This week is all about songs with a person’s name in the title, and today’s thus-titled classic song of the day is “Michael” by the Highwaymen. You might know it better as “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” and it’s been covered by many artists since its birth as a Black American spiritual way back in the 1860s. (That’s right, the 1860s, not the 1960s—the song is more than 150 years old.)
The spiritual known as “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” was first sung during the American Civil War by former slaves on St. Helena Island, off the coast of South Carolina. It was initially notated, as he heard the freedmen sing it, by Charles Pickard Ware in 1863. That music was first published in 1867 in a book titled Slave Songs of the United States by Ware, William Francis Allen, and Lucy McKim Garrison.
As a folk song, “Michael” had numerous sets of lyrics, some of which you may know and others you may not. One of the first known versions went like this:
Michael row de boat ashore, Hallelujah!
Michael boat a gospel boat, Hallelujah!
I wonder where my mudder deh.
See my mudder on de rock gwine home.
On de rock gwine home in Jesus’ name.
Michael boat a music boat.
Gabriel blow de trumpet horn.
O you mind your boastin’ talk.
Boastin’ talk will sink your soul.
Another early version had these lyrics:
Michael haul the boat ashore.
Then you’ll hear the horn they blow.
Then you’ll hear the trumpet sound.
Trumpet sound the world around.
Trumpet sound for rich and poor.
Trumpet sound the jubilee.
Trumpet sound for you and me.
One of the first recorded versions of “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” was by folksinger Pete Seeger and the Weavers in 1957, on a recording of their Christmas Eve 1955 post-blacklist reunion concert. That same year, fellow folksinger Bob Gibson recorded the tune for his Carnegie Concert album.
In late 1960, a folk quintet called the Highwaymen (not to be confused with the later Highwaymen country supergroup, with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson) made their own recording of the song, now titled simply “Michael.” Their single hit #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard’s Easy Listening charts in September of 1961. That’s the version with which most of us are familiar. The Highwaymen recording also hit #1 in the UK and was named by Billboard as the number-three song for all of 1961.
That’s not the end of the story, however. “Michael” became a folk standard for artists throughout the ages, sung by everybody from Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul and Mary to the Beach Boys and the Lennon Sisters. Trini Lopez even had a minor hit with a rock ‘n’ roll version of the tune in 1964.
So that’s the story of “Michael,” AKA “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” Go ahead and sing along—I know you know this one.
