Paul Robeson
photo: unknown photographer · public domain ↗Paul Robeson was the bass-baritone, actor, and activist who in 1925 became the first performer to give a full concert recital of African American spirituals and work songs, at a time when the classical stage treated them as unworthy of the recital hall. His commanding ‘Ol' Man River,’ introduced in Show Boat, became his signature, and his insistence on singing spirituals in the oral tradition he grew up with — rather than a more European concert-song style — shaped how a generation of singers approached the repertoire, Harry Belafonte among them.
Robeson coached with Burleigh and sometimes performed Burleigh's published spiritual arrangements, though Robeson's own delivery stayed closer to the oral, congregational tradition Burleigh had formalized for the concert stage.
listen forListen for the same steady, hymn-like piano accompaniment under a spiritual — the concert-song format Burleigh pioneered for material that had previously circulated only by ear.
Hayes was the first African American concert singer to achieve international fame performing spirituals on the recital stage, and his programs — closing with a set of spiritual arrangements — set the precedent that Robeson's own landmark 1925 all-spirituals recital followed a few years later.
listen forListen for the same unaccompanied gravity and plain-spoken diction on a spiritual — both men treat the melody as testimony rather than as a showcase for vocal ornament.