Stories Behind Popular Hymns: Gaither HomecomingSampel

Go Tell It on the Mountain

John Wesley Work, Jr., may not have originated the Negro spiritual “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” but he can take credit for the fact that we still sing it every Christmas. As the son of a church choir director, Work grew up in Nashville loving music. Even though he earned his Master’s in Latin and went on to teach ancient Latin and Greek, his first love continued to be music, and he went on to become the first African-American collector of Negro spirituals.

This proved to be a daunting task for Work because the whole premise of the genre is that they were passed down orally, from plantation to plantation; very few were ever written down. But Work proved up to the challenge, publishing his first book, New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, in 1901, and the second, New Jubilee Songs and Folk Songs of the American Negro, six years later. It was in this second volume that “Go, Tell It on the Mountain” first appeared. The original singers of the song fulfilled the same important task the angels gave the shepherds that first Christmas night outside of Bethlehem, proclaiming “that Jesus Christ is born!” And thanks to John Wesley Work, so can we.