Go Tell It on the Mountain

“Go Tell It on the Mountain” is an African-American spiritual, most likely from the oral tradition, first printed in 1907 in John Wesley Work Jr.’s New Jubilee Songs and Folk Songs of the American Negro. Work (1871–1925), a Nashville man who taught Latin and history at Fisk University and directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers, was the first African American to collect folk songs and spirituals; he may have had a hand in shaping this one, but it is usually credited as traditional. The earliest recording SecondHandSongs lists is by the soprano Dorothy Maynor with an unaccompanied male choir, made on November 14, 1941. In 1963 Peter, Paul and Mary rewrote it as “Tell It on the Mountain,” turning it toward the Exodus story with a “let my people go” refrain — a different text, which reached No. 33 on the pop chart and which some gospel groups sing in its place. Little Big Town took the Christmas song to No. 35 on Billboard’s country chart in 2006.