Dr. Thomas W. Talley, a Tennessee native, taught chemistry and biology at Fisk University from 1903–42, after earning his high school education, an AB in 1890, and a master’s degree in 1893 at Fisk. He later chaired the chemistry department there for 25 years. After earning a Doctor of Science degree at Walden University in 1899, he did postdoctoral work at Harvard, completed a dissertation at the University of Chicago later in his life, and completed several scientific publications during his career.
As an undergraduate, he joined the Fisk Jubilee Singers with a love and commitment to performance and knowledge of Black musical traditions that lasted his entire life. This love of Black traditional music led him to collect the texts of Black rural traditional music (some with musical notation) throughout Tennessee in his later life. Published in 1922, his groundbreaking work, Negro Folk Rhymes, was the first collection of African American secular folk music, the first folklore collection compiled by a Black scholar, and the first serious collection of folksongs of any type from Tennessee. In addition, Dr. Talley produced the first significant collection of folk narratives from African American rural communities across Tennessee, which remained unpublished until 1993. (From Notable Folklorists of Color)
Sometime in the early 1920s Florence Hudson Botsford invited Talley to contribute a song to her collection, Folk Songs of Many Peoples (1921-22). In response he sent her his original composition entitled Behold That Star. Behold That Star entered the Christmas music repertoire and was widely reprinted in anthologies. On November 30, 1958, the piece was performed on a national broadcast by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, with Leontyne Price singing. By this time the song had become so pervasive that Talley's name had been detatched from it, and Bernstein announced that he regretted that he did not know who had composed the song. And in the liner notes to his album Traditional Christmas Songs (1967), Pete Seeger writes that Behold That Star was "composed by a black musician [not named] in Tennessee about 1930." As we've stated above, Talley's original words and music for the spiritual were published in 1922 in Botsford's Folk Songs of Many Peoples, Volume 2, p. 50 (1922).
Refrain
Behold that star!
Behold that star up yonder,
Behold that star!
It is the star of Bethlehem.
There was no room found in the inn.
It is the star of Bethlehem.
For Him who was born free from sin.
It is the star of Bethlehem. Refrain
The wise men travelled from the East.
It is the star of Bethlehem.
To worship Him, the Prince of Peace.
It is the star of Bethlehem. Refrain
A song broke forth upon the night.
It is the star of Bethlehem.
From angel hosts all robed in white.
It is the star of Bethlehem. Refrain
Behold That Star - Marian Anderson
Behold That Star - Martin Hargrove, bass voice
Behold That Star - Rhythmuschor Fridolfing
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