Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier

The United States of America, a promised land? Free America! celebrates the ideas and hopes which preoccupied the young American Republic in the years 1770-80: the need for freedom of assembly, a willingness to rebel and go into battle fully aware of the cost, but above all, a desire for a new harmony whose songs, hymn tunes, and marches accompany the long journey to a new “promised land.” A powerful message which informs the first collaboration between harmonia mundi and Anne Azéma now leading the Boston Camerata.

Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917 – July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop music singer, whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music, and by 1955 had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Her 1952 song "You Belong to Me" topped the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, becoming the second single to top the UK Singles Chart, and the first by a female artist to do so.

To many blues enthusiasts, Josh White was a folk revival artist. It's true that the second half of his music career found him based in New York playing to the coffeehouse and cabaret set and hanging out with Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and fellow transplanted blues artists Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. In Chicago during the 1960s, his shirt was unbuttoned to the waist à la Harry Belafonte and his repertoire consisted of folk revival standards such as "Scarlet Ribbons." He was a show business personality - a star renowned for his sexual magnetism and his dramatic vocal presentations. Many listeners were unaware of White's status as a major figure in the Piedmont blues tradition…