A. Kori Hill

The Mississippi River is a big deal. It’s not the longest river in the US – that’s the Missouri. But it’s played a big role in American culture, commerce, and identity for more than a hundred years. 

Prior to the expansion of trains and way before cars and planes, the way to get around was either by foot, horse and/or cart, or by boat. The Mississippi River was very important in the early United States, as steamboats carried merchandise, food, people – enslaved and free – from the north to the south and from the east to the west. 

Because of its importance, the Mississippi naturally became the focus of books, movies, and music. There’s the musical Showboat (1927), which follows a steamboat theater company on the Mississippi; there’s Ferde Grofé’s Mississippi Suite (1925/26); there’s William Grant Still’s The American Scene (1957), Suite No. 5 (The Southwest), Movement III. “Song of the Rivermen (They Sing of the Mississippi.” And between those two sits Florence Price’s Mississippi River (The River and the Songs of Those Dwelling upon Its Banks) (1934). 

Price completed it after her Chicago Symphony debut and dedicated it to one of her teachers, fellow composer Arthur Olaf Anderson. It’s one movement divided into four sections. It highlights Price’s skill at quoting folk music and putting it in conversation with her original melodies. 

Price scholar Rae Linda Brown identifies four spirituals and two popular songs that Price quotes:  “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Go Down, Moses,” “Deep River,” and “Stand Still, Jordan;” a tune Price calls “Lalotte” and “Steamboat Bill River Song” (which you might recognize as the tune Mickey whistles as Steamboat Willie!). 

However, there’s another popular song Price quotes that a YouTube commenter @ThePepperh heard: “Git Along, Little Dogies.” 

Why did Price quote these tunes? Because they represent something specific about life along the Mississippi. Of dock workers, boatmen, and captains; of mothers, sisters, and uncles sold “downriver;” of the birds and plants that grow along its banks; of the Indigenous peoples who did and continue to call the river home; of steamboat races, festivals, and the constant activity of buying, selling, and traveling. Price grew up 141 miles from the Mississippi; her composition is not only built upon imagination but experience through proximity. 

Mississippi River is not as rigid as Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. It has more in common with Bedřich Smetana’s “Vltava” (“The Moldau”); Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture (which is full of quotes of fraternity and drinking songs); and George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. It’s about painting a picture with notes and letting listeners add the specific actions, images, and scenarios that speaks to them. 

What images do you see when you hear someone say “Mississippi River?” How do these images change when you hear Price’s Mississippi River? Are there other quotes of folk and popular music that you hear that haven’t been identified?