Jester Hairston sings and conducts his "Amen" - Lewis and Clark College Choir - c 1971

Jester Hairston
"Amen, for mixed voices (S.A.T.B.) a cappella" (1957)
New York : Schumann Music Co., ©1957.
Conducted and sung by Jester Hairston (1901-2000) with performance by Lewis and Clark College Choir, Dr. L. Stanley Glarum (1908-1976), director.
Lewis and Clark College Choir, Portland, Oregon Records [CENTURY] 36567
Digitized by Joseph Valles using a 5-laser ELPJ turntable and a Behringer UFO 002 digital processor.
This is a fantastic, obscure find on a vinyl album issued around 1971 by Lewis and Clark College Choir in Portland, Oregon: the great arranger of Negro Spirituals, Jester Hairston, appeared suddenly from out of the audience at a Los Angeles concert of the choir, and was invited to conduct one of his works. Not only did he conduct his spiritual, "Amen" (originally published in 1957), he also provided an initial commentary about this spiritual, and then SANG the lead!! He would have been 70 years old at that concert!
From the album liner notes:
"Jester Hairston, well-known composer of Negro Spirituals, introduces and conducts his compositions. Whenever the Lewis and Clark College Choir tours in the Los Angeles area, Hairston numbers are included because he always appears at one of the concerts. Of course, he is invited to conduct his own music."
About Jester Hairston:
"Hairston was born in Belews Creek, a rural community on the border of Stokes, Forsyth, Rockingham and Guilford counties in North Carolina. His grandparents had been slaves. At an early age he and his family moved to Homestead, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, where he graduated from high school in 1921. Hairston was still a small child when his father died in a job-related accident; he was raised by his grandmother while his mother went to work. While growing up, Hairston heard his grandmother and her friends talking and singing about life on the plantations of the southern US. He listened with immense interest and made a promise to himself that he would preserve this history through music.
"Hairston initially majored in landscape architecture at Massachusetts Agricultural College in the 1920s. While studying landscape architecture, Hairston became involved in various church choirs and choral groups. The accompanist of one, Anna Laura Kidder, saw his potential in music and became his benefactor. Mrs. Kidder offered him financial assistance to study music at Tufts University, from which he graduated in 1929. He was one of the first black students admitted to Tufts.[ Later he studied music at the Juilliard School. He worked as a choir conductor in the early stages of his career. His work with choirs on Broadway eventually led to his singing and acting in plays, films, radio programs, and television shows."--Wikipedia
About L. Stanley Glarum:
"L. Stanley Glarum, a prodigious choral composer and conductor who published over 200 compositions in his lifetime, was a man firmly rooted in his Northwestern heritage. Born in Portland on April 19, 1908, Glarum had his start in choral music immediately following his graduation from high school in 1926, when he became the accompanist and arranger for the Portland Advertising Club Gleemen. In this group, he learned to arrange for the male chorus and for male quartet. During the next ten years, he also studied jazz and classical piano, organ, theory, and composition privately. He left Portland after that period for St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, where he studied composition with F. Melius Christiansen, the famous Norwegian-born conductor and composer of a cappella and predominantly sacred music in the Lutheran tradition. It was in this time with Christiansen that Glarum began to develop his compositional style; the influence of Christiansen’s style would indeed be present in Glarum’s music for his entire career." -- Lewis & Clark Special Collection and Archives

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Giving credit to where credit is due :) beautiful song