Hall Johnson

Francis Hall Johnson, known professionally as Hall Johnson (March 12, 1888 – April 30, 1970), was one of a number of American composers and arrangers - including Harry T. Burleigh, R. Nathaniel Dett, and Eva Jessye — who elevated the African-American spiritual to an art form, comparable in its musical sophistication to the compositions of European Classical composers.

Francis Hall Johnson was born in Athens, Georgia to Alice Virginia Sansom and William Decker Johnson, who was a bishop in the AME Church. Johnson received an extensive education. He attended the private, all-black Knox Institute and earned a degree from Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. He also attend Atlanta University and the Juilliard School. As a boy, he taught himself to play the violin after hearing a violin recital given by Joseph Henry Douglass, grandson of Frederick Douglass. He went on to play the violin and viola professionally, including in the orchestra for the 1921 musical, Shuffle Along.

In time, however, he became more interested in choral music, forming the Hall Johnson Negro Choir, the first of many choral ensembles, in 1925. Hall Johnson and his choir became renowned through their participation in the 1930 Broadway production of Marc Connelly's The Green Pastures as well as in national and international tours of the play, radio versions, the 1936 film adaptation, and Hallmark Hall of Fame television broadcasts.

Johnson would also go on to arrange music for and conduct his choir in more than thirty feature-length Hollywood films, besides a number of short films and cartoons as well as in Walt Disney's film Dumbo, specifically in the song "When I See An Elephant Fly"; Johnson himself voiced one of the crow characters, the Deacon Crow. Some members of the choir also provided voices to these characters as well.

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