My Soul’s Been Anchored in de Lord
2 min
Recording
- My Soul’s Been Anchored in de LordMarian Anderson, contralto; Kosti Vehanen, piano · 4 February 1936, New York2:12
Marian Anderson recorded Florence Price’s arrangement of this spiritual for Victor in New York on 4 February 1936, with Kosti Vehanen at the piano. Victor issued the disc in February 1937, on a ten-inch Red Seal record that also carried Harry T. Burleigh’s Go Down, Moses.
Listening notes
- Refrain and two couplets
The words are a refrain, “In the Lord, in the Lord, my soul’s been anchored in the Lord”, and two couplets: “Before I’d stay in hell one day / I’d sing and pray myself away” and “I’m going to pray and never stop / Until I’ve reached the mountain top”.
- Manuscript of 1931, edition of 1937
Price’s manuscript of the arrangement is dated 30 September 1931 and dedicated to Abbie Mitchell. Gamble Hinged Music Co. registered it for copyright on 12 August 1937, six months after the record appeared. The Remick edition of 1937 is marked “As sung by Marian Anderson (Victor Record No. 1799)”.
- A reviewer on the piano part, 1937
In February 1937 The American Record Guide reviewed the disc. A. P. D. thought the arrangement “overdone in the elaborate piano accompaniment” and in a “theatrical ending”, and wrote that Vehanen “catches the syncopation of the piano part” and plays brilliantly.
- Lincoln Memorial, 9 April 1939
Anderson sang the arrangement at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939, with Vehanen at the piano. The printed programme listed it last of three spirituals, after Burleigh’s Gospel Train and Boatner’s Trampin’. Some 75,000 people attended, and six microphones served the crowd and the radio broadcast.