Whose “Danny Boy”? on An Anthem of Black Loss and Longing by Mark Anthony Neal

Carrie Mae Weems, "Mourning" (2008)Whose “Danny Boy”? on An Anthem of Black Loss and Longingby Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan |  NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Jackie Wilson seems an unlikely place to think loudly about the matters of Black Lives or even the matters of Black Music. Though less remarked upon than his contemporary, ”the hardest working man in showbiz,” Jackie Wilson was no stranger to working hard. “Mr. Entertainment,” as was Wilson’s moniker (because you had to have one in the 1960s), literally worked himself to death collapsing on stage in 1975; he remained in a semi-comatose state until his death in 1984.
Mr. Wilson’s catalogue includes well known “classic oldies,” such as “Lonely Teardrops” and “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.”  This here is no history lesson, but we do take serious Patti LaBelle’s claim in her memoir Don’t Block the Blessings, that Mr. Wilson and a friend tried to rape her. If we are to consider James “Thunder” Early’s point that mid-20th century R&B--Rhythm and Blues--was shorthand for “Rough and Black,” then it’s reasonable to believe that many a Black woman tethered to the economy of the Chitlin’ Circuit were made black and blue. Mr. Wilson is no outlier; even the recent biopic of the “hardest working man in showbiz” admits as much, if only off-screen.
Though Mr. Wilson was from Detroit and Berry Gordy penned some of his early hits, he never recorded for Motown, which has become a catchall phrase for any upbeat, car-happy tracks recorded by African Americans in the 1960s. Ironically a track like Martha and Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” which sonically epitomizes the classic Motown sound, was as much about taking it to the Streets, as it was about Happy Negroes dancing their troubles away.
Mr. Wilson though, was neither upbeat or car happy, when he lent his considerable vocal talents to renditions of the ballad “Danny Boy.” The song was written in 1910 by British songwriter Frederic Weatherly and set to the music of the Irish song “Londonderry Air.”  Generally regarded as an anthem of Irish-Americans and often featured at the funerals of law enforcement officers, “Danny Boy” might seem an odd choice for Wilson to record.  
Wilson’s connection to “Danny Boy” was personal; it was his first recording under the nickname of  Sonny Wilson in 1953, before he replaced Clyde McPhatter as lead singer of The Dominoes.  As Susan Whitall writes in her biography of Wilson’s Detroit friend and sometimes nemesis, Little Willie John, “Danny Boy” was a sentimental favorite that was included in both of their repertoires. As Wilson first wife Freda recalls, “He’d always win amateur nights doing “Danny Boy”, and when he recorded it, he did it the same way.” (quoted in Tony Douglas, Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops).
“Danny Boy” was also covered by Sam Cooke and Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles in the period. What is important is that “Danny Boy” was not some novelty song explicitly designed to crossover to White audiences, but was a song that resonated among Black audiences.
“Danny Boy” was Wilson’s signature tune—he often closed his shows with it. As Music critic Don Walker notes in Tony Douglas’ Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops (2005), “By the time Wilson hit the final cadenza in which he wrings 23 – count  ‘em – notes out of the word “therefore”, I was convinced there wasn’t a pop singer alive who could stretch such a thin piece of material into the aural equivalent  of an Armani suit” (25-26).
I surmise that LaBelle’s own earth-shattering version, recorded with the Bluebelles for the Parkway label in 1962, was at the root of Wilson’s attempt to “discipline” her for jacking his song. This was part of the reality of the Chitlin’ Circuit, where your money was tied to your billing on the marquee; If somebody out-sang you one night, they might appear higher on the marquee the next. But let me make this claim--both Mr. Wilson and Ms. Labelle owned that song, in the way that Black performers have often created an intimacy with pieces of art never intended for their use or consumption. Mr. Wilson and Ms. Labelle transform “Danny Boy” into something that Mr. Weatherly never intended; ain’t nothin’ “Irish Ballad” about the song the way they sing it.  
Wilson’s second version appears on Soul Time, an album that finds him in between the successes of the early 1960s and his commercial resurrection in the late 1960s.  Released in April of 1965 Soul Time may be one of Wilson’s most accomplished recordings, featuring “Danny Boy” and the opening track “No Pity (in the Naked City).”   
“Danny Boy” begins to circulate among Black performance publics during the historical moment in which Paul Robeson re-imagines “Ol Man River”—a song written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, and featured in their musical Show Boat (1927), which starred Robeson. As Shana Redmond writes of Robeson’s revisions in the post-World War II period, “Robeson infused the song with the contemporary currents  and political of the struggles for civil rights and self-determination in the workplace…‘Ol Man River’ was Robeson’s clarion call in Robeson’s crusade for civil and human rights.” (Anthem: Soul Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora, 100).
As Redman further notes, per the work of Bernice Johnson Reagon, a significant amount of Black protest anthems from the first half of the 20th century can be described as “adapted songs with a new purpose.” Citing another example from that period, Redmond writes of “We Shall Overcome” that the song “rose to prominence as the anthem the Civil Rights Movement but began its political life as a freedom song in a labor battle on the southeastern seaboard.” (142).
In Wilson’s hands, “Danny Boy” is performed as nothing less than a dirge. Like so many of the hymns that Black Americans transformed into anthems of loss, resistance and resurrection—thinking Alfred E. Brumley's “I’ll Fly Away”  or  Civilla D. Martin and Charles H. Gabriel’s “His Eye is On the Sparrow” as quick examples—Wilson’s 1965 version “Danny Boy” indexes the immediate losses of his contemporaries Sam Cooke and Malcolm X,  the on-going drama that was the Selma campaign, and perhaps the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. 

Incidentally, Patti LaBelle would transform another song—“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”—another sentimental pop song that was recorded by numerous black artists including a young Aretha Franklin.  While the song remains in the national consciousness tethered to Judy Garland’s performance of it in The Wizard of Oz, LaBelle has turned it into her signature song that resonates very powerfully among Black LGBTQ communities.
Though “Danny Boy” never rose to the level of national recognition of “We Shall Overcome” or Robeson’s "Ol’ Man River", it was a Friday and Saturday night anthem, for those who most accessible freedoms might be the time they spent at the Apollo Theater in New York or Chicago’s Regal Theater.

And perhaps more importantly, “Danny Boy” highlights the important role that secular Black publics played in the tribute and memorializing of the Black Bodies that mattered in that era, and the Black Bodies that still matter today.

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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African & African American Studies at Duke University, where he directs the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship. He is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture, Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic, and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities.  Neal hosts the video podcast Left of Black; you can follow him on Twitter at @NewBlackMan.