Kingdom Coming


"Kingdom Coming", also known as "The Year of Jubilo", is an American Civil War song, written and composed by Henry C. Work in 1862, prior to the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
The song is pro-Unionist, and the lyrics are sung from the point of view of slaves in Confederate territory, who celebrate their impending freedom after their master flees the approach of Union military forces. They speculate on the future fate of the owner, whom they suspect will pretend to be a runaway slave in order to avoid capture. With their owner absent, the slaves revolt, locking their overseer in a cellar as retribution for his harsh treatment toward them. The slaves then celebrate their impending emancipation by Union soldiers by drinking their absent owner's cider and wine in his kitchen.
Work also wrote the song "Babylon is Fallen" which sees the American Civil War from the perspective of the black U.S. soldiers fighting for the Union.

History

The lyrics of "Kingdom Coming" are written in an exaggerated dialect that Work presumably believed was typical of Southern blacks, and the words are now rarely sung. Instead, the tune is usually played as a lively instrumental, as in the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War. It is often heard in productions with Western or rustic settings that have nothing specifically to do with the Civil War.

Sample lyrics


CHORUS:
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In popular culture

Cartoons

The 1928 Mickey Mouse short The Gallopin' Gaucho opens and closes with music from the song. The song became the opening music for the character Pooch the Pup, starting with the 1932 cartoon The Under Dog.
"Kingdom Coming" appears in two MGM animated cartoons directed by Tex Avery, The Three Little Pups, and Billy Boy, as well as in Michael Lah's Blackboard Jumble and Sheep Wrecked. The piece is whistled throughout all four pictures by a dimwitted wolf character voiced by Daws Butler. This wolf character has no official name, but is commonly referred to as "Jubilo Wolf", in reference to "Year of Jubilo".
It also occasionally appears in Warner Bros. cartoons, such as being used throughout the 1938 Porky Pig cartoon Injun Trouble and its 1945 remake Wagon Heels, and the closing scenes of the 1945 Bugs Bunny cartoons The Unruly Hare and Hare Trigger.
Western pop singer "Tennessee" Ernie Ford had a hit record in 1958 titled "Sunday Barbecue", which became the latest incarnation of the original tune.

Films

In Too Busy To Work, Jubilo sings the song to his daughter Rose.
In The Telegraph Trail, John Trent whistles this tune. It is instrumental background music in The Horse Soldiers ..
In Meet Me in St. Louis, Esther Smith sings new lyrics, written for the movie, to the tune of "Year of Jubilo". The lyrics are in standard English and are inoffensive, with no reference to slavery, the Civil War, or any other controversial subject.

Books

The Year of Jubilo was the sequel to Ruth Sawyer's fictionalized autobiography Roller Skates, which won the 1937 Newbery Medal.

Other

The tune of "Kingdom Coming" was the opening theme for the NBC radio show The Chase and Sanborn Hour from 1940 to 1949.
In the late 1940s, this tune, played by a string orchestra, was used in a radio contest similar to "Name That Tune," called "Stop The Music", wherein random people were called on the phone and asked if they could name it for a substantial monetary prize. Most people could not, mistaking it for "The Old Grey Mare", which it resembles only slightly in its rhythm.
The tune was also used in the intro to the second movement of John Phillip Sousa's cubaland suite. A compilation of folk songs from Spain in mvt. 1 America in mvt. 2 and Cuba in mvt. 3

Notable recordings