Audio Clips
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Title: Ol’ Man River (2:33)  Listen
Album: Paul Robeson: Ol’ Man River
Recording Label: EMI Records
Year Produced: 1990
Sound recordings made 1929-1939
Ol’ Man River was the song above any that matched to perfection his [Robeson’s] profoundly bass voice, his magnificent physique, his nobility of looks and his warmth of character. Peter Gammond, 1985
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Title: Wales (0:54) Listen
Album: Paul Robeson: Freedom Train and the Welsh Transatlantic Concert
Recording Label: Folk Era Records
Year Produced: 1998
Sound recordings made 1957-58
The 1957 Welsh Transatlantic Concert sung in New York by telephone to Porthcrawl, Wales was the culmination of Robeson’s political defiance through music…marking one of the last times Robeson was forced to defy the Government’s attempt to silence him. Ian Shaw, 1998
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Title: L’Amour de moi (2:52) Listen
Album: Paul Robeson: The Legendary Moscow Concert
Recording Label: Telstar Records
Year Produced: 1997
Sound recordings made June 14, 1949 – Live concert from Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow
My father’s achievements as one of the greatest scholar-athletes in U.S. college history, as the world’s top concert singer for a decade, as the first Black film actor to star in dignified roles, and as a dominant figure in the American theatre on the strength of his portrayal of Shakespeare’s “Othello,” remain unmatched. Paul Robeson Jr., 1995
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Title: Ballad for Americans (10:07) Listen
Album: Paul Robeson: Songs for Free Men – 1940-45
Recording Label: Pavilion Records
Year Produced: 1997
Sound recordings made in 1945
Ballad for Americans was originally titled The Ballad for Uncle Sam, writing for a WPA theatre project called “Sing for Your Supper” presented in 1939. Even then, a Virginia congressman attempted to censure the production for its “Communistic” overtones. David Lennick, 1997
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Title: Trees (2:29) Listen
Album: Great Voices of the Century: Paul Robeson
Recording Label: Memoir Records
Year Produced: 1992
Sound recordings made in 1945
The appearance of Paul Robeson in a series devoted to the great opera singers of the century may cause a raised eyebrow or two. Although his color mitigated against him forging an operatic career in the unenlightened pre-war years, his instrument was certainly one of the great voices of the century. Tony Watts, 1992
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Title: Chin Chin (Chinese Marching Song) (1:46) Listen
Album: Paul Robeson: The Peace Arch Concerts
Recording Label: Folk Era Records
Year Produced: 1998
Sound recordings made in 1952
On May 18, 1952, Paul Robeson, in defiance of the United States government, stood on a makeshift stage at the Peace Arch Park in Canada, one foot away from the American border, and sang to 40,000 Canadians and Americans, proving that his voice could not be silenced. Ian Shaw, 1998
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Title: It Ain’t Necessarily So (2:39) Listen
Album: Paul Robeson: Songs of Free Men
Recording Label: Columbia Masterworks
Year Produced: 1997
Sound recordings made in 1947
Tony Randall, the famous American actor, baritone and vocal connoisseur of long-standing, met Robeson at a party. “It was a rainy night after my first play in New York, and he came to wish all us young actors well. He was putting on his galoshes to leave and we all started chanting ‘Robeson! Robeson!’ He smiled – he was a huge man with the most wonderful smile in the world – and said, ‘I’ll sing you a work song…’ He barely used his voice, using less effort than a whisper. And I tell you the walls shook and the windows. He had more rumble in his voice than any other human I’ve ever heard. It was a voice from God!” Albert Innaurato, 1997
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