“Hear Jerusalem Moan” — more fully “Don’t You Hear Jerusalem Moan” — is a traditional old-time song with a comic, lightly satirical streak. It has no known author; like much of the early string-band repertoire it circulated by ear long before it was recorded.
The song reached records in 1925, in a version by the Georgia musicians Bill Chitwood and Bud Landress. For all its churchy refrain, it is at heart a novelty number: its verses gently poke fun at the preachers of one denomination after another and at the trial of sitting through long Sunday sermons. That mix of sacred imagery and good-humored ribbing was common in old-time music, where comic religious songs sat easily beside the genuinely devotional.
The song has carried a tangle of related titles over the years and stayed alive as a brisk, crowd-pleasing piece.
