Mary Don’t You Weep Part 1 and 2 - The Caravans

Recorded in 1958. The song tells the Biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her distraught pleas to Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. Other narratives relate to The Exodus and the Passage of the Red Sea, with the chorus proclaiming Pharaoh’s army got drown-ded!, and to God’s rainbow covenant to Noah after the Great Flood. With liberation thus one of its themes, the song again become popular during the 1950’s and 1960’s American Civil Rights Movement. Additionally, a song that explicitly chronicles the victories of the Civil Rights Movement, “If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus“, written by Charles Neblett of The Freedom Singers, was sung to this tune and became one of the most well-known songs of that movement. The first recording of the song was by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1915. The best known recordings were made by the vocal gospel group The Caravans in 1958, with Inez Andrews as the lead singer, and The Swan Silvertones in 1959. “Mary Don’t You Weep“ became The Swan Silvertones’ grea