“Wade in the Water” is the name of a spiritual first published in New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1901) by John Wesley Work II and his brother, Frederick J. Work. It is associated with the songs of the Underground Railroad.
The song relates to both the Old and New Testaments. The verses reflect the Israelites’ escape out of Egypt as found in Exodus 14. The chorus refers to healing: see John 5:4, “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”
Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water
Many Internet sources and popular books claim that songs such as “Wade in the Water” contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture and the route to take to successfully make their way to freedom. An example of this is cited in the book Pathways to Freedom: Maryland & the Underground Railroad. The book explains how Harriet Tubman used the song “Wade in the Water” to tell escaping slaves to get off the trail and into the water to make sure that the dogs employed by slavers lost their trail.
The first commercially recorded version of the song was released by Paramount Records (sung by Sunset Four Jubilee Singers in 1925), as “Good News Chariot’s Coming and Wade in the Water. The Charioteers’ 1939 recording was even glossier, and by the time the Golden Gate Quartet recorded the song in 1948 individual voices were prominent, prefiguring the doo-wop groups of the rock and roll era.
