Michael, Row the Boat Ashore

"Michael"
Single by The Highwaymen
from the album The Highwaymen
B-side"Santiano"
ReleasedSeptember 1960 (1960-09)
RecordedJune 1960
StudioBell Sound Studios, New York City
GenreFolk[1]
Length2:57
LabelUnited Artists
Songwriter(s)Tony Saletan, traditional
Producer(s)Lou Adler
The Highwaymen singles chronology
"Michael"
(1960) 		"Cotton Fields"
(1961)

A man works a cornfield on St. Helena Island, where "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" was first attested.

"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" (also called "Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore", "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore", or "Michael, Row That Gospel Boat") is a traditional spiritual first noted during the American Civil War at St. Helena Island, one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina.[2] The best-known recording was released in 1960 by the U.S. folk band The Highwaymen; that version briefly reached number-one hit status as a single.

It was sung by former slaves whose owners had abandoned the island before the Union navy arrived to enforce a blockade. Charles Pickard Ware was an abolitionist and Harvard graduate who had come to supervise the plantations on St. Helena Island from 1862 to 1865, and he wrote down the song in music notation as he heard the freedmen sing it. Ware's cousin William Francis Allen reported in 1863 that the formerly enslaved Black Americans sang the song as they rowed him in a boat across Station Creek.[3]

The song was first published in 1867 in Slave Songs of the United States by Allen, Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison.[4] Folk musician and educator Tony Saletan rediscovered it in 1954 in a library copy of that book and introduced it into the American folk music revival. The song is cataloged as Roud Folk Song Index No. 11975.

  1. ^ Breihan, Tom (November 15, 2022). "The Byrds - "Mr. Tambourine Man". The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music. New York: Hachette Book Group. p. 68.
  2. ^ William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States, p. xl.
  3. ^ Epstein, Dena (2003). Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music of the Civil War. University of Illinois Press. p. 290. ISBN 0-252-07150-6.
  4. ^ William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States, p. 23.