the studio’s first published recording, starts off quick and bouncy. There’s a prominent role for men’s chorus, and just before the bridge Robeson sings a low descant against the chorus melody; he doesn’t take the customary fifth slide down to “you lands in jail.”
In a 1947 “Ol’ Man River” recording with the Columbia Concert Orchestra, the key is even lower: A-flat. The orchestra is polished, the tempo is very slow, but the low E-flat is a bit too low for him. There is tangible sorrow in “is soon forgotten” against lamenting strings; the tremolo strings against “body all aching and wracked with pain” work well. “What does he care if the land ain’t free?” is beautifully contemplative. Beginning in 1938, Robeson had begun changing some of the song’s more problematic lyrics: Instead of “Ah gits weary / An’ sick of tryin’; / Ah’m tired of livin’ / An skeered of dyin’, / But Ol’ Man River, / He jes’ keeps rolling along!”, Robeson sang “But I keeps laffin’/ Instead of cryin’; / I must keep fightin’ / Until I’m dyin’, / And Ol’ Man River, / He’ll just keep rollin’ along!”
Not on this recording but later he would change “Tote that barge! / Lift that bale! / Git a little drunk, / An’ you land in jail…” to “Tote that barge / and lift dat bale!/ You show a little grit / And you lands in jail.” Here, he sings “I must keep fightin’ until I’m dying” but doesn’t update the “get a little drunk” lyric to “show a little grit.” The live Royal Albert Hall “Ol’ Man River” in 1958, sung as an encore, is recorded very close. The voice is sometimes a bit rough, and you hear him thump the floor with his foot. There is thunderous applause.
Robeson is still with us. One of today’s most innovative artists, Davóne Tines, paid tribute to Robeson in his one-man show in the summer of 2024 at New York City’s Amph on Little Island, followed by Robeson, his first solo album, on Nonesuch, offering a unique view of an artist to whom Tines says he’s often been compared. The album promises to “take listeners on a trip from the stage of Carnegie Hall to the floor of a Moscow hotel room in an attempt to understand an icon not through aspiring to his monumentality, but through connecting to his vulnerability.”
And about Show Boat: The musical last year entered into the public domain, so we may soon be seeing and hearing even more reflection on it and “Ol’ Man River.” In January 2025, NYU Skirball will present Show/Boat: A River, a reimagining that “challenges us to confront our past and envision a reimagined America for 2025, bridging the gap between history and the present with striking relevance.”
