Song of the Day 1/7: Jester Hairston, “Amen”

Sidney Poitier, who died Thursday at age 94, was born in Miami but grew up where his parents lived, Arthur’s Town, on Cat Island in the Bahamas, one of that scattered country’s farthest-flung Out Islands. Arthur’s Town is home to about 150 people, about the size of Viola, and Cat Island remains remote and sparsely populated even in our travel-obsessed culture. Its trickle of tourism consists mainly of fly-casting anglers seeking bonefish.

I’ve been to the island several times — long story — and while everybody comes from somewhere, the distance from this hardscrabble village to the apogee of Hollywood is mind-boggling. He outlived most of the people who saw him in his prime, when his talent was so apparent, his charisma so palpable, that the restricted roles available to Black actors at the time could not contain him. He opened a lot of doors, but the most important was that he was the first Black actor who was good box office — his presence in a movie guaranteed an audience.

Poitier played many memorable roles, but he became the first Black to win a lead acting Oscar for a 1963 movie that’s now barely remembered, a sentimental tale that used the main social concerns of the day, civil rights and the Cold War, to preach a message of universal brotherhood. Poitier played itinerant handyman Homer Smith, who’s coaxed into building a chapel for a group of German-speaking nuns eking out a meager existence in the American southwest. It’s an uplifting story that, lacking a villain, also lacks bite, leading to dismissive reviews from modern sensibilities.

Some of its key scenes feature Poitier teaching a traditional Baptist gospel song to the Catholic nuns, and “Amen” became an often-heard hymn at religious services for years afterwards. Poitier didn’t do the actual singing — that was the work of composer and gospel music expert Jester Hairston, who arranged the traditional spiritual for the film. This was the movie’s final scene, when Smith, who’s been meaning to depart since his first night there, takes his leave, and Lilia Skala’s Mother Superior for the first time doesn’t try to stop him. (Old car trivia: Poitier is driving a 1959 Plymouth Sport Suburban.) Hairston went uncredited as a performer, though he was listed for vocal arrangements.

The song actually made the charts in 1964 when Curtis Mayfield arranged it for the Impressions after hearing it in the film. “I’d gone to see ‘Lilies of the Field,’ and the song in it, ‘Amen,’ was very inspiring for me as was the movie … Of course, I’d decided to do a version of it. We put it together in the studio starting off with a musical ‘swing low sweet chariot’, and then we fell into that particular song with somewhat of a marching rhythm.” It reached No. 7 on the Hot 100.

The traditional hymn was first recorded in 1948 by the Wings Over Jordan Choir. I couldn’t find that version, but they re-recorded it a few years later. The video won’t embed, so cut and paste to hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE6mVmtwaTQ