Shadrack

Falling down a Youtube rabbit hole through American musical history

A classic American musical story:

“Shadrack” is a 1930s pop song based on the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, from Daniel 3-26. It was written by a white Louisiana lawyer and got covered by jazz legends, black gospel groups, and a million other people. This song is the trunk of the tree.

BRANCH 1

Original 1938 Louis Armstrong version. He rerecorded essentially the same arrangement, with better sound quality, in the 50s.

1951 Louis Armstrong version (with Jack Teagarden) from the movie The Strip. In some later versions singers alter the names of the instruments to match whoever is playing (instead of “music of the cornet” the lyric becomes “music of the trambone”.

1956 Sonny Rollins with Modern Jazz Quartet

John Coltrane “Mr. P.C.” rec 1959

Branford Marsalis “Mr. Steepee” 1990

BRANCH 2

Golden Gate Quartet, 1946
The quartet recorded it a few times. Sly Stone, hip 1960s Oakland DJ, must have known this one.

Sly Stone “Loose Booty” 1974

features the line “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego”, essentially the same rhythm as Louis Armstrong/Golden Gate Quartet tracks.

Beastie Boys “Shadrach” 1989, samples the Sly Stone

BRANCH 3

Teddy Stauffer Mit Seinen Original-Teddies* 1939
Teddy Stauffer was a Swiss jazz star working in Germany in the 1930s.

Karlheinz Stockhausen was 11 when this came out. He may have heard this version of the Louis Armstrong version.

from Alex Ross’s “The Rest is Noise” (2007)

As the Second World War raged, [Stockhausen] began opening his ears to new sounds; like many Germans, he tuned in to American military broadcasts, and the bopping rhythms of Glenn Miller’s band relieved the tedium of wartime discipline…the young composer took a particular interest in the semi-independent movement of jazz melodies

Gesang der Junglinge, or Song of the Youths, created in 1955-56, is Stockhausen’s most original electronic creation and perhaps the most influential electronic piece ever composed. The youths in question are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, from the book of Daniel.

Paul McCartney interview with Mark Lewisohn, 2013

There was only one Stockhausen song I liked actually! We used to get it in all interviews ‘Love Stockhausen!’. There was only one, Gesang der Jünglinge – ‘The Song Of The Young’ – that was the only one I ever liked! I thought most of his other stuff was too fruity.

Beatles “Tomorrow Never Knows”, influenced by Gesange der Jungliche, 1966